Willy Guenthner has been awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER grant to investigate the origin and erosion of the Great Unconformity throughout North America. The highly-competitive grant, designated for early-career faculty members, provides Willy with five years of funding to pursue the project Refining zircon (U-Th)/He deep-time thermochronology for constraining Neoproterozoic thermal histories. The grant, using Willy’s new deep-time Helium Analysis Laboratory (HAL), will aim to assess existing geodynamic models for the formation of the Great Unconformity, each of which predicts a different timing and magnitude of erosion, and provide insight into atmosphere-biosphere-lithosphere interactions in deep-time. For more on Willy’s research and this NSF award, see this piece on the LAS website. Click on this link to a news item on the 2017 Geology paper co-authored by Willy, Steve Marshak and Mike DeLucia concerning the Great Unconformity. Willy’s CAREER award brings the total to three in the department from our young Faculty – with current CAREER awards to Lijun Liu and Trish Gregg.