TS: The University of Texas at Arlington Luminescence Laboratory

This award supports a full-time laboratory technician for five years at the University of Texas at Arlington Luminescence Laboratory (UTALL). This technician will expand access to luminescence dating services for the broader Earth Science community, especially to undergraduate and graduate students. Twenty-five percent of the technician’s time is dedicated to student training, including students within PI Brown’s research group, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in his Geochronology course , and support to external visitors. The UTALL is a laboratory partner for the Advancing Geochronology Science, Spaces, and Systems (AGeS3) program, an NSF-funded initiative that provides micro-funding opportunities to pair graduate students and across the United States with geochronology laboratories. The UTALL houses several unique instruments that are unavailable elsewhere in the United States and are thus uniquely valuable to external visitors. The technician will also develop freely available software for luminescence thermochronology analysis for the broader scientific community; presently this type of analysis is only done at a few universities including UTA owing in part to a lack of software. PI Brown and the technician will demonstrate existing and developed software at the New World Luminescence Dating Workshop, an annual meeting of luminescence dating specialists, which they will host. Additionally, the technician would help maintain research facilities, develop more accessible data archiving practices, and engage in community outreach activities. The technician will enhance a variety of research projects at the UTALL, the majority of which involve novel luminescence measurements of sediment or bedrock samples. Most of these projects, 18 currently planned, include graduate students, many of whom will visit the UTALL, and PIs who are early career researchers. Results from these projects will include the first measurements of ventifact erosion rates, the first luminescence ages of hydrothermal explosion deposits in Yellowstone National Park, the first luminescence-based exhumation histories of tectonic blocks in Southern California, and the first use of luminescence measurements to constrain boulder comminution on hillslopes. Other projects will determine paleoseismic records along several fault strands globally and records of ice sheet retreat in Greenland and Antarctica. The UTALL also hosts several unique analytical capabilities. It is the only US luminescence dating laboratory with a focus on luminescence thermochronology, it hosts the only infrared photo-stimulated luminescence rock slab imaging device in the US, which is used to measure sunlight exposure ages or erosion rates of hard rock surfaces. UTALL will soon host the first hydrostatic pressure vessel to test signal resetting within a luminescence dating laboratory, which the technician will help maintain and run. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.