JOHN C. JAMIESON STUDENT PAPER AWARD
Information on the Award
The John C. Jamieson Student Paper Award is presented annually and recognizes significant research and writing on the field of high-pressure or high-pressure research. Successful nominees are students enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program who demonstrate the potential to be elected AGU Fellows in the future. Established in 2015, the award is named to honor the memory of former University of Chicago geophysical sciences professor John C. Jamieson, and the contributions that he’s made to the field of mineral physics research.
Award Benefits
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1Recognition in Eos
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2Recognition at the AGU Fall Meeting during the award presentation year
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3Award certificate
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4$250 monetary prize
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5Complimentary tickets to the award presentation at the AGU Fall Meeting
Eligibility
Nominee Eligibility
- The nominee is required to be an active AGU member.
- The nominee must be affiliated with the Mineral and Rock Physics section.
- The nominee must be actively enrolled in an undergraduate program and have completed at least four semesters toward their degree or be actively enrolled in a graduate program.
- The following individuals are not eligible to be candidates for the award during their terms of service:
- AGU President;
- AGU President-elect;
- Council Leadership Team members
- Honors and Recognition Committee members;
- John C. Jamieson Student Paper Award Committee members;
- All full-time AGU staff; and
- AGU Fellows.
Nominator Eligibility
- Nominators are not required to hold an active AGU membership.
- The following individuals are not eligible to be nominators for the award during their terms of service:
- AGU President;
- AGU President-elect;
- Council Leadership Team members;
- Honors and Recognition Committee members;
- John C. Jamieson Student Paper Award Committee members; and
- All full-time AGU staff.
Supporter Eligibility
- Individuals who write letters of support for the nominee are not required to be active AGU members.
- The following individuals are not eligible to be supporters for the award during their terms of service:
- AGU President;
- AGU President-elect;
- Council Leadership Team members;
- Honors and Recognition Committee members;
- John C. Jamieson Student Paper Award Committee members; and
- All full-time AGU staff.
Relationships to a Nominee
The following relationships need to be identified and communicated to the Award Committee but will not disqualify individuals from participating in the nomination or committee review process. These apply to committee members, nominators, and supporters:
- Current dean, departmental chair, supervisor, supervisee, laboratory director, an individual with whom one has a current business or financial relationship (e.g., business partner, employer, employee);
- Research collaborator or co-author within the last three years; and/or
- An individual working at the same institution or having accepted a position at the same institution.
Individuals with the following relationships are disqualified from participating in the award nomination process as a nominator or supporter:
- Family member, spouse, or partner.
- A previous graduate (Master’s or Ph.D.) and/or postdoctoral advisor, or postdoctoral fellow may not write a nomination letter but may write a supporting letter after five years of terminating their relationship with the nominee beginning on 1 January after the year the relationship was terminated.
- A former doctoral or graduate student, or a former postdoctoral fellow may not write a nomination letter for a former advisor but may write a supporting letter after five years of terminating their relationship with the nominee beginning on 1 January after the year the relationship was terminated.
Nomination Package
Your nomination package must contain all of the following files, which should be no more than two pages in length per document. Learn how to successfully submit a nomination package or read our guide on how to submit a successful nomination.
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A curriculum vitae for the nominee.
- A statement on the applicant’s specific role in the research and writing of the paper
- A copy of the paper’s abstract.
- A copy of the full research article.
- A 500-word unpublished blog post about the research article. The finalists’ and winners’ posts may be selected for publication on AGU’s Geospace blog.
- One letter of support from an an advisor with intimate knowledge of the research involved in the paper submission. Letterhead is preferred.
Submission Process
Recipients
Jiejun Jing
Giacomo Criniti
Citation
Giacomo Criniti is an extremely worthy recipient of the John C. Jamieson Student Paper Award for his exceptional contribution to the field of mineral physics made by determining the elastic properties of bridgmanite, Earth’s most abundant mineral, at pressures compatible with the deep lower mantle, as published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth (Criniti et al., 2021, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JB020967). The Brillouin scattering measurements of MgSiO3 bridgmanite presented in this paper include the first single-crystal measurements of the longitudinal wave velocity, vP, of bridgmanite at pressures of Earth’s deep lower mantle. Previous Brillouin scattering studies on both single-crystal and polycrystalline bridgmanite samples either have been carried out only up to approximately 45 gigapascals, or have been only able to constrain the aggregate shear wave velocities at deep mantle conditions. The main problem that is elegantly addressed in this paper is that when high-pressure acoustic phonon measurements are made on bridgmanite in the diamond anvil cell using Brillouin scattering, the bridgmanite vP signal, which is increasing in frequency with increasing pressure, merges and is obscured by the much larger S wave peak of the diamond anvils, at pressures higher than 30–45 gigapascals. This prevents the velocity from being determined at higher pressures. Thanks to his exceptional experimental skills and his deep understanding of crystallography and mineral elasticity, Giacomo was able to align both the diamond anvils and bridgmanite crystals to allow the vP signal to be measured on the high-frequency side of the diamond vS signal, at pressures above 50 gigapascals. By making simultaneous single-crystal measurements of density and acoustic wave velocities, Giacomo obtained a self-consistent data set, which places strong constraints on the elastic behavior of bridgmanite up to pressures of 80 gigapascals. Using the newly determined bridgmanite elastic properties to compute wave velocities for a pyrolite bulk composition at lower mantle conditions, he found good agreement with seismic reference models, suggesting that there is no basis in seismology for considering that the average Earth’s lower mantle has a different composition than the upper mantle. This is contrary to what was suggested by studies on polycrystalline bridgmanite in which no measurements of vP were possible. These measurements were only possible through Giacomo’s extraordinary experimental abilities and dogged perseverance. —Tiziana Boffa Ballaran and Daniel J. Frost, Bayerisches Geoinstitut, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany
Response
Being an extremely enthusiastic person when it comes to discovering new things, my choice of joining the Bayerisches Geoinstitut of the University of Bayreuth was likely the best one I’ve made in my career so far. The institute is an experimentalist’s wonderland when it comes to high-pressure research, and therefore it seems only natural to me that I fell in love with experimental mineral physics when I first got to work with Tiziana Boffa Ballaran. Tiziana is both a brilliant crystallographer and a caring supervisor, but the project she assigned me for my master’s thesis was certainly not an easy one. The idea was to compress single crystals of MgSiO3 bridgmanite in diamond anvil cells to high enough pressure to observe a crossover between the sample vP and diamond vS by Brillouin scattering. This represents both a crystallographic problem and an experimental challenge. A lot of trial and error was involved in finding a protocol to define the most suitable orientation and size of bridgmanite crystals, focused ion beam milling strategy, and sample loading in the diamond anvil cell. Fortunately, our technician Raphael Njul was always ready to help by preparing perfect single-crystal platelets in a very short time. Even thus, assembling a single cell took on average of 1 week, and the process would have driven me crazy were it not for Alexander Kurnosov. No matter the hour or the day, Alex was always available to share his extensive knowledge about diamond anvil cells and Brillouin scattering and help with troubleshooting in the data collection and analysis. Last but not least, it was thanks to Daniel Frost and his teachings about the ways of thermodynamics that I was able to put such valuable data into the right context. In the end, the project proved to be way harder and more time consuming than I expected, and by the time it was finished I was already at the end of the first year of my Ph.D. Writing a paper is a team effort, and if it were not for all the people I mentioned, it would have been impossible for me to finish. This is why I am extremely grateful to everyone who supported me throughout this project and to the Mineral and Rock Physics section of AGU for recognizing our efforts by awarding me the 2022 John C. Jamieson Student Paper Award. —Giacomo Criniti, Bayerisches Geoinstitut, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany
Wen-Yi Zhou
Citation
Wen-Yi Zhou received the 2022 Mineral and Rock Physics (MRP) John C. Jamieson Student Paper Award for her outstanding work investigating water content, temperature, and olivine fraction variations at 410-kilometer depth using high-pressure/-temperature elasticity data of wadsleyite. This work was published in Nature Communications earlier this year and presents the first simultaneously inverted 2D temperature and petrological model in Earth’s interior based on experimentally determined mineral physics data. This study also provides direct evidence for the thermochemical heterogeneities in Earth’s interior, which is important for understanding the material exchange processes between the upper and lower mantle. Wen-Yi is expected to graduate with a Ph.D. degree from the University of New Mexico in winter 2022. —Jin Zhang, Texas A&M University, College Station
Response
I am honored and humbled to receive the 2022 John C. Jamieson Student Paper Award from the Mineral and Rock Physics section of AGU. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work on this project and am grateful for the generous help from all my wonderful coauthors. I would first like to thank my Ph.D. adviser and coauthor, Jin Zhang (Texas A&M University), for her guidance and support from the day we began experiments to the day the paper got accepted. Her timely feedbacks and years of experience helped me overcome difficulties and achieve progress in every step. She encouraged me to read literature in different fields to be open-minded and always supported me to gain new skills. She is also a role model who gives me the courage to pursue science. I would also like to thank all the other authors who have offered a lot of help for this research project. Ming Hao (Carnegie Institution for Science) generously helped me with these 24-hour experiments. Brandon Schmandt (University of New Mexico) introduced me to the world of seismology and inspired me to study mantle heterogeneities from a global perspective. Bin Chen (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) helped us to synthesize precious wadsleyite samples and provided insightful suggestions about the manuscript. Ruijia Wang (Southern University of Science and Technology) offered her professional help in coding whenever I needed it. Many thanks to the Mineral and Rock Physics section of AGU for this award. —Wen-Yi Zhou, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Mingda Lv
Rajkrishna Dutta
Cara Vennari
Suyu Fu
Francesca Miozzi
Christopher Joseph Cline
Christopher Langrand
Ting Chen
Xintong Qi
Xuebing Wang
Honors Contacts
