Dr. Sarah Carmichael

Dr. Sarah Carmichael is a geoscientist who studies the tiny minerals that tell big stories. She is a National Geographic Explorer and one of the Explorers Club 50 (“Fifty People Changing the World that the World Needs to Know About”). Her research has taken her from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the ocean in the Alvin submersible. She currently works all over the world, from Virginia to Mongolia, using tiny minerals to determine the cause of a major mass extinction over 300 million years ago. Her work on mass extinctions is similar to what a crime scene investigator does with trace evidence: what tiny clues are preserved in the rocks that tell us about how these animals died? She also works in cave systems in the Appalachians, using tiny minerals created by bacteria and fungi to trace the impacts of humans on modern cave ecosystems.

Even though she has to travel to extreme places to get her samples, most of her work is done in the lab. To study these tiny minerals, she uses a variety of high-tech laboratory techniques such as scanning and transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction and infrared lasers.

Carmichael is a professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. She teaches classes on physical geology, geologic mapping, science writing, igneous and metamorphic rocks, and energy extraction in Appalachia.

Areas of expertise

• National Geographic Explorer (fieldwork in extreme environments)
• Mass extinctions
• Caves
• Fracking (hydraulic fracturing) for natural gas
• Mining and energy (particularly in Appalachian and Western NC)
• U.S. energy policy from the 1930s to the present