intro
PROFILE
VOLCANO GUY'S GOT CHOPS Leif Karlstrom’s dad is an earth sciences professor who studies the American Southwest. His mom is a violinist with the Santa Fe Symphony. Exposed to both professions growing up, Karlstrom had no intention of following the career path of either parent. Turns out, he followed both. By day, Karlstrom is a member of UO’s earth sciences faculty, a specialist in volcanology. He researches the source of eruptions and the way fluids flow, such as why magma either oozes or blasts from a volcano, what governs the recurrence of eruptions through time, and how noise made by volcanoes can be used to probe their unseen inner structure. By night, he’s a violinist. Classically trained, he’s played in everything from punk bands to orchestras. While attending graduate school in the Bay Area, Karlstrom helped form a bluegrass group that won the RockyGrass and Telluride music festival competitions, and he has toured Europe and Asia. He still gigs often, including a show last New Year’s Eve at the historic Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia. Where most people would see little overlap between science and music, he likens the mental agility needed to connect clues about the Earth’s history to that of interpreting a complex musical composition. “It’s as creative an endeavor as the arts,” he says. “That’s why I’m drawn to science as a profession.”
Karlstrom Leif
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EARTH SCIENCES
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O R E G O N Q U A R T E R LY
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SPRING 2018
BY JIM MUREZ
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLIE LITCHFIELD, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS