Geophysical Institute pair receives NASA funding for volcano research

Geophysical Institute research assistant professor Társilo Girona and his doctoral student, Claire Puleio, have each received a three-year NASA funding award to study heat emissions from Alaska volcanoes and volcanoes elsewhere around the globe.

Girona received a NASA New Investigator Program award for work in Earth science. 

Claire, who started with Girona in August, received a NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology award.

Both awards are highly competitive and will provide $470,000 of funding for three years. 

The goal of their work, Girona says, is to better anticipate volcanic eruptions in Alaska by using a new satellite-based method that detects subtle thermal anomalies. This will be complemented with field experiments at Mount Okmok volcano in the Aleutian Islands.

The pair will also study volcanoes in Argentina, Chile, Japan, New Zealand and Cape Verde.

The two projects will expand the work done by Girona and colleagues and which was featured in a paper published in Nature Geoscience earlier this year. Read about that paper here.

Collaborators on Girona’s project include Taryn Lopez of the Geophysical Institute, Hannah Dietterich of the Alaska Volcano Observatory and Carlo Cardellini of the University of Perugia, Italy.