Dr. Harriet C.P. Lau, an assistant professor within the Division of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley’s Faculty of Letters & Science, has been awarded a 2022 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David & Lucile Packard Basis. Lau is certainly one of 20 early-career researchers to be acknowledged with this prestigious award. Every fellow will obtain $875,000 over 5 years to pursue their analysis.
“This award got here as an absolute shock and is a real honor,” mentioned Lau. “The Basis encourages its fellows to confront ‘dangerous’ and impressive analysis questions in our respective fields, and I aspire to satisfy that objective!”
Lau is a theoretical geophysicist who research the dynamics of Earth’s inside, or mantle, on a worldwide scale. Lau and her analysis group use fashions to investigate mantle deformation over timescales that span from seconds to hundreds of thousands of years, pushed by processes like earth tides. These processes affect Earth’s floor surroundings in some ways, from mountain constructing to volcanism, to adjustments in ice sheet and sea stage dynamics.
“This beneficiant award will go in direction of a multi-year effort in my group to know how higher understanding mantle and crustal deformation throughout these huge timescales influences Earth’s local weather system on equally huge timescales, from the paleo to the trendy day,” mentioned Lau.
“Prof. Lau’s analysis isn’t just pushing the boundaries of learning how the Earth deforms over a broad spectrum of timescales, it is usually well timed,” mentioned Michael Manga, earth and planetary science professor and division chair. “Understanding how Earth’s mantle deforms can also be essential for understanding how ice sheets and oceans reply to a altering local weather.”
Since 1988, The Packard Basis has supported and strengthened university-based science and engineering packages. The Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering are designed to supply promising researchers with the chance to pursue their work and tasks with nice flexibility and restricted funding restrictions. Packard Fellows additionally convene at an annual assembly to share and focus on their analysis, making attainable interdisciplinary collaborations. “Packard Fellows are inquisitive, passionate scientists and engineers who take a artistic method to their analysis, dare to suppose huge and comply with new concepts wherever they lead.”
Lau joins a strong cohort of present school members in Berkeley Letters & Science who’ve additionally been named Packard Fellows: Dipti Nayak (Organic Sciences 2020); Courtney Dressing (Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology 2019); Norman Yao (Physics 2018); Antonio Montalban (Arithmetic 2010); Feng Wang (Physics 2010); Holger Mueller (Physics 2009); Doris Bachtrog (Organic Sciences 2008); Daniel McKinsey (Physics 2004); Dan Stamper-Kurn (Physics 2002); Uros Seljak (Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology 2000); Jennifer Doudna (Biochemistry 1996); Edward Frenkel (Math 1995); and James Graham (Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology 1993).
