Rate My Professor Emily Finzel

Emily Finzel is Professor and Departmental Executive Officer of the School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of Iowa, where she has served since 2012, advancing from Assistant Professor to full Professor. She earned her PhD from Purdue University in 2010, MS from the University of Alaska, and BS from the University of Wisconsin. Before academia, she worked as an exploration geologist for ExxonMobil, mapping and evaluating oil and gas resources. Her academic interests center on sedimentary processes in modern and ancient basins, employing techniques such as sedimentologic analysis, geologic mapping, detrital geochronology using U-Pb and Hf isotopes, mudstone rare earth element geochemistry, heavy mineral provenance studies, and petrographic analysis to decipher tectonic histories preserved in stratigraphic records. Research spans diverse settings including forearc and backarc basins in south-central Alaska, the Cordilleran foreland basin in southwestern Montana, Paleozoic cratonic basins of the Midcontinent, the Miocene Apennine foreland basin in Italy, and the Cretaceous Neuquén Basin in Argentina. She directs the Tectonics & Basin Analysis Lab, mentoring graduate students who have graduated to roles such as Geologist at ConocoPhillips, Petrographer at CTLGroup, and PhD candidates at Montana State University.

Finzel's influential publications include 'Upper plate proxies for flat-slab subduction processes in southern Alaska' (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2011), 'Lower–Middle Pennsylvanian strata in the North American midcontinent record the interplay between erosional unroofing of the Appalachians and eustatic sea-level rise' (Geosphere, 2018), 'Surface motions and intraplate continental deformation in Alaska driven by mantle flow' (Geophysical Research Letters, 2015), 'Detrital zircons from Cretaceous midcontinent strata reveal an Appalachian Mountains–Cordilleran foreland basin connection' (Lithosphere, 2014), and 'Provenance of synorogenic foreland basin strata in southwestern Montana requires revision of existing models for Laramide tectonism' (Tectonics, 2020). She was named the William M. Furnish Fellow and received the 2021-2022 Collegiate Teaching Award. Her scholarship advances models of subduction dynamics, foreland basin evolution, and continental tectonics across North America and global orogens.