The chemistry of volcanoes

Kate Saunders first realised that volcano science fired her up during a lecture as a first year geoscience undergraduate student at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. ‘I can remember thinking wouldn’t it be really good if I could do that as a career,’ she says, before quickly dismissing it as a pipe dream.

Her interest lay dormant for two years, until a field trip to her first volcano – Mount Ruapehu in New Zealand. The trip was organised by Victoria University of Wellington, where Saunders was on exchange as part of her degree course. ‘The textbook suddenly came alive for me.’ With her interest reawakened, Saunders approached one of the lecturers and asked if he was looking for PhD students. He was – and just like that Saunders took a major step towards her dream career as a volcanologist. ‘Everything fitted together really nicely,’ she remembers.