‘I cook rocks’
Emmanuel Codillo recreates geologic processes hundreds of miles beneath Earth’s surface to understand the inner workings of planets, shedding light on magma generation and volcanic activity, earthquakes, and critical mineral deposits.
I’m an experimental petrologist and a high-temperature geochemist focused on understanding chemical interactions deep within the Earth’s interior, primarily in subduction zones. These zones occur when two tectonic plates collide and one plate sinks deep underneath the other. It’s critical to understand what is happening in subduction zones because they create tremendous amounts of volcanic activity as well as the world’s largest earthquakes.
But because we have no way of going down to one of these tectonically active zones to study them directly, we have to find other ways to unravel their inner workings. I do this by conducting experiments where I recreate high-pressure and high-temperature conditions in the laboratory, simulating the processes and conditions relevant to the Earth’s deep interior.
My lab here at Stanford is called Deep FRI, short for “Deep Fluid-Rock Interactions.” Among other things, we determine the melting temperatures of different rocks to understand the physical and chemical states of deep Earth.
In other words, I cook rocks in the lab.
Doing this requires some very specialized instruments, and I’m excited to be building an experimental petrology lab here at Stanford. I’m hoping to have devices that can create temperatures up to 2,000 degrees Celsius and as much as 25 gigapascals of pressure – conditions even deeper than 400 miles beneath the Earth’s surface. One important aspect of my lab is the ability to measure electrical conductivity of rocks and fluids under pressure in real time, something that only a few laboratories in the world have.
My inspiration for this work reflects a great deal on my experience growing up in the Philippines. Located on the edge of a subduction zone, the Philippines is home to a lot of volcanoes, earthquakes, and critical mineral deposits, making the field of geosciences fairly popular. I wanted to be a chemist, so when I started at the University of the Philippines, I first took up chemistry. But after a year, I shifted to geology, thinking that there’s a lot more opportunity in terms of career if you’re a geologist. As my studies continued, I discovered that geology has a lot of chemistry, so I combined the two things that I like. And when I left the Philippines to pursue my PhD with the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program, I ended up pursuing a doctoral degree in geochemistry.
Now that I’m at Stanford, I can complement my work with observations of natural rocks. It turns out California has a lot of rocks that I care about. Another way to understand processes occurring deep inside our planet involves looking at high-pressure rocks that formed at depth but have later moved to the surface. The western U.S. is geologically active, and in addition to creating a really nice landscape, the exposed rocks are the types useful to my research.
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