This award extends an NSF/Boston University (BU) partnership to ensure technician support for the BU TIMS Facility in the Department of Earth Sciences. The award provides two years of funding for the BU TIMS Facility Manager after which time Boston University will guarantee continuation of technical support for the productive lifetime of the Facility. The Facility includes a Triton TIMS (Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometer), a New Wave MicroMill device, and a newly renovated 1000 ft2 clean lab including 300 ft2 of brand new space explicitly designed for ultra-clean TIMS related sample preparation. We specialize in the preparation and analysis of very small samples for isotopic analysis, in particular for Neodymium and Strontium. The TIMS Facility is at the heart of geochemical research in the Department of Earth Sciences supporting the four BU PIs' NSF-funded research spanning tectonics and metamorphism, igneous and mantle processes, weathering and earth surface processes, geochemical paleoceanography, and paleoclimatology.
As an open regional facility for isotopic analysis, the TIMS Facility draws a very large external userbase from the geochemical community. Almost 50% of the on-site userbase is external to Boston University (from 10 other institutions thusfar), and involves predominantly NSF-funded research projects. In addition, the technical support position enables hands-on training in TIMS isotope geochemical analysis for a significant number of graduate and undergraduate students. Over 50% of the users have been students (graduate and undergraduate), and a major part of the technician?s efforts have gone into student training. Thus, the technician enables us to stay true to our mission of sustaining a research lab of excellence, while training students as the next generation of isotope geochemists. Through our website, conference presentations, and publications we actively advertise the availability of the lab and seek to share its capabilities and methodologies with the broader geochemical community.
This award was granted to provide bridging support for a full-time Technician for the Boston University Thermal Ionization Mass Sepctrometer (TIMS) Facility. The Technician position had been funded by NSF during an the initial establishment of the TIMS Facility. During the lifetime of the current grant, support of the Techncian was successfuly transitioned from NSF to BU funding. Now, the Technician will be supported by BU for the productive lifetime of the Facility; this fulfills the expectations and goals of the NSF grant. The BU TIMS Facility houses a TIMS, and microdrill for microsampling, and supporting clean lab and sample preparation labs. The Technician is responsible for the day-to-day management, maintenance, and running of the Facility. A significant amount of this work relates to the training and management of numerous users (over 20 undergraduates, graduates, post-docs, and senior academics during the grant period) from within Boston University and from outside BU. With specialization in analysis of small amounts of Neodymium and Strontium isotopes as well as Calcium isotopes in diverse samples (e.g. rocks, soils, natural waters, teeth), ongoing research conducted in the TIMS Facility spans topics including geochemical sycles during mountain building and subduction, chronology of garnet growth, deep mantle procesess, chemistry of river solutes, archaeological provenance, and more. During this award, the Facility has establishedand refined novel methods for the precise analysis of extremely small amounts of Neodymium isotopes that would not have been possible without the assistance of the Techncian. The most significant application of these methods thusfar has been in dating the growth of zoned garnet crystals that may span millions of years duration. These methods, now published, are available to the scientific community and many outside users come to the BU TIMS Facility to learn these methods alongside the Technician.
