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Friends of the Sedgwick Museum Summer Placements 2022

We are four Earth Sciences undergraduate students from the University of Cambridge. We use samples from the Sedgwick Museum’s collections in our studies, so these placements were an exciting chance for us to work behind the scenes on current projects in the Museum. We each spent 1-4 weeks on a project during the summer of 2022, generously funded by the Friends of the Sedgwick Museum.

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Reflecting on the Department’s first Sutton Trust Summer School

This August, the Earth Sciences Department hosted a week-long summer school for college-level students, as part of the Sutton Trust programme.

The Sutton Trust is an educational charity which aims to improve social mobility and address educational disadvantage. The summer school is a widening participation programme open to state-school students and high-achieving students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

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Cambridge at the Goldschmidt 2022 Conference

Alasdair Knight,  a second year PhD student in the Department of Earth Sciences, reports back from the 2022 Goldschmidt conference in the blog post below.

Alasdair can normally be found researching the chemical reactions that occur between greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere and the rocks at Earth’s surface. These reactions are thought to have been important for keeping Earth within the correct temperature range for life to exist. 

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Careers in earth sciences – Jenny Omma talks big data and rock analysis

Jenny Omma is Chief Geologist at Rocktype — a mineralogy consultancy using big data to revolutionize rock analysis.

After studying for her M.Sci in Natural Sciences, and continuing at Cambridge to do a PhD in earth sciences, Jenny spent five years in industry before setting up her own company in 2014. We caught up with Jenny in the following blog post to find out more about her career path and work in the energy and mineral sectors.

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Arran 2022: best bits, as chosen by staff and students!

I can normally be found writing news stories or running outreach events for the Department, but this year I decided to dust off my walking boots and tag along to Arran with our first years to find out what makes this fabled Island so geologically exciting. Let’s just say it didn’t disappoint, and in the post below I’ve managed to condense down what — according to our students and demonstrators — makes this trip so special.

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Transforming the visitor welcome

Sarah Hammond, Sedgwick Museum Administrator, tells us about improving the visitor experience for families at the museum.

In the year or two before the pandemic, the museum team had a big push to improve access for families to the museum. Our work began where our visitors start their journey – outside. We updated the imagery and added more signs to guide people from the street to the museum.

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Birds of a feather: Katrina van Grouw on art and science

It was an emotional journey. Nose pressed to the small oval of glass as London City Airport was left far below, I smiled wistfully down at the River Thames, golden in the rising sun’s first rays, as it made its final sweeping arc to meet the sea. The cut-out shapes of the Kent marshes, and the Isle of Sheppey beyond; home to a plethora of birdlife now as ever, is a place of special significance for me. Not only was it the intended destination of my first ever birdwatching trip, aged nine, but from this same London Clay Formation laid down in the Eocene, over 50 million years ago, came the first fossilised skull of a very remarkable bird. With jaws lined with bony projections of different sizes, like lobster claws, it was unlike any bird known.

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