Submission deadlines for 2023:
- 1st March
- 1st June
- 1st November
For full details, please select from the relevant links below:
Research Student Bursary (up to £300 available)
Early Career Bursary (up to £1000 available)
Reports from previous recipients
Tom Neill- November 2021
The bursary award has allowed me to investigate the changes in Tc-99 speciation during sulfidation processes. Tc-99 is a key fission product in radioactively contaminated land and geodisposal scenarios. The experiment was done under controlled conditions in a ‘chemostat’ reactor allowing us to monitor the reaction as it occurred (see picture). We have some exciting results including Tc k-edge X-ray absorption spectra recorded at diamond light source, which suggest that sulphide may play a role in speciation of Tc in reducing environments. This research was presented at the 2023 Nuclear Waste Services Research Support Office Annual Meeting and is currently being written up for publication.
Tc sorbed to magnetite being reacted with sodium sulfide in the chemostat reactor.
Nina Schleicher- April 2020
Identifying the sources of metals in aerosols holds the key to implementing effective source control measures to improve air quality. I was awarded an EMG bursary to investigate Zn isotope fractionation processes during dissolution representing aerosol transport from pollution sources to sinks. This information is needed to improve the application of Zn isotopes as novel proxies to trace aerosol sources.
While my work was severely delayed by Covid-19, I was still able to leach four different important source materials (road dust, mineral dust, fly ash and volcanic ash) in nitric acid at pH2 in time steps from 5 minutes to 6 days in order to simulate atmospheric processing. I also analysed the element composition of the leachate at 20 time points each. I am currently preparing to add Zn isotope measurements of the leachates for selected time points. Both data sets combined will not only be of sufficiently high quality for publication, they will also lead to improvements in the use of non-traditional metal stable isotopes for aerosol source tracing.
Ke-Qing Xiao – April 2019
“The project was delayed a bit due to COVID, but is still going and I am working on it right now and expect to have at least one paper out of it. Here are some progresses:
- An invited talk “The role of minerals in cryptic methane cycling in marine surface sediment” about this project at Goldschmidt 2019 session 11g “At the Frontiers of Redox Biogeochemistry: New Rungs in the Redox Ladder”
- Our proposal to Diamond based on this project was highly rated and provisionally recommended for beamtime in 2021, but there is uncertainty due to COVID, as you can understand.”
- The work has now been published Mineralogical control on methylotrophic methanogenesis and implications for cryptic methane cycling in marine surface sediment, Nature Communications, 2022
Joseph Stewart – September 2018
“The EMG funding was used to visit the laboratories at Imperial College London to measure Neodymium isotopes in fossil cold-water corals from the Equatorial Atlantic. These results are being prepared for publication and will provide key insight into intermediate water circulation patterns during the last deglaciation. Thanks to Tina van de Flierdt and Naomi Pratt for hosting me and for help with analytical work.”
Ion exchange columns for Neodymium isotope analysis of corals at Imperial College London (Department of Earth Science).
Alicja Lacinska – September 2018
“The EMG bursary was used to undertake TEM analysis at the Micro and Nano-research centre, University of Nottingham for a project called CrCarb. The project focuses on the development of methodologies for immobilisation of Cr6+ in crystalline phases. The data obtained was essential for the evaluation of the crystallinity of laboratory-formed materials and is now being used to supplement a Royce scheme proposal for further advanced material investigations. The support of EMG is greatly appreciated.”
SEM image of Cr-bearing materials produced for the CrCarb project.
Roselie Tostevin – September 2018
“The EMG bursary enabled me to join two students from St Andrews University during their visit to the core library in South Africa, where we logged and sampled iron- and silica-rich Palaeoproterozoic sediments. These cores turned out to be so interesting that they spurned a a successful grant application. This grant will fund a PhD student to investigate how local oxygen levels influenced primary iron mineralogy in Palaeoproterozoic basins.”
Iron rich horizons in the core
Brant Walkley – August 2018
“The visit to University of Liverpool (Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy) that this award allowed was excellent. I collaborated with Dr Frederic Blanc (https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/chemistry/staff/frederic-blanc/), and we performed variable temperature 17O NMR and 1H NMR experiments to probe oxide and proton ion conduction in an A- and O- site deficient perovskite material, sodium bismuth titanate. This material has potential as a fast oxide-ion conductor, Pb-free piezoelectric, end member for high temperature/permittivity multilayer ceramic capacitors and potential oxidation catalyst.
The bursary covered the costs of 17O enrichment of the samples via gas-solid exchange, which is necessary to achieve high signal in 17O NMR. The data are being included in a manuscript we are currently working on for submission to Journal of Materials Chemistry A, and this work also contributes to funding proposals that are in preparation. During the visit I was also invited to give a talk at the Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy seminar series, which was an excellent opportunity.
Overall, the bursary allowed me to pursue independent research outside my role at the time, established new collaborations that have continued, and it has provided valuable data for our work.”
Andy Bray – September 2017
Clare Thorpe – December 2016
“The Mineralogical Society seed corn bursary allowed me to begin investigations into the ‘Ballidon long duration experiment’ where both archeological and nuclear waste glasses have been buried for up to 50 years. This preliminary work contributed to a successful EPSRC/Davd Clarke Fellowship application to investigate the durability of vitrified nuclear waste in complex natural environments.”
Weather station monitoring at the site of the long duration experiment
Laura Newsome – September 2016
“I was awarded an EMG bursary for my idea to investigate the microbiology of the Mendips massive birnessite deposits. I’m interested in manganese as it has a strong affinity for contaminants such as Cr and Pb, but also for valuable metals such as Co. Microbial manganese cycling is widespread in the natural environment, and may contribute impact on the mobility and fate of these metals. I heard about the massive birnessite deposits at a previous MinSoc conference and enquired whether a microbiological origin had been considered previously; while it was suspected, no investigations had yet been performed. The EMG bursary enabled me to organise collection of new samples from the Mendips caves, to characterise them with aqueous and solid phase geochemical analyses, and to extract and sequence microbial DNA. I’m still working on analysing the data, and am hoping to start some additional sequencing and culturing work on the samples shortly.”
Benjamin Tutolo – March 2016
“Hisingerite is a Fe(III)-bearing product of low-temperature (< 200 °C) fayalite hydration, but little is known about its modes of occurrence or its potential for H2 production. This knowledge gap stems, in part, from the difficulty in separating hisingerite, which occurs as micrometer-scale veinlets, from associated Fe-bearing minerals. Using EMG bursary funds, I travelled to the USA to perform microbeam x-ray fluorescence and spectroscopy analyses to determine both the occurrence and Fe oxidation state of hisingerite in field samples. These data will contribute to a forthcoming publication, as well as a future proposal focussing on the planetary implications of hisingerite production.”
Ben presented his preliminary work on hisingerite at Goldschmidt 2017 in Paris – Veinlet-Scale Reactive Transport during Serpentinization: Implications for H2 Fluxes from Oceanic Serpentinites.