*** Postgraduate and undergraduate projects available ***

*** Looking for motivated postdoctoral researchers ***

Magnetic minerals in rocks have the unique ability to record magnetic fields from ancient times and preserve them till today, providing a glimpe into the Earth's and even the Solar System's past. Applications of rock magnetism are vast: from the reconstruction of the behaviour of the geodynamo over billions of years, over the tracking of the motion of rocks, boulders and even continents in the past, all the way to the study of planetary formation and the evolution of the solar system from meteorites. 

My research is on understanding how magntic minerals in rocks, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial, record and preserve magnetisations. In particular, I am interested in how micro- and nanoscale samples that are used to study the Earth's and the Solar System's formation record magnetisations; how magnetic minerals can give insight into rock's movements during natural disasters like floods or landslides, and how magnetic minerals in sediments can give insight into past climate variation. For my work I use tools from physics and computer science, including theoretical work, statistical physics, numerical modelling, finite-element models, Monte Carlo simulation, but also experimental work. 

Thomas Berndt is currently assistant professor at Peking University, since finishing his Boya Postdoctoral Fellowship. Before, he obtained his PhD from Imperial College London for his work on viscous remanent magnetization dating of floods in the Natural Magnetism Group of Dr. Adrian Muxworthy. He holds a MSc in Geophysics from the University Complutense Madrid, Spain and a BSc in Physics from the University of Southampton.