Research Scientist / Electron Microprobe Manager

JOSEPH S. BOESENBERG

Joe joined the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University as a Research Scientist and Manager of Electron Microprobe Facility in April 2012. Previously, he worked at the American Museum of Natural History as Senior Scientific Assistant for the Meteorite Collection.

Joe received his masters degree in 1994, at Rutgers University where he worked with Dr. Jeremy Delaney and conducted one atmosphere partial melting experiments on different types of chondritic precursors to investigate the origins of eucrites and their differentiated parent body (presumably the asteroid, 4Vesta).

 

 

In 2000, Joe was invited back to Rutgers do a part-time Ph.D. His dissertation centered on examining the exchange of oxygen isotopes between gas, silicate melt and solid olivine at very low pressures utilizing a high temperature vacuum furnace. These experiments simulated reactions experienced by chondrules (crystalline spherules found in most meteorites) during their formation in the first few million years of the early solar system. A second project experimentally investigated the origin and formation of phosphor-an olivine in the pallasites, a type of stony-iron meteorite. His dissertation advisor was Dr. Roger Hewins.

These days his scientific research interests are diverse. They include metal-silicate interactions; asteroidal and planetary differentiation; the HED meteorites (howardites, eucrites, diogenites) and their association to asteroid 4Vesta; pallasites; mesosiderites; lunar and Martian rocks; oxygen isotopes; experimental petrology and stable isotope reactions; chondrule formation in the early solar system; volatiles in meteorites; terrestrial and extraterrestrial volcanism; and archeometallurgy (Civil and Revolutionary War metallurgy).

In January 2010, Rutgers Magazine published an article and a website on Rutgers Alumni now working at the American Museum of Natural History. Joe was one of the people interviewed. Here is the story: Knights at the Museum.

Education:

  • Ph.D., 2007, Rutgers University
  • Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History
  • Associate Graduate Faculty, College of Science and Engineering, School of Geology, Energy and the Environment, Texas Christian University

Professional Society Memberships:

  • American Geophysical Union
  • Meteoritical Society
  • Mineralogical Society of America