Dr. Martha Giovanna Pamato, postdoc researcher at the Department of Geosciences, has won an ERC Starting Grant

 

Dr. Martha Giovanna Pamato, postdoc researcher at the Department of Geosciences, has won an European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant with her project focused on diamonds as key the unravel the origin of Earth’s water.

Dr. Pamato came back to Padova in 2019 after more than a decade abroad and she started working on diamonds, and the minerals that are included in diamonds, after she received another important acknowledgment as The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship.

More in detail, during the next five years Dr. Pamato will study the isotopic signature of hydrogen in the diamonds because it’s a way to understand and get some information about the origin of Earth's water: in fact some of them are very old, going back to 3.5 billion years, and they are also the strongest and most robust and inert natural samples that we have.

“I hope that my project will help solve this mystery which has fundamental implications, not only for our planet or for other planets in the solar system but also beyond because the origin of the water is strictly related also with the origin of life”, Dr. Pamato said

News on Unipd - Unipd: four researchers have won the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants