Quick Facts
Biography
Dimitri Alexander Sverjensky is a professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University where his research is focused on geochemistry.
Career
Dimitri A. Sverjensky received his B.Sc. from the University of Sydney, Australia in 1974. Sverjensky then went on to Yale University where he received both his Masters and Ph.D in Geology in 1977 and 1980, respectively. After leaving Yale, Sverjensky worked as a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, before becoming an assistant professor at SUNY Stony Brook. In 1984, Sverjensky was appointed an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, and later promoted to associate professor. Since 1991 Sverjensky has been a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University Throughout his academic career, he has served as associate editor for Economic Geology and Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. From 2005 to 2015, Sverjensky also was the senior visiting investigator at the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Sverjensky is a member of the Deep Carbon Observatory’s Extreme Physics and Chemistry Community, where he also serves on its Scientific Steering Committee.
Research initiatives
Sverjensky’s research areas include aqueous geochemistry, mineral surface geochemistry, thermodynamics, and water-rock interaction. In 2005 Sverjensky started a collaboration at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Astrobiology addressing the role of mineral-water interfacial reactions in the origin of life and the role of hydrothermal fluids. A second aspect of Sverjensky’s research is investigating the surface environments on early Earth using theoretical models of weathering and element mobility. In 2012 Sverjensky launched a new field of research through the Deep Carbon Observatory investigating the role of water in deep Earth. Current areas of investigation include the origins of fluids in diamonds, the species and transport of carbon, sulfur and nitrogen in subduction zones, and the role of fluids in oxidation of the mantle wedges.
Awards and honors
2011: Fellow of the Geochemical Society & the European Association of
Geochemistry
1988: Lindgren Award (Society of Economic Geologists)
1979: William E. Ford Prize in Mineralogy (Yale University)
1975: Australian-American Education Foundation Travel Grant
1974-75: Australian Commonwealth Government Postgraduate Scholarship
1974: Deas-Thompson Prize for Geology (University of Sydney)
1972: Quodling Prize for Crystallography and Petrology (Univ. of Sydney)