Our Guest rockstar

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  Ian W. Honsberger grew up in the northeastern United States along a Mesozoic fault system that separates high-grade Ordovician metamorphic rocks from unmetamorphosed Triassic to Jurassic rift basalts and clastic sediments formed during the opening of the Atlantic Ocean. Unknown to him at the time, Ian transected this fault zone everyday on bus rides to and from school and swam in the lake that occupies the fault. So, it made sense that earth science sparked Ian’s interest during his undergraduate studies. He earned a B.A. in Earth Sciences from the University of New Hampshire in New Hampshire, USA.

Ian began his professional career, with his undergraduate degree in-hand, as an employee of the United States Geological Survey’s Volcanic Hazards Team in California. After only two months of crushing volcanic rocks, he decided that an earth science career was not for him. So, he left that seemingly great job to pursue other things. After four years of driving and living around the US and taking-on different jobs including being a mason, educator, and warehouse worker, Ian realized that he should pursue earth sciences again. He returned to the University of New Hampshire for graduate studies in metamorphic petrology and received his Ph.D. in 2015. Prior to joining the Geological Survey of Canada, Ian moved to Ottawa, Canada to complete a two-year temporary teaching position at Carleton University. He has been a Research Scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada in Ottawa since 2017. His research foci are orogenic gold systems and petrology-based studies in the northern Appalachian Mountain belt. Ian is married to a wildfire scientist and has a two-year-old daughter and five-year-old dog.