DSU Professor Recieves 600 Thousand Dollar HBCU Grant For Research

DOVER, DE-

A Delaware State University Professor is receiving a 3 year, 627 thousand dollar grant to study properties of minerals in the Earth’s mantle from the National Science Foundation. 

Dr. Gabriel Gwanmesia says the money will go to recreating conditions where the mineral is naturally occurring in a lab environment by simulating the heat and pressure of molten rock hundreds of thousands of miles underneath the earth.
First, the material will be created at Stony Brook University on Long Island then sent to Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago for X-ray crystallography analysis using their synchrotron light source.
He says his focus will be the amount of water, in the form of OH that is stored in the minerals wadsleyite and ringwoodite.

“Water affects the properties of everything including the melting of rocks to produce volcano’s– it’s speculated that by volume if you were to extract all the water from the rocks it would be more than all the water in the ocean,” Dr. Gwanmesia said.

He says with the funding that hypothesis would be something he would be able to study to better understand the mechanics of the earth’s core.
He says the grant helps to make sure his grad students can participate in the program and notes that he was one of the few black men in his field when he began his work 15 years ago- something he’s hoping this grant can help to change.