Roberta L. Rudnick

Biography

B.S. Portland State University (1980), M.S. Sul Ross State University (1983), PhD The Australian National University (1988). Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Geochemistry, Mainz, Germany (1987-1989). Research Fellow, Research School of Earth Sciences, ANU (1989-1994). Assistant, Associate, Full Professor, Harvard University (1994-2000); Professor, Distinguished University Professor University of Maryland (2000-2016); Distinguished Professor UC Santa Barbara (2015-present). Fellow of AGU, GSA, MSA, Geochemical Society, European Association of Geochemistry.. Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Foreign Associate Chinese Academy of Sciences. Areas of specialization: Geochemistry and Petrology, Continent Formation and Evolution.

Research

Roberta Rudnick combines petrology and geochemistry with geophysical information to investigate the composition, origin and evolution of Earth's continental lithosphere. She has been investigating the utility of glacial diamictites to trace the composition of the upper continental crust through Earth history, and uses xenoliths (foreign rock fragments carried to the surface by volcanoes) to investigate the lower crust and upper mantle.