The funding of this proposal will provide salary for a technician to support the radiogenic and heavy stable isotope facility at Washington State University. The technician will be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Neptune MC-ICP-MS and associated clean laboratory. This position is essential to facilitate the pursuit of many ongoing isotope geoscience projects, in areas such as crust and mantle evolution, igneous petrology, Lu-Hf and zircon U-Pb geochronology, global tectonics and biostratigraphy, and ensure their completion in a timely fashion. The funding for an isotope lab technician will benefit both Washington State University as well as the geologic community, by supporting a facility that has a long-term record of providing geochemical service to geology. Our facilities are open to the geological community and we welcome researchers to come to WSU to perform their isotopic work here. We have several collaborations in place that will bring faculty, research scientists, graduate and undergraduate students to WSU from other institutions to perform chemical separations and isotopic analyses on the MC-ICP-MS. The collaborations with outside research groups have important benefits for both WSU and the visitors by allowing cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques. WSU benefits from the influx of scientific ideas that visitors bring. In addition, the type of isotopic analyses visitors desire often drive the development of new analytical techniques. Visiting researchers benefit by acquiring isotopic data for their projects, but also by learning new techniques and by gaining an understanding of their data from an analyst's point of view. Student participation will be an essential element of these collaborations. The benefit to the student of visiting a different institution and interacting with a different set of faculty and students is enormous and is important step in a young scientist's career development. ***
