What do you do?
I use computational chemistry to understand geochemical problems associated with the interactions, arrangements, and transformations of atoms in minerals and solutions, and, most importantly, at the interface between the two.

Why should the general public be interested in what you do?
This knowledge is the only way to make scientific progress on the prediction and control of contaminant migration in the Earth’s subsurface.

Why does it interest you?
This is an interdisciplinary area of study, integrating the fields of geochemistry, mineralogy, surface science,  and aqueous solution chemistry.  Computational methods play a key role in bringing these fields together.  The computer provides a kind of meeting place for the vacuum chamber, the synchrotron, the test tube, and the outcrop.  That’s a pretty small place now, but it’s getting bigger.

What major advances/discoveries have occurred in your research field over the last 10 years?
I don’t think that this field moves forward by a small number of overarching discoveries.   It tends to move forward in myriad fronts involving specific chemical/geochemical systems.  The key “event” will occur gradually- when we look at the textbooks in 20 years and find that our understanding of chemical speciation in interfacial systems has changed dramatically as ever more sophisticated experimental probes and computational methods piece together a chemically realistic picture of the trillions of square kilometers of mineral-water interface sitting under our feet.