Michael Hudak

Michael Hudak

Michael Hudak
Graduate Mentor
Education: 

B.A. in Geology and in Environmental Studies, Amherst College, 2012

Growing up in Florida where rocks are scarce, the geology section of 8th grade earth science was easily my least favorite unit. Discovering geology in college was a happy accident for me. I graduated with B.A. in Geology and in Environmental Studies from Amherst College in 2012. My senior honors thesis on the geochemistry of Paleoproterozoic meta-granites inspired me to pursue an M.Sc in the Geosciences. Along the way, I made a detour to Los Alamos National Laboratory for a year as a post-bac to work on calcite-fluid interfaces as well as Arctic hydrology and soil chemistry. I’ve since returned to my motivating interest in magmatic processes and have been working in Iceland investigating the wholesale assimilation of altered crust into magma bodies, which we refer to as “basaltic cannibalism.” Other work I am concurrently involved with includes boron isotopic fractionation through subduction zones and the petrogenesis of rare mantle melts in western Anatolia. I plan to build upon my Masters work for a dissertation here at Penn State, continuing to evaluate the role of crustal assimilation and recycling in Icelandic magmas and its implications for volatile production at Icelandic volcanoes.

Wang, Z.P., M. R. Hudak, A. Lerner, R. K. Grubbs, S. Wang, Z. Zhang, E. Karapetrova, D. D. Hickmott, and J. Majewski, 2014. X-ray scattering of calcite thin films deposited by atomic layer deposition: Studies in air and calcite saturated water solution, Thin Solid Films.

Posters

Hudak, M.R., M. Feineman, P. C. LaFemina, and H. Geirsson, 2014. Basaltic cannibalism at Thrihnukagigur volcano, Iceland, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

Heikoop, J. M., B. D. Newman, M. R. Hudak, M. Gard, G. L. Altmann, H. Throckmorton, and C. J. Wilson, 2013. Deployment of Indicator of Reduction in Soils (IRIS) Probes in Arctic drained thaw lake basins and drainages: Time integrated signals of soil saturation and redox, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

Throckmorton, H., G. Perkins, M. Rearick, G. L. Altmann, L. R. Cohen, M. R. Hudak, M. Gard, B. D. Newman, J. M. Heikoop, and C. J. Wilson, 2013. Isotopic and geochemical signatures of different aged drained thaw lake basins (DTLBs) and drainage channels in Arctic Alaska, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

Newman, B. D., H. Throckmorton, J. M. Heikoop, G. L. Altmann, L. R. Cohen, M. Gard, M. R. Hudak, G. Perkins, C. J. and Wilson, 2013. Using Deuterium and Oxygen-18 to Understand Multi-scale Hydrology of an Arctic Landscape near Barrow, Alaska, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

Hudak, M. R. and T. A. Harms, 2012. Geochemical analysis of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks of the Highland Mountains of southwestern Montana, Northeast Geological Society of America Meeting.