Donna Blackman is a Marine Geophysicist working part-time since Summer 2019 on research supported by NASA and NSF. Both studies are team efforts where she applies her expertise in ocean lithosphere processes to assess implications for possible hydrothermal circulation on outer space Ocean Worlds and mantle flow on Earth.

Donna joined EPS at UCSC, after retiring from 25 yrs at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, pleased to return to the Dept where she completed her undergraduate studies in Earth Sciences in 1982. After graduate work in the Northeast (Woods Hole-MIT Joint Program and Brown University), she moved west for a postdoc at University of Washington before starting at Scripps.

The main research focus of her career is tectonic and magmatic processes that occur along ridge-transform plate boundaries, employing a variety of geophysical methods, seafloor mapping and sampling, and ocean-floor drilling. She used numerical modeling to explore mineral deformation and the development of seismic anisotropy due to mantle flow along plate boundaries. And, she led studies of long-distance sound propagation in the oceans to characterize signals recorded by international networks for nuclear test monitoring.