Martha Pamato

About Me

I am an Associate Professor of Mineralogy in the Department of Geosciences, University of Padua. I graduated from the University of Padua with a B.Sc. in Geological Sciences in 2008 and then moved to Germany where I obtained a M.Sc. (2010) and PhD (2014) in Experimental Geosciences at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut, University of Bayreuth. As a Postdoctoral Research Associate, I spent a year in the United States at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (IL) and then moved to the University College London (UK) in 2015. I was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) fellowship in 2018 and moved back to the University of Padua in 2019. I was recently awarded the ”Ugo Panichi Prize” from the Italian Society of Mineralogy and Petrology (in 2018) and the Dr. Eduard Gübelin Research Scholarship, Dr. Eduard Gübelin Association for Research & Identification of Precious Stones (in 2020).

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I am a mineralogist interested in the behaviour of minerals under extreme pressure and temperature conditions such as those encountered in the Earth’s inaccessible mantle and core. I have a interdisciplinary geological background allowing me to combine experimental and theoretical methods to study natural specimens in an effort to understand the structure and composition of the deep Earth and its evolution into a habitable planet. In 2021, I obtained an ERC starting grant for the project INHERIT (2022-2027), which aims to determine Earth’s primordial hydrogen isotopic signature and content through analysis of a unique set of worldwide, natural diamonds dating 3.5 to 0.09 billion years. The new results will be fundamental to pinpoint Earth’s water origin with long-term implications for understanding planet habitability, in our Solar System and beyond.