Wai Allen studies hard to help Native American tribes.
Allen welcomes the pressure of a graduate student pursuing her MS Degree in Geology at Purdue, because she has important goal to achieve. She says that, “Aside from my research interests, I am very interested in natural resource policies that affect the mineral rights of Native American tribes.”
The Navajo Nation member’s research takes place in basin development and evolution using detrital-zircon geochronology in Alaska.
A geological paper states that the mixture of detrital zircons in sandstone, precise mineral age identification, and the ability to analyze much “from a single sandstone sample has made detrital-zircon geochronology a powerful tool in provenance studies.”
Allen earned a BS in Geology-Environmental Option at Fort Lewis College, and is a member of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.
