MIT EAPS Directory
Nilanjan Chatterjee
Principal Research ScientistNilanjan Chatterjee is an igneous and metamorphic petrologist. His current research interests include the origin and crystallization of the K/Pg Deccan flood basalts of India, igneous activity and metamorphism in the Cenozoic Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt, and high-grade metamorphism in eastern India with implications for Proterozoic-Paleozoic supercontinent break-up and assembly. He has also collaborated in studying hydrous peridotite melting in the mantle wedge.
Nilanjan obtained his B.Sc. (1981) and M.Sc. (1983) from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and his Ph.D. (1989) from City University of New York. His Ph.D. thesis involved creating an internally consistent thermodynamic database to calculate phase equilibria. During 1990-1991, he served as a postdoctoral assistant at American Museum of Natural History, New York, where he studied meteorites. Nilanjan has over 25 years of experience with the electron probe micro-analyzer (EPMA, or the electron microprobe) and its applications in the earth and material sciences. He oversees the operation of the Electron Microprobe Laboratory (a research facility within EAPS), teaches the theory and application of the x-ray micro-analytical technique, and provides training for students, researchers and the faculty.
Publications
Chatterjee, N. (2021) Origin of the primitive, strongly SiO2-undersaturated alkalic rocks from the Deccan Traps by low-degree mantle melting and high-pressure fractional crystallization. Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, 176,31. doi: 10.1007/s00410-021-01787-4
Borlina, C.S., Weiss, B.P., Bryson, J.F.J., Bai, X-N., Lima, E.A., Chatterjee, N. and Mansbach, E.N. (2021) Paleomagnetic evidence for a disk substructure in the early solar system. Science Advances, 7, eabj6928. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abj6928
Eyuboglu, Y., Dudas, F.O., Zhu, D.C., Liu, Z., Chatterjee, N., Akbulut, K., Zhang, L.-L. and Li, S. (2021) Xenoliths in Late Cretaceous to Early Paleocene adakites of the Eastern Pontides Orogenic Belt, NE Turkey. Lithos, 398-399, 106265. doi: 10.1016/j.lithos.2021.106265
Chatterjee, N. (2018) An assembly of the Indian Shield at c. 1.0 Ga and shearing at c. 876-784 Ma in Eastern India: insights from contrasting P-T paths, and burial and exhumation rates of metapelitic granulites. Precambrian Research, 317, 117-136. doi: 10.1016/j.precamres.2018.08.024
Ghose, N.C., Chatterjee, N. and Windley, B.F. (2017) Subaqueous early eruptive phase of the Late Aptian Rajmahal volcanism, India: evidence from volcaniclastic rocks, bentonite, black shales, and oolite. Geoscience Frontiers, 8, 809-822. doi: 10.1016/j.gsf.2016.06.007
Contact Information
t: 617 253 1995