This award provides partial funding for the support of a research technician for a period of three year. The technician will be working in the electron microprobe and electron microscope facility in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University. The technician will help maintain and operate the facility and perform analyses for research projects in metamorphic and igneous petrology, mineralogy, crystallography and geochemistry in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and will also make the facility available to researchers in the departments of Biophysics, Materials Science and Engineering, Physics, Astronomy, and Geography.