SEES Lecturer Sami Mikhail has been honoured by the Geological Society of London with the 2017 Murchison Fund. This award recognizes significant contributions to the field of hard rock and tectonic geoscience by an individual under the age of 40.
The motivation behind Sami’s research is to understand how th
e interior of a planet affects and controls the composition of its surface. This is driven by his desire to understand how planets can become habitable in our own Solar System, and beyond (i.e. exosystems). Sami’s research so far has addressed the origin of Earth’s atmosphere and of diamonds in its mantle; and the crustal evolution of the planet, Venus.
Former Murchison winners include Charles Lapworth (1878), John Dewey (1971), and Andrew Mackenzie (1989), among others.