Tracy Frank loves reading rocks.

Inspired by a childhood traversing the stomping grounds of dinosaurs and the earliest hominids, Frank is a sedimentary geologist who has studied rocks from around – and deep within – the Earth.

“Rocks are more than inanimate objects,” said Frank. “They contain history just waiting to be discovered.”

Frank will discuss why she enjoys being a scientist as the keynote speaker at the 11th annual Women in Science conference, Feb. 20-21. Just to get it out of the way, Frank says she enjoys being a scientist because the work is challenging and varied; she gets to travel a lot; and the research focuses on important issues, including climate change and global warming.

Of course, there are also those wonderful stone tales.

Frank’s fascination with rocks started in Africa. When Frank was around 10-years-old, her family moved to Nairobi where her father was a visiting professor at a veterinarian school. She remembers exploring the Great Rift Valley, volcanoes and Olduvai Gorge, the home to the earliest hominids.

ROCK HOUND – Tracy Frank, associate professor of geosciences, will be the keynote speaker at the 11th annual Women in Science Conference for high school women. Photo by Greg Nathan/University Communications.

“Those places really inspired me,” said Frank. “I saw all these rock features and wanted to know how they got there. I started realizing then that there are stories in rocks.”

Frank’s father and mother – who was a veterinary researcher – encouraged their daughter’s scientific side. And, when in high school, the self-described “band geek” was surrounded by friends who also dug science.

“I also had some great high school geology teachers who had a big effect on me,” said Frank. “We went on this one field trip, around Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. I remember seeing dinosaur tracks. They were amazing.”

As an undergraduate at Iowa State University, Frank was the only woman in a number of her geosciences courses. She was also – at least for a while – the only woman in her graduate school research group at the University of Michigan.

“That was something that never really discouraged me,” said Frank. “I owe that to being brought up in a family that didn’t try to discourage me from doing anything.”

Frank also had strong support from female faculty members.

“But, by the time I became a post-doc at Penn State, the whole male-female thing, being the lone woman feeling sort of disappeared,” said Frank. “I wasn’t treated any differently. Everyone was supportive of the research I was pursuing.”

Her study has taken Frank around the globe.

Frank worked at the University of Queensland in Australia for four years, studying limestone deposits within the Great Barrier Reef. She met her husband, Chris Fielding, while in Australia.

The two geologists came to UNL when Fielding accepted an endowed chair in the geology department. Frank – who continued her research and worked other jobs – waited two years before a post opened within the department.

Since joining the UNL faculty, Frank has continued to study formations in Australia, ventured on two-month stints with the integrated ocean drilling program three times, and served as a researcher with the multi-national ANDRILL project in Antarctica.

“As a sedimentary geologist, a lot of my work involves geochemistry,” Frank said. “I look for chemical signatures in rocks that can provide an indication of what climate and environment was like in the past.”

She has studied sedimentary formations back to the Precambrian Period, 1.5 billion years ago.

Frank aims to continue to work on research directed at global warming and climate change.

“There are all kinds of interesting stories in rocks,” said Frank. “I’m excited to be doing this kind of research. And, it’s also an exciting time for young researchers – both women and men – because there is so much opportunity out there for them.

“Geoscientists really get to do some amazing things.”

– Story by Troy Fedderson, University Communications