Innovative technologies in dating rocks and exploiting resources: a model of excellence in research for the benefit of society, within the third episode of the series “Project under the lens”

The series Project under the lens invited geologists Mihai Ducea, Maria Pârlea and Vlad Ene, researchers at the Petrochronology Lab within the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics of the University of Bucharest, to talk about dating rocks and exploiting resources, about geosciences, research and the role of state of the art technologies in its development, about the relation between fundamental research, industry and society, but also about how this complex topic can start from a good practice example such as the Petrochronology lab within the FGG-UB.

The third edition of the series Project under the lens is available below:

The Petrochronology Lab of the University of Bucharest was opened in 2023 and currently has 10 employees and a team of researchers and top PhDs approaching themes which regard both fundamental research and applied research in the industry of resources.

The idea of setting up the laboratory started to from the acute need of services which a isotopic geochemistry laboratory can offer to various areas of geosciences, such as resource exploitation or climate change.

As professor Mihai Ducea shows, not only that such a lab did not exist in Romania, but was also inexistent in other countries from this area of Europe, the closest one being located in Graz, Austria, with which the newly established Petrochronology Lab of the UB is developing exchanges and collaborations. Thus, on an area of over 1000 kilometers, there is currently no other similar laboratory.

As consequence, there is no surprise that, since its recent founding, researchers within the lab have developed collaborations and connections both with numerous researchers, as well with the industry in Romania and from other countries such as the US, Chile, Serbia and Poland. Requests have multiplied to such a degree that extending the laboratory and the research group has become increasingly necessary.

The main goal that stood at the base of establishing this laboratory was to ensure a space that could foster excellence in research in this particular field. There are a great number of research projects financed from national and European grants which can be unreeled through the Laboratory. But, beyond fundamental research, the lab has developed numerous collaborations with the industry, with a significant increase in the volume of work carried out by its team.

What’s actually happening inside the lab? A simple answer would be that researchers date rocks through a state-of-the-art system of laser ablation. The materials used are mainly minerals which contain uranium.

What is rock dating useful for? Other than the researchers’ curiosity to find out what the age of granite from the Retezat mountains is, for instance, geochronology or the age of rocks is also essential for the industry of mineral resources and other types of resources, such as petrol and gases. More precisely, determining the ages of these rocks is extremely useful for establishing exploitation goals for various companies in the field. Mihai Ducea offers examples of companies which, are the present time, instead of sending their samples abroad, at great distance, redirect them largely to this lab to determine geological ages.

At the same time, any kind of study which tries to understand and explain the evolution of climate change must be anchored in geological ages too. To put it in other words, we want to find out, with precision, what the temperature was at a particular moment in the geological past so that we can explain how climate change evolved.

Outside its utility for geosciences, the lab also has an important interdisciplinary component, and innovative technologies within it prove very useful for other sciences as well. As a matter of fact, the lab was intentionally designed to extend its connections with researchers in archeology, biology, microbiology and biomedicine. Thus, as professor Ducea shows, it is very possible that soon, instead of crystals, the materials analyzed in the Petrochronology lab will be organs or archeological artifacts, on which these state of the art technologies might offer important data.

Created as an interdisciplinary hub, the Lab has become a place of meeting for students, professors and researchers in various fields, and this proves, once again, the necessity of extending these types of enterprises because excellence in research cannot be achieved without laboratories, modern and innovative technologies and, most importantly, without highly trained people who have a passion for their fields of research.  

More information about the Petrochronology Laboratory of the FGG-UB and what its aims are, about the state of the art technologies it uses and also about its interactions and connections between fundamental research, industry and society, in episode no. 3 of the series Project under the lens, with geologists Mihai Ducea, Vlad Ene and Maria Pârlea, researchers within the UB Petrochronology Laboratory.

Mihai Ducea is a researcher and professor at the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics of the University of Bucharest. He is the coordinator of the Earth, Environment and Life Sciences Section within the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB).

He graduated from the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics of the University of Bucharest. He later pursued master’s theses at Duke University (US) and California Institute of Technology. He received his PhD title in geology at California Institute of Technology in 1998. After a short postdoctoral stage at Florida International University, in 2001 he became an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, pursuing the complete academic path until receiving the title of professor, in 2009. Between 2017-2018, he was a Fulbright scholar and winner of the Dida Scholarship of the University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China, 2016-2019

He carried out a great number of research projects in the field of tectonics, magmatic petrology and isotopic geochemistry. At present he coordinates isotopic laboratories in both universities, Arizona and Bucharest. He participated in projects carried out in the great mountain areas of our planet, such as the Andes, the Carpathians, the Himalayas and Tibet. He is one of the most cited geologists of all time (top 0.1%) and has an h index of 72 (google scholar) for the over 225 papers published after finishing his PhD.

He is Fellow of the American Geological Society since 2016 and chief-editor of the renowned magazine Geological Society of America Bulletin (Q1) starting 2022. He is also Head of the international division of the Geological Society of America since 2024. He is a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy since 2021, and has recently been elected fellow of the prestigious American Geophysical Union – AGU.

Maria Pârlea is a PhD student at the Doctoral school of Geology of the University of Bucharest. Her themes of interest include magmatic petrology, isotope and tectonic geochemistry. Maria pursued Bachelor’s and Master’s studies at the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics of the University of Bucharest, being captivated by the capacity of geology to explain any curiosity related to nature and our planet. Her Bachelor’s thesis aimed at the topic of mineralogy, a qualitative study concerning certain wide-spread minerals, common for most rocks, and delved into how their quantity influences the analyses at X ray diffractometer. Her Master’s thesis consisted in verifying the contamination of magma in the Perșani volcanic field with the help of calcium isotopes. The PhD project focuses on geochronology, more exactly on the geochemistry of a mineral named zircon, with the help of which she hopes to determine crustal widths of the present time and from the geological past.

Vlad Ene is a scientific researcher within the project Paleotopography and Crustal Evolution. He followed a Bachelor’s program in geologic engineering of resources within the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics of the University of Bucharest and holds a Master in research at the University of Toronto with a thesis focused on the geochemistry of ilmenites from kimberlites and their possible use an exploration indicators for diamonds. He later worked in exploring porphyry copper resources in the mountains of Banat. He defended his PhD at the University of Leicester, Great Britain, with a thesis focusing on post-collisional magmatism in the Apuseni mountains and its adakitic characteristics. Within the PhD program he took numerous classes at the Universities of Leeds, Pavia or British Geological Survey. At present, his activity within the Petrochronology Lab of the University of Bucharest is focused on dating minerals using the U-Pb systematic, petrology and geochemistry of magmatic rocks, but also its constituent minerals. He has several projects that are being carried out at the moment, among which using maps of geochemistry distribution of major and minor elements and phenocrystal traces for identifying deep magmatic processes or redating, using modern methods, of North Dobrogea magmatism.