Hello! I am second author on this week's (Dec. 1 2000) cover article in Science, check it out and feel free to to send me any questions or comments. It is a very exciting project - I am continuing to work on geochemical modeling of sulfide formation in biofilms of sulfate reducing bacteria, and application of this observed phenomona to certain types of ore deposits. To bring you up to speed on my other activities, I am a dissertator at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and hope to be done in about a year and a half (Murphy's Law not withstanding...). I am working under Dr. Jillian Banfield in a large group with a lot of interaction and collaboration with microbiologists, chemists, material scientists, and other geologists - it is an exciting opportunity to learn and work within a broad range of fields. My primary focus is a study of the kinetics and mechanisms of intermediate sulfur species involved in the biologically catalyzed oxidation of pyrite. I have come full circle, and am back to thinking about acid mine drainage, which as you may recall was the subject of my senior thesis in 1995. I recently presented my results on the kinetics of tetrathionate (S4O62-) oxidation at low pH during the 2000 Goldschmidt conference in Oxford, and gave an invited lecture at the 2000 Soil Science and Agronomy Conference in Minneapolis on molecular biological techniques and findings at our AMD site in northern California.