pezzera@ualberta.ca

2018 BSc Geology, University of Milano-Bicocca. Thesis title: Significance of the presence of N₂ fluids in the oceanic lithosphere under the Canary Islands. A petrographic, microthermometric and Raman study of fluid inclusions in El Hierro peridotites. Supervisor: Dr. Maria Luce Frezzotti.

2020 MSc Geology and Geodynamics, University of Milano-Bicocca. Thesis title: Micro-Raman characterization of inclusions in detrital pyroxenes from different geological settings. Supervisors: Dr. Sergio Andò and Dr. Laura Borromeo.

My university training so far focused on the study of inclusions for geochemical and provenance purposes.

For my PhD, my main research project is based on over 3000 (micro)diamonds from an unconventional deposit, hosted by a Mesoarchean volcaniclastic sequence, on the Superior Craton in Manitoba (Anderson, 2016). Despite diamonds often having ancient formation ages (up to 3.5 Ga), those extracted from the mantle in the Archean are very rare. The only other well-known examples of Archean placer diamond deposits are in the Witwatersrand basin of South Africa and the Wawa area of Ontario. Diamonds will be optically described and chemically characterized for their nitrogen content and stable isotope compositions. The inclusions will be analyzed by Raman spectroscopy and single crystal X-ray diffraction. I will try to get as much information as possible from this valuable sample set, with the ultimate goal to better understand the carbon cycle and thermal evolution of early Earth. Moreover, given the unconventional (non-kimberlitic) nature of the deposit in an active continental margin setting, my work may have implications for diamond exploration.