Concord University along with five partner institutions has been awarded $579,998 through the U.S. National Science Foundation’s EarthCube program which seeks to transform research in the earth sciences via publicly-accessible databases and online tools. The funded project is titled “THROUGHPUT: Standards and Services for Community Curated Repositories.” Other partner institutions include Columbia University, the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, Northern Arizona University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Stephen Kuehn, Associate Professor of Geology and Director the Electron Microprobe Laboratory, serves as Concord’s lead investigator. A major contribution to the project is information on explosive eruptions of Cascade Range volcanoes and of other volcanoes from around the world that has been collected by Dr. Kuehn and numerous Concord geology students over the last seven years. Data collected by researchers at other institutions will also be included.

Concord has recently hired Dr. Janine Krippner to work on the THROUGHPUT project. Originally from New Zealand, she recently completed her doctoral degree at the University of Pittsburgh where she studied pyroclastic flows from Shiveluch volcano in Kamchatka and from Mount St. Helens in Washington State. She actively engages in volcano outreach on social media and has attracted more than 11 thousand followers on Twitter. She has also been interviewed many times by both print and broadcast media including the BBC News, CNN, Discovery Channel, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, National Geographic, and other media outlets around the world.

Public presentations featuring Dr. Krippner’s experience with communicating the eruptions of Agung volcano on the island of Bali in Indonesia are being planned for late February.

For additional information please contact Dr. Kuehn at sckuehn@concord.edu or 304-384-6322 or contact Dr. Krippner at jkrippner@concord.edu or on Twitter.

(Originally from Sarah Dalton for Concord University).