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Lectures and Courses

To date I have taught regular semester long courses covering a wide range of Environmental Geochemistry related subjects at Imperial College London and Princeton University. I have also delivered short courses and guest lectures at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS Lyon), University of Sao Paolo (USP), The Natural History Museum (NHM) and Xiamen University.

The courses taught are typically between 25 to 50 hours and include classroom teaching, lab teaching and tutorials. 

Courses Taught at Imperial College London (2021 to date)

ESE Climate Report and Environmental Geochemistry Laboratory – hybrid

Courses Taught at Princeton University (2020)

CEE 308 Environmental Engineering Laboratory The course aims to introduce the students to the chemical, biological and physical processes controlling contaminant transport in the environment. The student will learn to design and set up experiments in the laboratory and in the field. The student will apply a wide range of experimental measurement techniques relevant to environmental engineering. General considerations for experimental design and data analysis will be covered. The course will combine hands on modules with more theoretical concepts, including geochemical modelling.

CEE102  Engineering in Modern America This course introduces students to modern engineering by presenting the design of bridges and dams, locomotives, cars, and planes, electrical power and communications systems, and chemical processes. The lectures stress the political and visual context of engineering in urban, industrialized society, and the homework assignments focus on the principles of engineering science that explain how modern objects and systems work.  The two one-hour tests draw from the homework, the lectures, and the readings. The course, aimed at freshman engineering students and liberal arts students interested in learning about technology, has no prerequisites.  Students will be enrolled in one of three options: laboratory, writing, or both the laboratory and writing.

Courses Taught at Imperial College London (2000 to 2019)

ESE 130 Low Temperature Geochemistry This introductory course in geochemistry focuses on aqueous chemistry and on inorganic and physical chemistry.  I use a well-established textbook – Introduction to Geochemistry by Misra – as the basic text.  Additional textbooks like ‘Aqueous Chemistry’ from Stumm and Morgan, ‘Physical Chemistry’ by Atkins and de Paula and ‘Geochemistry’ by White are recommended.

ESE Laboratory Course in Environmental Geochemistry This course introduces the fundamental chemical principles relevant to geochemistry.  Students examine important processes such as oxidation, adsorption, and complexation and determines equilibrium constants, rate constants and thermodynamic parameters.  Students learn to plan, to set up and to conduct experiments and are introduced to analytical chemistry and its principles. Key (transferable) concepts such as quality control, precision, accuracy, detection limit etc. are introduced.  Equally students receive training in Health and Safety.

ESE215 Tutorials Last years tutorial focused on the geochemistry of arsenic.  ‘Millions of people are threatened by arsenic contamination – How do we deal with it?’ This is the question we ask ourselves and for which we need a solution.  We need to understand how the arsenic gets into the groundwater, in what mineralogical form it exists, how it gets released, how it affect humans and ultimately how do we get it again out of the water.  Using this approach, I introduce the students to areas as diverse as physical chemistry, geochemistry, microbiology and epidemiology.  We use novel data sets published on line by Cornell University.

Introduction to Thermodynamics

Introduction to Geochemical Cycles

Introduction to Chemistry

Independent Projects

MSci Project

 

Short Courses Taught 

  1. Introduction to Soil Chemistry (1 day), Master Course in Soil Science, The Natural History Museum, 2014
  2. Short course on stable isotope geochemistry (2 days), Masters Course in Earth Science, Ecole Normal Superieure, 2009
  3. Short course on stable isotope geochemistry (1 week), Post graduate course, Department of Earth Science, University of Sao Paolo, Brazil, 2008
  4. Short course on stable isotope geochemistry (2 days), Under graduate course, Department of Ecology, Xiamen University, China, 2008