Kyle Kim

 

Department of Geology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20740

kkim1228@umd.edu

 

Education

2021- Present

Currently a PhD student under the advisory of Dr. Megan Newcombe, with a project studying how varying magma ascent rates control the eruptive style of volcanic eruptions. 

 

2015 - 2019

Bachelor's of science in Earth Science, with a concentration in planetary science from the

University of California, Santa Cruz.

 

Professional Summary

I am a first year PhD student at the University of Maryland, College Park.  I am currently measuring magma ascent rates for Cinder Cone volcano in Lassen Volcanic National Park.  I have experience operating a number of lab instruments including a scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, and Nicolet iN10 MX FTIR.

 

Experience

PhD Student 2021 - Present

• Double polishing olivine grains that are on the order of 100's of microns wide and 10's of microns thick

• Acid baths of the polished grains to ensure no crystal bond is present on the surface of the grain when it is time to measure water content

• Measure water content of olivine grains with FTIR

• Measure water and carbon dioxide concentrations of melt inclusions hosted in olivine grains with FTIR

• Running data collected through code created by Dr. Newcombe in order to calculate magma ascent rates.

• Comparison of magma ascent rates with eruptions that are very stylistically different in order to determine the role of magma ascent rate in the explosivity of an eruption.

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Research Assistant March 2021 – July 2021

 

• Sample Prep for the furnace

• Operate a furnace connected to a residual gas analyzer

• Monitor gases released with respect to both temperature and time

• Determine main constituent gasses lost during the heating experiment

 

Research Assistant October 2019 – August 2020

• Created scanning electron microscope element maps of thin sections

• Prepared samples for X-ray diffraction

• Determine bulk mineralogy of meteorite powders before and after heating experiments using XRD

• Sample Prep for the furnace

• Operated a furnace connected to a residual gas analyzer

• Monitored gases released with respect to both temperature and time

• Determined main constituent gasses lost during the heating experiment

• Presented the project at the Bay Area Planetary Sciences meeting and DPS

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Summer research intern July 2019 - September 2019

• Operated the scanning electron microscope to create high resolution maps of thin sections

• Used RAMAN spectroscopy to determine if there is any -OH signatures in the exsolution features

• Used RAMAN to characterize olivine grains