President Barack Obama poses for a group photo with the 2009 Recipients for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in the South Court Auditorium of the White House Dec. 13, 2010. Steven Lower, Associate Professor at Ohio State and Ph.D. recipient from our group in 2001, is standing second to the right of President Obama. Congratulations Steven! (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

We are a research group directed by University Distinguished Professor Michael Hochella, Jr within the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech. Our work is in the field of nanoscience applied to environmental geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and mineralogy. We are a core member of the national Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT). We also study other complex environmental systems including mineral-microbe interactions and mineral surface science.

For more information on our research, our lab, and the group itself, please follow the links on the right.

Latest News and Events:

• We would like to welcome our new postdoc, Manuel Caraballo, who completed his Ph.D. in Geosciences at the University of Huelva, Spain.
• Carol gave a talk and spent 10 days in November at the Ernst-Ruska Center in Juelich, Germany. She greatly enjoyed playing with analyzing her natural samples on their nice TEMs.
• Harish will be convening a session at the European Geosciences Union Conference (Vienna, April 2011) titled "Nexus between microbes, metals and minerals in the environment." Click here for more information and to submit an abstract.
• Harish gave a talk at Goldschmidt 2011 in Prague, Czech Republic. Mike presented a poster and Carol also attended.
• Congratulations to Dr. Rebecca French who successfully defended her Ph.D. on August 12th, 2011. We wish her the best of luck with her future endeavors.
• The Hochella group has recently gained a tiny new group member, born on April 29th, named Dujin. Congratulations Bojeong and Chee-Sung!
• Congratulations to Rebecca French, who has accepted a 1-yr Congressional Fellowship from the American Geophysical Union starting Sept 1. She will have the chance to be a science advisor for Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT). Full story.

(last updated November 21, 2011)

In the summer of 2007, Mike (and a few of his colleagues) appeared on the science radio program Pulse of the Planet. The program, featured on NPR stations across the country, airs as two-minute clips of Earth-related research, news, and interviews. Mike is the focus of several episodes as part of the 'Science Diaries' series. To listen to the audio files and read a transcript of each episode, follow this link. Individual links are also provided below. You can read Mike's 'Science Diary' Blog here and a VT press release here.

Note: If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to the Pulse of the Planet Podcast by clicking here.

Individual episode links :

Clark Fork River, Hours in the Library, Headwaters, Restoration, Comparison, Shelved, Samples, and Found It!