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Research Areas

Externally funded projects within the department span a wide range of research areas. These projects include substantial amounts of field, lab, and computational work. Many of the research projects are collaborative both within and outside the department, with notable ties to Argonne National Labs, Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), the Field Museum, and the Chicago Botanic Garden, to name just a few.

From a geographic standpoint, we currently have active projects in Namibia, Greenland, China, Iceland, Australia, the large icebergs of the Ross Sea off the coast of Antarctica, the New Zealand Southern Alps, the Yucatan Peninsula, the Amazon Delta, the Pacific Rim, various Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) sites, northern Italy, southern France, Arctic Canada, and sites throughout the United States.

Graduate students carry out a significant portion of the Department's research under the guidance of experienced faculty and staff. Undergraduate students also participate in ongoing research

Earth and Planetary Science research at Northwestern is supported by our state-of-the-art analytic lab facility called the Integrated Labs for Earth and Planetary Sciences (ILEPS).

Please visit the links shown to the left for more information about the department's research.