Ruolin Deng

Ruolin Deng is a postdoctoral research scientist in the Geoinformatics Group at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) supervised by the Doherty Senior Research Scientist Dr. Kerstin Lehnert. He works on the development of two large sample databases hosted at LDEO: EarthChem and Astromat. EarthChem is a trusted repository service for researchers to publish and archive geochemical sample data, while Astromat is the primary NASA-funded sample data archive for sample-return missions, such as OSIRIS-REx and Artemis.

Prior to joining LDEO in November, 2025, he finished his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Geology at California Institute of Technology. His Ph.D. thesis focuses on using noble gases in deep sea sediments as tracers for interplanetary dust particles. Utilizing interdisciplinary methods including isotope geochemistry, cosmochemistry, planetary science models, sedimentology, and paleomagnetism, he links interplanetary dust particles to their parent bodies (e.g., asteroids, comets) and evaluates their interactions with terrestrial systems.

He earned his B.Sc. in Geology at Peking University in 2019, with a thesis on the partition behaviors of platinum group elements between basaltic magma and plagioclase/olivine under different oxygen fugacity conditions.

Education

  1. Ph.D. in Geology, California Institute of Technology, 2025
  2. M.Sc. in Geology, California Institute of Technology, 2022
  3. B.Sc. in Geology, Peking University, 2019