Scholarships

RMAG Foundation Scholarship

The Trustees of the RMAG Foundation may elect to award this scholarship to an applicant demonstrating outstanding research abilities and achievement. There are no restrictions on school affiliation or field of study as long as it is geoscience oriented. The Trustees may not elect to award the Scholarship every year.

The 2024 RMAG Foundation Scholarship was awarded to:

Bruno Belotti, Ph.D. candidate, Geology, University of Idaho

Bruno’s dissertation topic is “The Stratigraphic Record of Soft-bedded Glaciers Over Glacial Cycles.” His work is under the supervision of Drs. Elizabeth Cassel and Timothy Bartholomaus. Bruno’s work is a field-based study in a sedimentary basin in Alaska’s Chitina Valley, which was deposited under the influence of local Quaternary glacial fluctuations. The work has the aim of constraining the timing, rates and styles of sediment deposition and of correlating them with specific phases of glacier advance and retreat throughout multiple glacial cycles. Bruno will use two burial-age dating techniques – Terrestrial Cosmogenic Nuclide and Single-Grain Optically Stimulated Luminescence – to constrain the deposition timing and duration of a package of interglacial sediment in the Chitina Valley.

In addition to constraining the timing of an ancient retreat of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet in Alaska, the proposed work will yield insights into the potential for sediment preservation beneath large outlet glaciers, and will allow him to couple the age difference between the dated glacial contacts with their associated stratigraphic thicknesses, revealing net rates of pro-glacial sediment accumulation during an ancient deglaciation.

Bruno has B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Geosciences from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Recent winner of the RMAG Foundation Scholarship:

2023

Molly McCreary, Ph.D. Candidate, Geology, University of Utah

Molly’s dissertation topic is “Mapping of a landslide in Serpentine Valley in Prince William Sound, Alaska.” Molly’s work is under the direction of Dr. Jeff Moore. Molly will address the question of why certain paraglacial slopes become critically stressed and why acceleration occurs even after small amounts of ice are removed. She will develop a numerical model using GPS measurements of the landslide, which will them be used to evaluate thermal, hydrologic and mechanical stresses present at the rock slope surface. When paired with rock mass characterization evaluations gathered during field mapping, the model will demonstrate and help predict the progressive slope damage over time in valleys that have experienced multiple cycles of glaciation.

Molly has a M.S. in Geology and a B.S. in Geophysics from Texas A&M University, College Station. She also has a B.A. in English with a minor in Chemistry from the University of Texas, Austin.