Question: How did you know you wanted to become a volcanologist?

Elena Maters answered on 29 Jun 2020:

I didn’t always know that I wanted to work in volcanology – things just turned out that way! My favourite subject in school was biology and I thought about becoming a marine biologist. So I studied biology and environmental science at university. At the end of my course we had to choose a topic for a masters project, and one professor suggested measuring iron release from volcanic ash, which can ‘fertilise’ the phytoplankton that live in the ocean surface. That summer I did lots of lab experiments with ash from different volcanoes, and my professor was super enthusiastic about the results, and shared stories about his experience as a volcanologist doing fieldwork around the world. It made me so interested to learn more so I carried on to do my ‘doctoral’ degree researching volcanic ash for the next 4 years, and am still studying ash today! 🙂