Alexandra Matiella Novak - Profile

M. Alexandra Matiella Novak, M.A. Matiella Novak

Hello! My name is Alexandra and I'm a PhD candidate at Michigan Technological University, in the Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences, located in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan. My research is in volcanology and the monitoring of volcanic eruption ash clouds in the upper atmosphere (>10 km) using satellite data. These ash clouds are extremely hazardous to aircraft and can stay in the atmosphere for many days and travel many hundreds of kilometers from their source volcano. So far, there have been no ash cloud-aircraft encounters that have led to a crash. But in one of the most famous cases of an encounter - a KLM Royal Dutch Arilines 747 encountered an ash cloud from Redoubt Volcano, Alaska at 25,000 feet in 1989 - the aircraft lost power to all four engines and the pilots weren't able to restart the engines until they had "glided" out of the ash cloud. The plane was reported to have passed through the 13,000 foot mark before all four engines were restarted. That's a harrowing 12,000 foot descent with no power!!!

Although I enjoy doing research on volcanoes very much, I feel that my true calling is writing. I love writing and I love earth science (hence, the PhD in Geology) so I figured I would love combining the two and at the same time exposing the public to some of the great ongoing research in the natural hazard field that sometimes just stays in the realm of academia and never gets public exposure.

I have completed a minor in journalism and when I finished I went to the editor of our local newspaper, the Daily Mining Gazette, and asked if I could contribute a monthly column on current natural hazard events/research. He politely told me that no one around here would care about that stuff, but he did invite me to contribute a monthly column about being a college student. I figure some experience in public writing is better than nothing, so I am currently writing a monthly column called "Campus Life". However, I still want to try my hand at writing about earth sciences for the public, so please enjoy!