Jun Korenaga Associate Professor The evolution and dynamics of Earth's mantle, in connection with its chemical differentiation, has been my primary research interest. It is a fascinatingly complex and fundamentally multidisciplinary subject, given the mantle's parental nature to the continental and oceanic crust, its thermal and chemical interaction with the core, and its potential role in the evolution of the hydrosphere. I'm a freestyle geophysicist, and my current research spans mantle and core dynamics, theoretical geochemistry, and marine geophysics. [News] I received an A. Richard Newton Breakthrough Research Award from Microsoft to build a comprehensive statistical framework to estimate the physics of plate-tectonic convection on Earth [Microsoft's press release]. (March 2008)