Plank recalled the event to State of the Planet, an Earth Institute News source at Columbia University.

She received her Ph.D. in Geosciences with distinction in 1993 from Columbia University, Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory with her thesis Mantle Melting and Crustal Recycling at Subduction Zones under the advising of Charles H. Langmuir.

There, she collaborated with her PhD advisor from Columbia (Langmuir) to work on her most cited publication, The chemical composition of subducting sediment and its consequences for the crust and mantle (see below).

She has done field work around the ring of fire, Philippines, Nicaragua, Iceland, and across the southwest United States as well as the Aleutian Islands.

[3][2] Plank serves on the executive committee of the Deep Carbon Observatory.Two of her other main research contributions have been to the understanding of magma generation and crustal recycling at subduction zones.

More specifically, Plank has published notable papers tracing sediments from sea floors to their ultimate end as lava from arc volcanoes.

[11]In one of her most recent papers, Thermal structure and melting conditions in the mantle beneath the Basin and Range province from seismology and petrology, a collaboration with D.W. Forsyth, Plank revised a mantle-melt thermobarometer.

They did this revision to show more precise pressure and temperature equilibrium estimates of mantle melt in the Basin and Range region of the United States.