The National Science Foundation awarded a $206,000 grant to NIU’s department of geology and environmental geosciences that will improve technologies and research capabilities.

NIU has received the award three consecutive years.

“These grants are called major research grants (MRG). Our proposal had to compete with proposals from all other universities and across all science and engineering fields,” said Jonathan Berg, department chair of geology and environmental sciences. “From these proposals, NSF funds about one out of every three submitted.”

To have received the grant three consecutive years is a huge accomplishment, Berg said.

“This has resulted in more than $1.1 million in new instrumentation for the department,” Berg said. “I believe that NIU has received only four or five of these grants ever, so for the department to receive three of them in three successive years is quite a feat and quite a tribute to the quality of science being conducted in our department.”

The grant will be used to purchase a new mass spectrometer that will be used to analyze primary light isotopes of elements.

“We have an older generation isotope ratio mass spectrometer, but it does not have the precision, efficiency and flexibility of the modern, state-of-the-art instrument,” Berg said.

Isotopes and isotope ratios represent “fingerprints” of geologic materials and processes that serve as excellent tracers of biologic activity within soils and oceans, Berg said. Information gained through the research of isotopes can be of critical importance predicting what might happen in the future in terms of global warming and sea-level rise.

Berg credits the success of the proposal to the department’s professors and their scientific reputations.

“They will benefit from this new instrument, but so too will many other faculty and a host of graduate and undergraduate students,” Berg said.