Loÿc Vanderkluysen, PhD

Loÿc Vanderkluysen, PhD, an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, was quoted in a July 30 Live Science article about a recent 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Russia’s Far East Kamchatka Peninsula that set off tsunami warnings in Japan, the U.S. and other countries across the Pacific Ocean.

Loÿc Vanderkluysen, PhD, an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, was quoted in a July 28 Live Science article about the Pacific Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped belt of volcanoes known for explosive eruptions and intense earthquakes.

Loÿc Vanderkluysen, PhD, an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, authored a Jan. 17 article in The Conversation about lava diversion methods and the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland. The article was republished on Jan. 18 by The San Francisco Chronicle and several additional regional outlets. Vanderkluysen was also quoted in a Jan. 18 The Science Times article about dams built to protect Icelandic towns from lava.

Loÿc Vanderkluysen, PhD, an assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, was quoted in Dec. 9-10 stories byNational Geographic, USA Today, Reuters, the Independent and Mirror about a recent volcanic eruption in New Zealand. The USA Today and Reuters stories were picked up by media outlets throughout the country, including The New York Times.

About sixty-six million years ago a planet-wide catastrophe brought the non-avian dinosaurs to their demise, and the end of the Cretaceous period was marked by a mass extinction of its fauna and flora. New data, published in the journal Science, says it’s possible that intense volcanic eruptions in India coincided with the worldwide extinction – ultimately cementing the fate of the massive reptiles.

Nicholas Barber, a geoscience student from the College of Arts and Sciences, has become the second Drexel student to be awarded the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, making his PhD program at the University of Cambridge cost-free.

Was it an asteroid impact on Earth 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs? Or the eruption of volcanoes in India for hundreds of thousands of years? For decades, paleontologists and geologists have debated the role these two global events played in the last mass extinction.But compelling new evidence supports the hypothesis of a group of geoscientists: that the asteroid’s impact ignited volcanoes around the globe, most catastrophically in India, and that, together, these planet-wide catastrophes caused the extinction of many land and marine animals, including the dinosaurs.

Drexel vulcanologist Loÿc Vanderkluysen, PhD, provides insight into the science of volcanos and what challenges remain during the ongoing rescue effort in Japan.