Research Interests:

I am an experimental mineral physicist, and my research focuses on the understanding of elastic and mechanical properties of Earth materials from ambient conditions to very high pressures and temperatures. Knowing pressure-temperature-composition dependences of solid materials allow geophysicists and geodynamicists to properly model the structure and the dynamic behavior of Earth interiors and improve planetary evolutionary models.

My favorite tools to investigate the elastic coefficients of minerals and materials and their thermo-elastic and mechanical properties in a wide range of physical conditions are:

The diamond anvil cell - to generate high pressures.

Brillouin spectroscopy - to determine the elastic coefficients of solids and fluids.

Synchrotron X-ray diffraction - to investigate the effect of pressure and stress on the atomic arrangement and density of solids at very high temperature and pressure and to observe and analyze the development of crystal preferred orientation in synthetic polycrystalline aggregates which simulate the rocks of the deep Earth mantle.