David Fike
Graduate Student in Geobiology (Geochemistry)

Department of Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Ave., 54-812
Cambridge, MA 02139

Phone: (617) 335-6372
E-Mail: dfike@mit.edu

I am a fifth year graduate student in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Sciences at MIT and expect to complete my degree in summer 2007.  My supervisor is John Grotzinger, currently the Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology at Caltech.  I moved with him to Pasadena and spend my time shuttling back and forth between Cambridge and Pasadena. It makes for a rather hectic schedule, but provides me with the opportunity to interact with a variety of great people that I wouldn't have had the chance to meet had I stayed at MIT. 

When I am at MIT, my adopted home is the Geobiology Group under Professor Roger Summons. He has graciously opened his lab to me and I have done the majority of the thesis research work in his lab, particularly analyzing carbon and nitrogen isotopes of organic matter in ancient rocks. I also spend a lot of time in the Stable isotope facility at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, analyzing sulfur isotopes in the lab of Professor Lisa Pratt.

Following completion of my doctorate, I will be staying at Caltech as a post-doc working in association with Professors Victoria Orphan and John Eiler developing novel sulfur isotope proxies and applying them to modern marine environments.

Futher down the road, I am looking for the opportunity to establish a broad research program that applies high-resolution multi-proxy geochemical analyses to modern environments and throughout the geologic record.  In addition, I am interested in applying these same principles to better understand environmental change as recorded in the sedimentary deposits on Mars.