Professor Robert White

Magmatism associated with rifting is one of the most important factors in shaping the crust: two-thirds of the earth's crust forms at mid-ocean spreading centres, and many of earth's most spectacular features, including flood basalts and volcanoes, result from interaction between rifting and mantle melting. Relatively small changes in mantle temperature have a profound effect on the volume and composition of melts produced from that mantle. Understanding these processes is important not only academically, but also for wider social reasons because of the hazards of volcanic eruptions, their impact on global climate change, and their importance in the development of sedimentary basins and continental margins. Much of our understanding of these processes comes from probing the subsurface using seismic methods. We seek to apply innovative data acquisition, processing and modelling methods to maximise the geological constraints that can be inferred from these observations. Currently much of my research work is focused on Iceland, which is exhibiting abundant and ongoing volcanic eruptions.

I am also interested in relations between science and faith, and in 2006 co-founded the charity The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion which is based in Westminster College, Cambridge. This has 20 staff involved in teaching, education and research across a wide range of relevant topics. My own research, talks and publications focus on natural disasters and their mitigation, the causes and consequences of climate change and more general topics of science and faith.