A feature of West Antarctica has been named for UB researcher Sophie Nowicki to honor her leadership in helping the world understand the future of sea level rise. An internationally known ice sheet scientist and climate modeler, Nowicki joined UB in 2020 after many years at NASA. She is an Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Geology, College of Arts and Sciences, and a core faculty member in the UB RENEW Institute.
At the boundaries between tectonic plates, narrow rifts can form as Earth’s crust slowly pulls apart. But how, exactly, does this rifting happen? Does pressure from magma rising from belowground force the land apart? Or is a rift just a rip, created mainly by the pulling motion of tectonic plates that are drifting away from each other? A study in the journal Geology explores these questions and sheds new light on how this process works.
1/13/2022: Shambhu Upadhyaya and Jason Briner are the recipients of the 2021-22 Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award, presented by the Graduate School to recognize UB faculty for their support and development of graduate students through their mentoring activities.
Our featured alumni for 2020 are Jessica Ball and Martin Derby. Both work on natural hazards, and speak to their experience at UB in our Alumni Profiles page.