New Faculty
Dr. John Hanchar
Professor and head
Department of Earth Sciences
Faculty of Science
Dr. Hanchar's research interests are in the general areas of experimental and environmental geochemistry and materials science. Over the past decade he has developed synthesis methods for producing high-purity undoped and doped silicate, phosphate, oxide minerals, and glasses, for structural properties, trace element incorporation, diffusion, spectroscopic studies, and storage materials for radioactive waste from dismantled nuclear weapons and spent nuclear fuel.
Recently, Dr. Hanchar has been collaborating with colleagues at MIT, the University of Mainz in Germany, and the V. G. Khlopin Radium Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia investigating the effects of in situ radiation damage caused by man-made radioisotopes, and naturally occurring alpha-induced, crystalline and non-crystalline materials. He has also been involved for the past several years on understanding the trace element, isotopic composition, and petrogenesis of naturally occurring accessory minerals (e.g., zircon, apatite) and trace element composition of feldspars and melt inclusions from ash beds in the Dolomites region of northern Italy, and hydrothermally altered granitic rocks in the Adirondack Mountains of New York state.
After completing his PhD, Dr. Hanchar was a U.S. Department of Energy Postdoctoral Appointee at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. He then spent one year at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana as a visiting professor. Afterwards, at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., he was assistant and associate professor of geosciences and developed and managed the environmental science undergraduate degree program. Prior to coming to MUN in the summer of 2005, Dr. Hanchar worked for one year at the U.S. National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia, as a program director for the Petrology and Geochemistry Program in the Directorate for Geosciences. Currently he assists the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., and the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow as a technical expert evaluating the cleanup of weapons facilities from the former Soviet Union, and the training of scientists who previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction to do environmental remediation research.
A native of Rochester, New York, Dr. Hanchar completed a B.Sc. degree in geology at Memphis State University, in Memphis, Tennessee, a master's degree in geology at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, and a PhD in geochemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.