Pamela Speciale (UT Austin)

Pamela Speciale is a Ph.D. candidate entering her 5th year at the University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences (JSG). Her research interests include paleopiezometry, rock mechanics, and strain localization in the lithospheric mantle. She is exploring the mechanisms and longevity of strain localization in the mantle lithosphere through experimental deformation of dry olivine aggregates. Pamela has quantified the rate of grain growth in deformed/deforming damp olivine though deformation/stress relaxation experiments on natural olivine aggregates. She is also examining stress–grain size relationships in feldspar and orthopyroxene in naturally deformed rocks, in an effort to test experimental extrapolations of these relationships to estimating stress in the lithosphere.

More information can be found at Pamela’s profile page.

Current project affiliations: Strain localization and grain growth in the mantle