Awards & Special Lectures

The European Association of Geochemistry, through its awards, fellowships and special lectures, seeks to recognize outstanding contributions to geochemistry. The honors bestowed on our awardees recognize exceptional contributions at different career stages (see the criteria for individual awards below). We are committed to promoting the diversity of our awardees, to recognizing a wide range of different types of exceptional contribution, and we acknowledge the different career paths that lead to the achievement of such contributions.

2024 Medallists

2024 H.C. Urey Award

Janne Blichert-Toft

Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon & CNRS, France

Janne Blichert-Toft is a leading light in the study of planetary mantles and crustal evolution on Earth and other Solar System bodies (e.g. Mars). She has helped pioneer bold new applications of isotope geochemistry (principally to the study of Hafnium, but also of Lead) with specialization also in the highly siderophile elements, to name but a few lines of inquiry in her exceptional bibliography. Moreover, her work has helped to steer radiogenic isotope geochemistry more broadly towards quantitative applied chemical geodynamics. Janne is an unwavering supporter of the field of geochemistry in Europe and throughout the world, as exemplified by her generous devotion to supervising students and postdoctoral scholars, dutiful service to professional organizations, and leadership on journal editorial boards.
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2024 Science Innovation Award

Evelyn Füri

Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques (CNRS-UL), France

During the last few years, Evelyn Füri has accumulated an impressive record of very original results on the origin of volatile elements (mainly N, H and noble gases) in lunar rocks, Martian samples, cometary materials from the Stardust mission, differentiated meteorites and asteroid returned samples. These results were achieved by combining laser assisted noble gas mass spectrometry and high mass-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry to resolve the distribution of the isotopes of H, N and rare gases at microscale in these extra-terrestrial samples.
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The 2024 EAG Science Innovation Award is named in honor of Samuel Epstein honoring his work in isotope geochemistry.

2024 F.G. Houtermans Award

Feifei Zhang

Nanjing University, China

Feifei Zhang is recognized for his important contributions to analysis of biosphere-environment co-evolution based on non-traditional isotopes (Fe, U, Li, Ca, Ba, Tl) combined with numerical modeling. His doctoral research helped to establish the carbonate U-isotope proxy as a global-ocean redox indicator, opening new avenues of research in paleoceanographic studies. His more recent work has focused on development of isotopic proxies for continental weathering, marine productivity, and ocean acidification.
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EAG Awards

H.C. Urey Award: the society’s highest honor, recognizes outstanding contributions advancing geochemistry over a career. The award is based on scientific excellence as well as the broader impacts candidates have made in their careers to date.

Science Innovation Award: recognizes mid-career scientists who have recently made an important and innovative breakthrough in geochemistry.

F.G. Houtermans Award: recognizes exceptional contributions to geochemistry by an early career scientist.

Distinguished Service Award: recognizes outstanding service made to the geochemical community, exceeding the expectations of normal service. Nominations are made by the EAG Council.

Joint EAG-GS Awards and Special Lectures

The following are jointly presented by the EAG and the Geochemical Society:

Geochemistry Fellows: honors outstanding scientists who have made major contributions to the field of geochemistry. The award is based on scientific excellence as well as the broader impacts candidates have made in their careers to date.

P. Gast Lectureship: recognizes to a mid-career scientist for outstanding contributions to geochemistry. Nominations are made by the EAG Council and GS Board.

R. Berner Lecture: recognizes a mid-career scientist on a topic associated with elemental cycling at the Earth’s surface.

An “outstanding / exceptional / profound contribution(s)” encompasses one or various combinations of the following contributions:

a series of publications (including any combination of papers, edited volumes, authored books, written reports, other writing) that represents outstanding contribution
an innovative breakthrough
teaching and training the next generation of geochemists
improvements to infrastructure and techniques
capacity building - especially in developing countries or emerging disciplines
significant contributions to building of the community such as through meeting organisation, building peer-networking groups, other positive initiatives, and tangible efforts that advance diversity, equity, and inclusion
work with policy makers to ensure that their decisions are grounded in rigorous science
curation of significant sample collections and databases of long-term scientific value
communication of the intrinsic excitement of our field to the general public, where innovative and / or connecting with traditionally underrepresented or underserved people will be considered a plus
exceptional editorial contributions

Career Paths

The European Association of Geochemistry recognizes that there are diverse research career paths, as well as the challenges of managing a research career alongside other personal commitments, possible chronic illness, and/or disability. When reviewing applicants’ eligibility and research experience, the societies will take into consideration - where reported with brevity in nomination packages - time spent working on a part-time basis and/or outside of the research environment. If a nominee has been reported to have worked part-time, they should briefly state the percentage of full-time equivalent hours that they observed and the time period it pertains to.

Where nominees have had a career break, worked outside of scientific research (where relevant to the nominee’s assessment category), taken formal periods of maternity, paternity shared parental and adoptive leave as the primary care giver, or extended/repeated sick or bereavement leave, this will be taken account of by awards committees. Each case will be considered individually.

Janne Blichert-Toft, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon & CNRS, France

Recipient of the 2024 Urey Award

Janne Blichert-Toft is a Research Director with the CNRS at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon, France). Following M.Sc. (1990) and Ph.D. (1993) degrees obtained at University of Copenhagen, with much time spent at Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University, she was awarded one of the first European Marie-Curie Post-Doctoral Fellowships to study at ENS Lyon. She was appointed by the CNRS at ENS Lyon in 1997, and defended her HDR dissertation at Université Claude Bernard, Lyon 1, in 2000. Over the years, she has been fortunate to spend extended periods of time as an invited professor at University of California Berkeley, Harvard University, California Institute of Technology, The Australian National University, Cambridge University, Tokyo University, University of Chicago, and Rice University. She was awarded Fellowship of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry in 2010, the American Geophysical Union in 2012, and the Mineralogical Society of America in 2023, and has been a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters since 2016. She is also the recipient of medals, prizes, and awards from the CNRS, the French Académie des Sciences, the French CEA, the French BRGM, the Danish Geological Society, the Geological Society of London, the European Geosciences Union, the American Geophysical Union, and the European Association of Geochemistry.

Janne is a geochemist and an analyst specializing in radiogenic and stable isotopes with applications to geochronology, terrestrial and planetary mantle-crust-core evolution and mantle dynamics, mantle geochemistry, crustal growth and lithospheric dynamics, early Earth geodynamics, planetology, cosmochemistry, meteoritics, and ore geology, with a thematic shift over the last 15 years into new arenas of anthropology, geoarcheology, archeology, archeometry, numismatics, and ancient history.

Janne is perhaps best known for advancing the measurement and application of the Lu-Hf isotope system by multiple-collector inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS) in geochemistry, cosmochemistry, and planetary science. She showed the enormous power of this isotope system for constraining the origin, formation, and evolution of the Earth, the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and the early Solar System. Her work opened up new research trajectories that shaped the paths for geochemistry and cosmochemistry in the quest to reveal and quantify processes from the mineral to the planetary scale. She also used the revolutionizing new technique of MC-ICP-MS to reinvigorate Pb isotopes with high-precision measurements of a wide array of geological and archeological materials to address important questions, old and new, in the geochronology of the early Solar System and its solid planetary-type bodies, as well as terrestrial geodynamics, hominid evolution, oil formation, and archeological and historical issues so far only documented by ancient texts.

Janne had the privilege of being Editor of G-Cubed for ten years and, for the last decade has had the ongoing privilege of being Editor of Geochemical Perspectives and Associate Editor of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. She is also the Principal Editor for Geochemistry of Elements Magazine, another privilege and a different challenge.

Additional information and a list of publications can be found here.

Evelyn Füri, Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques - CNRS - UL, France

2024 Science Innovation Award medallist

Evelyn Füri is a Chargée de Recherche (junior researcher) at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She was first trained in isotope geochemistry during her diploma studies at the Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. She then moved to sunny San Diego where she completed a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2010. After studying the noble gas geochemistry of various types of terrestrial samples such as subglacial and submarine basalts, geothermal fluids, and fumarolic gases, she decided to broaden her expertise by turning her attention to extraterrestrial samples. To this end, she obtained a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship from the French National Space Agency (CNES) to analyze light noble gases trapped in cometary material returned by NASA's Stardust mission at the noble gas facility of the Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques (CRPG, rainy Nancy, France). In parallel, she was trained in using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to analyze meteorites as well as lunar samples collected during the Apollo missions. In 2014, she obtained a permanent CNRS researcher position at CRPG.

Evelyn’s main research objectives are to improve our understanding of the origin of noble gases and light elements (H, C, N) on Earth and other planetary bodies in the inner Solar System. Her work has also provided new insights on the behavior, distribution, and inventory of these elements in deep planetary reservoirs. Recently, Evelyn and her team developed novel methodologies in both noble gas mass spectrometry and SIMS techniques to analyze nitrogen isotopes in meteorites, samples brought back to Earth by space missions, and synthetic samples. Measurements of noble gases in various extraterrestrial samples provided additional constraints on modifications of light element isotope ratios induced by the solar wind and cosmic radiation during space exposure. Finally, Evelyn has been collaborating with researchers at CRPG and other national and international institutes to better understand the effects of various phyico-chemical parameters on the solubility and isotopic fractionation of nitrogen during planetary differentiation.

As a member of the ‘Hayabusa2 Initial Analysis Volatile Team’, Evelyn analyzed noble gases and nitrogen in both gas and solid samples collected on the asteroid Ryugu. She is also part of the sample science team of the OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned samples from the asteroid Bennu in 2023. In addition, Evelyn was part of the science core team of the Emirates Lunar Mission, which, unfortunately, experienced an unsuccessful landing on the Moon in 2023.

Evelyn received the CNRS bronze medal in 2017 and was awarded ERC Starting and Consolidator grants in 2016 and 2022, respectively. Thanks to her expertise in isotope geochemistry, cosmochemistry, and sample return missions, Evelyn has been solicited to give invited and keynote talks at several international conferences and workshops. She also regularly engages in public outreach activities, for example as part of the association “Les p’tits cueilleurs d’étoiles”, whose goal is to playfully introduce the world of planets and space to hospitalized children.

Feifei Zhang, Nanjing University, China

2024 Houtermans Award medallist

Feifei Zhang (张飞飞) is a full-time professor in isotope geochemistry and historical geobiology at Nanjing University. A Chinese raised in Xiaogan City, Hubei Province, Feifei completed his bachelor studies at the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), his M.Sc. degree in Isotope Geochemistry at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences under the guidance of Prof. Xiang-kun Zhu (2014), and his Ph.D. degree in Geological Sciences at the Arizona State University working with Prof. Ariel Anbar (2018). Feifei then spent two years at Yale University and the University of Copenhagen doing postdoctoral research with Profs. Noah Planavsky and Tais Dahl before returning to China.

Feifei’s research interests broadly lie in combining isotopic tracers with numerical models to study the complex interactions between Earth’s climatic and environmental systems and the evolution of life. He is studying paleoenvironmental change in carbonates by applying the Li, Ca, and Sr isotope systems to track continental weathering, the Ba and Zn isotope systems to track marine productivity, and the Fe, U, Ce, and Tl isotope systems to track marine redox. To do so, Feifei is running a cutting-edge metal geochemistry lab at Nanjing University equipped with a Neptune XT MC-ICP-MS, an Element XR HR-ICP-MS, an Agilent 8900 ICP-MS, an iCAP Pro ICP-OES, and a 120 square-meter clean laboratory.

Feifei’s major contribution in his early career has been to apply and test the carbonate U-isotope proxy to paleoceanic systems of multiple geologic epochs, demonstrating its robustness as a global-ocean redox indicator, which represents a seminal advance in paleoceanographic studies. Work in progress, funded by the National Science Foundation of China and in collaboration with Profs. Shu-zhong Shen (paleontologist), Yi-gang Xu (geochemist), and Alexandre Pohl and Benjamin Mills (modelers), is aimed at coupling geochemical proxy data with Earth-system models to understand how life and its planetary environments have co-evolved through the Paleozoic-Mesozoic transition in a quantitative manner.

Additional information and a list of publications can be found here.

Ming Tang, Peking University, China

2023 Houtermans Award medallist

Ming Tang is a geochemist at the School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University. Ming grew up in Zhenjiang, a small, quiet city with more than 3000 years of recorded history in eastern China. In 2007, he went to Nanjing University and got his bachelor’s degree four years later. After that, Ming departed for the U.S. and obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2016. For the next three years, Ming worked as a post-doc at Rice University. Ming finished his U.S. journey and returned to China to join Peking University in 2019.

Ming has been working on a variety of topics related to the evolution of continents. During his Ph.D., Ming was supervised by Bill McDonough and Roberta Rudnick and used the Eu anomaly in MORB and the continental crust to understand lower crust recycling. Roberta then introduced Ming to the field of Li isotopes. Ming collaborated with Catherine Chauvel and used Li isotopes to track sediment recycling in the Lesser Antilles. Ming later extended his interest in Li to zircon and collaborated with Maitrayee Bose, Dustin Trail, and Yulia Goreva. He showed that Li diffuses in multiple modes in zircon. Ming’s final project at Maryland was to use terrigenous sediments to track the chemical evolution of the upper continental crust through time. Ming was inspired by the diamictite work by Richard Gaschnig, Roberta’s former post-doc. Ming and Kang Chen built on Rich’s work and showed that Earth’s upper continental crust may have transitioned from mafic to felsic in the late Archean.

During his post-doc, Ming worked with Cin-Ty Lee at Rice University. There, Ming focused on arc lower crust, trying to understand what causes calc-alkaline magmatic differentiation. Ming showed that Fe depletion, which characterizes calc-alkaline magmas, was driven by the fractionations of Fe-rich silicates, particularly garnet, instead of magnetite, as previously thought. This series of works also showed that garnet fractionation causes endogenic oxidation of magmas.

The wide range of training projects gave Ming a research experience with rich flavors and encouraged him to think big. This wasn’t possible if Ming had not worked with many excellent scientists with diverse research backgrounds.

Ming’s enthusiasm for exploration continues. Now funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ming is working with his Chinese colleagues and international collaborators to understand how solid Earth processes influenced hypsometry through time and the consequences on the surface environment. Recently, Ming and his collaborators proposed that Earth may have experienced “orogenic quiescence” in its middle age. Ming also started to look at extraterrestrial materials, including the Lunar samples returned by the Chang’E-5 mission.

Additional information and a list of publications can be found here.