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• Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Ph.D. FN ‘07

Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Ph.D. FN ‘07

Linda Elkins-Tanton is the Mitsui Career Development Assistant Professor of Geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT her group is working to understand relationships between large volcanic provinces and global extinction events, focusing on the Siberian flood basalts and the end-Permian extinction. Her investigations have taken her to Siberia, where she has carried The Explorers Club flag, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Faroe Islands. Other members of her lab are investigating the chemistry and physics of the formation of terrestrial planets, focusing on planetesimals, the Moon, Mercury, the Earth, “super Earth” exoplanets, and on processes such as degassing the earliest atmospheres.

Dr. Elkins-Tanton received her B.S. and M.S. from MIT in 1987, then spent eight years working in business, including five years spent writing business plans for young high-tech ventures. She later returned to MIT to pursue a Ph.D. Upon completion, she became a research associate at Brown University, where she remained until her appointment in 2007 to the MIT faculty.

Linda Elkins-Tanton is a two-time National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow and has been appointed to the National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey Mars panel. In 2008 she was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation CAREER award, and in 2009 was named Outstanding MIT Faculty Undergraduate Research Mentor. She is preparing the second edition of her six-book series The Solar System, a reference for libraries. When not in the lab or in Siberia she is home in Southborough, Massachusetts with her mathematician husband, son, and three border collies.