Award Recognizes Significance and Impact of Research
Each semester, the Dan E. Wells Outstanding Dissertation Award is presented to a doctoral student who has performed outstanding research and submitted the best dissertation to the College. The Summer/Fall 2024 recipient was Yu-Huan Hsieh, a geology Ph.D. graduate.
The award was announced on December 14 at the 91破解版 Commencement for the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Hsieh received a certificate and an award of $1,000.
Hsieh鈥檚 dissertation is titled 鈥淔rom the Foreland and Retroarc Thrust Belts to the Mantle Transition Zone: First Multi-scale Retrodeformable Transect of the Active 90 mm/year Taiwan Arc-Continent Collision.鈥�
Her research, conducted under the supervision of John Suppe, distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, culminated in a deep and detailed description of the Earth鈥檚 crust around and under the island of Taiwan. This mapping disclosed new information for faults in that area, explained a discontinuity in volcanism, and disclosed new dome-shaped magma intrusions.
The increased detail disclosed in this dissertation creates a deeper understanding of subduction in plate tectonics that will aid in future geological research.
She will continue her research as a postdoctoral fellow at , working with Suppe.
For the award, nominated dissertations are evaluated for the:
- Significance and impact of the research
- Originality of the work
- Quality of the scholarship, and
- Quality of the presentation and organization of the dissertation
- Kathy Major, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics