Most recently Dr. McCanta was a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology analyzing minor element zonation in minerals as a new tool to determine the magmatic history of igneous rocks. Broadly, the results of her research can be applied to a number of rocky bodies and their interior magmatic processes including Earth, Earth's Moon and Mars. In the extraterrestrial vein, Dr. McCanta has worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, as a Urey Fellow, and was awarded a NASA Graduate Student Research Fellowship toward work that could help determine the magmatic and metamorphic conditions of the Martian interior based on petrographic studies of Martian meteorites. On the terrestrial side, her work has shaped scientific thought on the ascent rate of magma in subduction zone settings related to volcanism, in particular at Mt. Shasta and Mt. St. Helens.
