Dr. Renée Heilbronner, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Basel, Switzerland, is spending spring semester at Texas A&M as the Michel T. Halbouty ’30 Visiting Chair in the College of Geosciences. Heilbronner specializes in rock deformation and microstructures. She is involved in a research group that identifies deformation processes through microstructure studies using polarizing light and electron microscopy (SEM and TEM) in naturally and experimentally deformed rocks.

Heilbronner received her Ph.D. from A&M in 1984 and has returned for three months to the Department of Geology & Geophysics to help install new methods and software for image analysis and orientation imaging (CIP and EBSD) that can be used for microstructure and texture analyses of rocks. The aim is to determine deformation mechanisms and flow laws from experiments and to derive the rheology and deformational history of natural tectonites.

Heilbronner also conducted a five-day workshop on campus March 10-14 titled “Image Analysis of Geomaterials.” She is highly renowned for similar workshops she conducts in Switzerland. Graduate students traveled from Wisconsin, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Rhode Island to attend the workshop along with faculty and graduate students from A&M’s Department of Geology & Geophysics. A group photo of TAMU workshop participants can be viewed at http://pages.unibas.ch/earth/micro/.  

Heilbronner currently advises three Ph.D. students from the University of Basel who traveled with her to A&M this semester. Julia Onneken, Anja Thust, and Rudiger Kilian are spending the semester at A&M so they can continue their research under her supervision. The students are also auditing various A&M courses to further their research and to develop their knowledge of the English language.

The Halbouty Visiting Chair is unique in that its purpose is to bring nationally and internationally acclaimed visiting scholars to campus. The individual term of this endowed Chair is determined by the availability and length of commitment made by the honoree. The first recipient of this Chair in 1999 was Dr. Fred Mackenzie of the University of Hawaii. Other previous Chair holders include Dr. Jay Melosh from University of Arizona; Dr. Albert Bally, Rice University; Dr. Frank Schwartz, Ohio State University; Dr. Jon Olson, University of Texas, and Dr. Doug Burbank, UC Santa Barbara.

For more information on Heilbronner and the workshop, please visit: http://pages.unibas.ch/earth/micro/.