2010 WISE Conference Keynote Speaker —

Dr. Kate C. Miller

Discovering the Sciences — It's a Blast

Dr. Kate C. Miller, Dean of the College of Geosciences at Texas A&M University, will share how she parlayed an interest in science as a young girl into a career in university teaching, research and administration. Along the way, she will give examples of how she was able to make life choices in order to have both a meaningful personal life and a fulfilling career. As part of her research, Dean Miller conducts experiments that include setting off large blasts to generate seismic waves. Her research focuses primarily on the application of active source seismology to the origin and evolution of the continental lithosphere. In recent years, this work has resulted in student research and publications on the west coast of North America, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, and central and eastern Europe. With her students, she recently wrapped up research in continental rifts including the southern Rio Grande Rift and Lake Baikal. Current projects include the active source experiment for the NSF-funded BATHOLITHS Project, that took place in the summer of 2009 and the seismic experiment for the Big Horn Mountains, an NSF EarthScope project, which is scheduled for the summer of 2010. BATHOLITHS is a multi-disciplinary study of the Coast Range Plutonic Complex of British Columbia directed at understanding the magmatic evolution of continental arcs. The Big Horns project is a multi-disciplinary investigation of how contractional basement-involved foreland arches, such as those that comprise the central Rocky Mountains, form and are linked to plate tectonic processes.