I switched gears during my Master's at Cornell. I was interested in the history of Earth, so I joined a research program that centered on stratigraphy. 

I hail from Saudi Arabia, where energy resources are the current driving forces of our economy. The research project I conducted at Cornell helped me imagine ways in which my country can use our knowledge and data from oil acquisition, and repurpose it for renewable resources.

The Earth Source Heat endeavor at Cornell University does just that: Cornell intends to be carbon-neutral by 2030, and part of that initiative is sustainably heating the campus via geothermal heating. My thesis repurposed tools and data typically used in the oil and gas industry to find layers of rock beneath Cornell that had interconnected holes which would allow us to naturally heat water, which would then circulate across campus. It was an incredibly fun thesis, and a lot of fun projects spun out from it, resulting in three chapters instead of one, and 178 pages written. I was lucky to have been taught stratigraphy and mentored by Dr. Terry Jordan.