I'm Sophie, and I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of Wyoming studying rare earth element (REE) and critical mineral (CM) geochemistry in Dr. John Kaszuba's research group. I grew up in San Francisco, CA and received my B.S in Geology from the University of California, Davis. I worked in geotechnical and environmental consulting as a Project Geologist for two years before heading back to school. 

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My dissertation research takes a holistic approach to evaluating REE and CM occurrence in U.S. coal basins, which may be an important unconventional domestic source of CM. The goal of my dissertation is to constrain the pathways of critical mineral transport from source to sink, and to uncover what makes the Powder River Basin an important CM reservoir. 

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Academic Interests:

- Aqueous geochemistry

- Rare earth elements and critical minerals

- Clay mineralogy

- Machine learning applications in economic geology