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Karin Lydia Louzada
Science and Technology Attaché
CONTACT (NEW)
Royal Netherlands Embassy
Netherlands Office for Science & Technology
4200 Linnean Avenue N.W.
Washington DC 20008
Mobile US: +1 (857) 998-0728
E-mail: louzada AT post DOT harvard DOT edu
web-address: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~planets/louzada/
Me, drilling paleomagnetic cores at Lonar crater, India. Photograph by B.Weiss.
I am moving to Washington DC for my new job as a Science and Technology Attaché at the Royal Netherlands Embassy. I will be relocating to DC in December 2009. This fall I will be in San Mateo, California at the Silicon Valley office and in Den Haag. My website will remain at Harvard.
I recently obtained a PhD degree from theDepartment of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. I study how rocks and minerals on planetary surfaces are affected by meteorite impacts. My approach is two-fold:
1. In the Shock Compression Laboratory we shoot metal discs 34 mm in diameter through a 5 m long, 40 mm diameter horizotal gas gun at velocities of 100's to 2000 m/s, at samples of magnetic minerals and rocks. The impact induces a shock wave, just like in a meteorite impact. By studying how the magnetic properties of these materials react to shock waves, we can infer where impacts have occurred on other planets that we can’t visit directly, like Mars, but where we have magnetic information of the planet’s surface from satellites.
2. Lonar crater, India, is the best preserved impact crater formed entirely in basalt, and is therefore a unique analogue for impact craters on Mars. During two field seasons we collected samples of naturally shocked basalt at Lonar crater in order to study the effects we observe in shock experiments on pure minerals and rocks.
On this website you can find my disseratation and preprints of my publications.
Cheers, Karin
Download my CV here (07-10-09).
Download my PhD dissertation here.
Education
June 4, 2009 - Doctor of Philosophy, Earth and Planetary Sciences
Harvard University, U.S.A.
Dissertation: The effects of impact cratering on planetary crustal magnetisation.
Advisors: Dr. Sarah T. Stewart (Harvard) (and Dr. Benjamin P. Weiss (MIT))
March 6, 2007 - Master of Arts, Earth and Planetary Sciences
January 27, 2003 - Doctorandus (Drs./Master of Sciences), With Distinction, GeologyHarvard University, U.S.A.
Advisors: Dr. Sarah T. Stewart (Harvard) and Dr. Benjamin P. Weiss (MIT)
Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Thesis: The magmatic evolution of the upper ~3450 Ma Hooggenoeg Formation, Barberton greenstone belt, Kaapvaal Craton, South Africa.
Advisor: Dr. Manfred van Bergen
August 24, 1998 - Propedeuse, Cum Laude, Geology
Utrecht University, the Netherlands
last updated 08-29-09