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Steve Jacobsen receives Humboldt Award

July 2, 2014

Professor Steve Jacobsen has received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Award winners are honored for their outstanding research record and invited to spend a period of up to one year cooperating on a long-term research project with specialist colleagues at a research institution in Germany. Jacobsen's Humboldt research on Earth's deep water cycle will be carried out at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut, University of Bayreuth, Germany. Using the unique facilities in Bayreuth, including a 5000 ton high-pressure multi-anvil press, Jacobsen will synthesize mantle minerals and study the behavior of water-silicate reactions at deep-mantle conditions. He will also be studying natural mantle materials brought to the surface as inclusions in diamond. The research will ultimately lead to better understanding the composition and oxidation state of the Earth's interior.