The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) announces the launch of its inaugural lecture series: IODP DRILLS, the Distinguished Researcher & International Leadership Lecture Series.

IODP DRILLS is the topical scientific lecture series to feature prominent, internationally known scientists describing scientific results derived from samples retrieved from beneath the ocean floor. DRILLS will actively engage future generations of scientists in ocean drilling, while highlighting scientific ocean drilling’s major accomplishments to the scientific community and beyond.

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program offers scientists unprecedented capabilities through an equal partnership between Japan and the United States. The Japanese riser vessel is capable of drilling 7000 meters into the ocean floor, which potentially permits access to the deep crust of oceanic arcs in the search for a better understanding of how continental crust is born. The Izu-Bonin Mariana subduction factory is an ideal environment to answer scientific questions of global significance including how continental crust forms and evolves in an intra-oceanic arc setting. This talk will serve to highlight the potential of IODP in the scientific setting of an oceanic arc.

Tatsumi-san has dedicated his career to understanding how the solid earth evolves through the subduction factory. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1983 then conducted research abroad at the University of Manchester before returning to Japan as a professor at Kyoto University from 1984-2000. In 2001, Tatsumi-san was invited to be the Program Director of the Institute for Research on Earth Evolution at JAMSTEC. Since the inception of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program in 2003, Tatsumi-san has distinguished himself as a leader amongst Japanese scientists and he was recently elected to serve as on the IODP-MI Board of Governors.