Ji-Eun (JJ) Kim is a Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Elizabeth Griffith. Here she describes how the Friends of Orton Hall furthered her academic career.
Thanks to the Friends of Orton Hall (FOH) fund, I was able to complete experiments for one of my Ph.D. thesis project, “Application of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) for investigating export productivity in the Cretaceous Pacific Ocean”. The goal of this work was to quantify export production with high-resolution X-ray fluorescence (XRF) scans from a core collected in the western Pacific that have deposited during the Late Cretaceous. A portion of the fund was used to purchase reagents and supplies for making acid cocktails to digest marine sediments. The majority of the fund was used for inductively coupled plasma - optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) at the Trace Element Research Lab (TERL) of the School of Earth Sciences to analyze elements in the sediment that can later be used to calibrate the XRF results. The XRF scanning was attained from MARUM at the University of Bremen in Germany.
The results were presented at the 2019 Fall Meeting of AGU. It served as a stepping stone on presenting what I can do at OSU to other scholars out in the world. The poster “High-resolution export production during the Maastrichtian using marine barite at Shatsky Rise" also received travel fund from the FOH. Stay tuned for the next exciting news on how FOH has helped me out on my journey on presenting the ongoing research!
The School of Earth Sciences relies on the generous support of our alumni and friends to provide programs, scholarships and facilities that enrich the experience of our students, provide life-changing opportunities, and enable world-changing discoveries. The Friends of Orton Hall gifts are distributed to students in support of degree research work. If you are interested in giving to support the Friends of Orton Hall or other funds, please visit our giving page.