ACADEMIC BACKGROUND Personal Dimitri Sverjensky was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. An early interest in bird-watching, together with a love of the outdoors, lead to the study of geology at Cranbrook School. There, as a teenager, he first learnt the formulas of complex minerals such as tremolite under Frank Tebbutt. Subsequently, at the University of Sydney, he was trained in Crystallography by Ian Threadgold. Under the influence of Dal Swaine and Ron Wilkins, it became clear to him that he wanted to pursue the combination of geology and chemistry. This interest in geochemistry lead him to the Ph. D. program at Yale University in the fall of 1975 where he studied Economic Geology and Isotopic Geochemistry with Brian Skinner and Danny Rye. His first position after graduating in 1980 was at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory studying oil-field brines. While there, he also started a collaboration in Theoretical Geochemistry with Harold Helgeson at the University of California, Berkeley, an association and friendship that lasted twenty-seven years. After a three year stay at SUNY Stony Brook as an Assistant Professor, he was hired in 1984 by Johns Hopkins University where he has been ever since. Over a period of more than thirty years, Dimitri's research interests in Geochemistry evolved from Economic Geology to high temperature and pressure Aqueous Solution Chemistry (collaborating with H. C. Helgeson, E. L. Shock, and J. J. Hemley) to the Geochemistry of the mineral-water interface. Following a sabbatical in 2005 at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Dimitri started a collaboration with Robert Hazen and colleagues on the role of the mineral-water interface in Origin of Life studies and on the application of theoretical geochemistry to models of the environment on the early Earth in Astrobiology. He is also studying the role of fluid-mineral interactions in the Earth's Deep Carbon Cycle in a collaboration with Isabelle Daniel (Lyons) and Craig Manning (UCLA) through the Deep Carbon Observatory. Dimitri is married to Pamela Sverjensky, a pianist, teacher and long time Chair of the Piano department at the Levine School of Music in Washington, DC. They have two daughters, Tatiana and Natalya. Education Yale University, New Haven, CT: Ph.D. in Geology (1980) Academic Honors 2011: Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry Positions Held
Teaching and Research Interests Astrobiology |