Our senior research scientist Dr. Swaroop Sasidharanpillai travelled to Prague, Czech Republic, to present at the 2025 Goldschmidt Conference. As described on their website, “Goldschmidt is the foremost annual, international conference on geochemistry and related subjects, organized by the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society.
The trip began with attending the preconference workshop: Microscale Transport Phenomena in the Origin of Life: From Hydrothermal Vents to Exobiology. This was of particular interest since the origin of life (and hydrothermal vents in particular) is one of our group’s research themes.
This year’s conference featured a special session honouring Dr. I-Ming Chou: “A celebration of I-Ming Chou’s 80th birthday: Understanding geological processes through investigating the physicochemical properties of minerals, fluids, and melts“.
Prague is beautiful city with a lot to explore. So, I made sure I walked a lot and saw as much as I can during the visit.
Swaroop
“This special session featured talks from many pioneers in the field of geochemistry and spectroscopy. I was fortunate to be able to talk to Dr. I-Ming Chou and discuss about his research and talk about the ongoing research in hydrothermal chemistry lab at University of Guelph.” – Swaroop
As part of the special session, Swaroop presented a talk titled “Formation and Stability of Metal Glycolate Complexes at Hydrothermal Conditions using Polarized Raman Spectroscopy and a High Pressure Fused Silica Capillary Cell”, co-authored by group members/alumni Kelvin Olivares, Matthew Wolf, and Prof. Peter Tremaine. It showcased how we use the high pressure fused silica capillary tube Raman spectroscopy pioneered by Dr. Chou to study chemical speciation at hydrothermal conditions by precisely controlling the experimental conditions to yield quantitative speciation data.
Says Swaroop, “The conference gave me a broader view for the application of pure chemistry in understanding geochemistry and beyond.”
The upcoming 2026 Goldschmidt Conference is here in Montreal, Canada.
https://www.conf.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/2026/meetingapp.cgi