ALOHA

I'm a volcanologist and I teach here at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. While I specialize in Volcanology, I also teach courses in the Physical Geology, Geology of the Hawaiian Islands, Mineralogy, and Petrology.

If you love geology and volcanoes, UHH is the only University in the U.S. with an active volcano in it's backyard. It's a great place to come and study, not to mention the fact that it's in Hawaii!

We have a great degree program and a small school atmosphere where the learning of our undergraduate students is our top priority. If you have any questions, send me an email or give me a call.

When I'm not around UHH, you can often find me out filming volcanic activity on Kilauea with my wife and fellow volcanologist Dr. Cheryl Gansecki. We produce educational films about the eruption that are shown in the theater at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. A lot of our footage is used in many different TV programs on the major networks, Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, and others, as well as at a number of museums including the American Museum of Natural History. You can learn more about our filming by visiting Volcano Video Productions. The filming we do is so good and unique that we were also written up in by Videography Magazine. They did a really nice job of writing up what we do, check it out!

My research interests with volcanoes concentrate on basaltic volcanoes in Hawaii and large ash-flow caldera eruptions. I'm probably best known for my work on the mechanics of pahoehoe lava emplacement, but all lava flows have a special place in my heart. I love trying to gently coax a volcano's story out of the rocks and minerals. But if that doesn't work, grinding them to bits and torturing them in hot furnaces and under electron beams is kind of fun too! One way or the other, they eventually talk and say some pretty interesting things.

Doing all this stuff seems to interest other people and I've been interviewed on TV quite a bit talking about the Hawaiian Islands, Kilauea, and lava flows. One of the most fun interviews was when I talked the History Channel into including my entire volcanology class in a program called SUICIDE MISSIONS: VOLCANOLOGISTS. The students were totally stoked and were good on camera. You can also find out a bit more about me by visiting the Bishop Museum's X-TREME SCIENCE EXHIBIT.

Prior to coming to UHH, I worked for 15 years at the US Geological Survey in the Volcano Hazards Program, including 3 years at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. During my tenure at HVO the town of Kalapana was over run by lava and I was intimately involved with monitoring the progress of lava flows and evacuating residents. This experience had a profound effect on me and made me much more interested in making science more applicable to people.

I also run the Electron Microprobe lab here at UHH. We are the only undergraduate liberal arts college in the U.S. with our own microprobe. I was just awarded a two year NSF Major Research Instrumentation Grant to finish refurbishing the microprobe, complete the lab, and make the remote operation of the probe a reality. Once we're up and running, we'd love to work with students and professors from other small universities as well. We will also be working cooperatively with the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in analyzing lava samples to determine their thermal and chemical history.