Going places with geology

Graduating senior Maggie Izumi heading to New Orleans, Hawaii before returning for master’s

By California State University, Bakersfield

December 10^th, 2025

Studying geology at California State University, Bakersfield has taken Maggie Izumi places, from conferences in Washington D.C. and Anaheim to research with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the Bay Area. Soon, it will also take her to back to her home state of Hawaii.

Born on Oahu, Izumi and her family moved to Bakersfield when she was about 5 years old. Now 30, Izumi is about to graduate with her bachelor’s degree in geology, but before she can officially complete the program, one requirement remains: a field camp assignment, which Izumi will undertake on the Big Island, through the South Dakota School of Mines.

“It’s like coming full circle for me,” she said of returning to Hawaii.

The family moved to Bakersfield, where Izumi’s mother was originally from, because there were fewer opportunities to support themselves in Hawaii, where her father was born and raised. Both teachers and CSUB alums, Izumi’s parents always encouraged her curiosity and interest in science. Though Izumi first wanted to study civil engineering, there were early signs that geology would end up being her calling.

“I was going through a lot of my old childhood stuff, and I stumbled upon rocks,” she recalled. “I had rocks! Oh my gosh, looking back on it now, I guess I've always just kind of liked rocks. Even growing up, I was always outside, whether I was playing sports or playing in the dirt.”

Falling for geology

Izumi graduated from Centennial High School in 2013 before studying civil engineering for a year at Cal Poly. After getting married in 2015, she moved to South Dakota but found herself starting from scratch when she divorced about six years later. Returning home, she enrolled at Bakersfield College in 2022 with her family’s encouragement.

Izumi was closer to finishing her associate degree than she realized, but a physical science requirement proved more influential than she could have expected. Among her options was a geology class with Dr. Chris Benker. She thought it would be “just rocks and dirt” and an easy A.

“In the very first class, in the first 10 minutes, he's like, ‘By the end of this course, I'm going to convert some of you guys to geology majors,’” she recalled. “And I just thought to myself, ‘That's so dumb. Who would ever fall for that?’ And sure enough, by the time the class was over and done with, I had fallen in love with geology.”

Transferring to CSUB, Izumi quickly felt at home with the faculty and her classmates in the Geological Sciences Department.

“Our department is small, but that doesn't mean there are no opportunities,” she said. “I almost appreciate more that our department is small. You get so much one-on-one interaction with your professors, and when you have that, you really can make a name for yourself and from there, you have all these research opportunities.”

Izumi has made the most of the opportunities available to her within the department, conducting research with faculty members and attending conferences. Not long after starting at CSUB, she joined Dr. Matthew Herman’s lab, where she studied seismic events like the 2024 earthquake in Taiwan.

Dr. Herman, an associate professor of geology, said Izumi doesn’t require much motivation to start a project, making her easy to mentor.

“In my opinion, the best scientists are people who ask lots of questions about the way things work,” he said. “Maggie is intensely curious and this drives her to explore as many areas of geology as she can. This has given her uniquely broad scientific experiences that she can use as a foundation for her future as a geologist.”

Rewarding work

Izumi’s two years working in Dr. Herman’s lab also overlapped with her participation in the CAL-EPIC internship, a partnership between CSUB and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). For the last two summers, she and other CSUB students have traveled to the Bay Area to work with scientists in the cutting-edge LBNL labs on projects that aim to solve vital real-world problems.

After initially studying carbon dioxide and hydrogen storage and sequestration, Izumi narrowed her focus this last summer to concentrate more specifically on hydrogen-based research. Her work centers around finding ways to take hydrogen from the air and pump it into unused oil wells. As a clean source of energy, the hydrogen can then be pulled up to use when needed with the excess stored when it is not.

With CSUB co-mentors Dr. Herman and Dr. Liaosha Song, Izumi has worked to characterize the electrical properties in western Kern County to be used for such storage.

“It’s so rewarding,” Izumi said. “It’s definitely been a lot of work — I won’t downplay that — but I know it’ll pay off. The things that we are researching, it’s groundbreaking work.”

Izumi has received validation for her research not just from the scientists at CSUB and LBNL, but also from some of the 25,000-plus attendees at the 2024 American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in Washington D.C., where she presented her work for four hours, well past the minimum one hour required for presenters to be at their posters.

“I was in an ocean of scientists, and it was intimidating!” she said. Getting positive feedback from geophysicists decades into their careers “was super validating. It was awesome to know that I was on the right track.”

That track will continue for Izumi, who will return to CSUB in the spring to begin the master’s in the geology program. If all goes according to plan, she will spend next summer back at LBNL doing the bulk of the research for her master’s project so she can spend the rest of her time finishing classes, analyzing her research and writing her thesis.

Dr. Song, an associate professor of geology at CSUB, has worked closely with Izumi on her CAL-EPIC research and will serve as her faculty mentor for her graduate program.

“Maggie is a self-driven student who excels in practical, lab-based projects,” he said. “She brought her enthusiasm to the lab and consistently went above and beyond expectations. Being her thesis advisor, I have no doubt she will bring that intrinsic motivation and dedication to lab experiments and her future thesis.”

When she isn’t busy with research, Izumi also serves on the board of the Kern County Mineral Society, a 90-year-old club that promotes education in mineralogy and earth sciences and, among other activities, awards scholarships and stipends to local geology students.

“I am always busy,” Izumi said. “But I love it. I love getting involved. I love being able to share my knowledge and background with people. I love the fact that I can give back as well not just in terms of knowledge but also financially to some of our students. That’s a big one for me.”

Next steps

Izumi’s busy schedule doesn’t let up much even after her undergraduate classes come to an end. Following commencement on Dec. 13, Izumi will then go to New Orleans for the next AGU conference from Dec. 14 through 20. She will have a week off around Christmas before flying out to Hawaii for field camp.

If the pace of it all gets to her, Izumi will at least be in good company. Not only does her aunt live just down the road from where she will be staying in Hawaii, but two of her graduating geology classmates will be going to the same field camp: her boyfriend, Tyler Garza, and friend Garrett Cooper.

Working with the two is “going to be a blast,” she said, and she’s looking forward to returning to her home state with her new perspective as a geologist. In the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, the trio will study the Kilauea volcano integrated with initiatives of the United States Geological Survey Hawaii Volcano Observatory (HVO) to monitor current activity and volcano hazards.

“I’ll get to experience a lot of geology in places that you normally wouldn’t be able to,” she said. “We’re going to be doing a lot of volcanology. There’s a possibility that we’re going to sample lava! You sold me there! That’s what I get to do? Done deal.”

With grad school coming up in the spring, graduating doesn’t yet feel like a significant milestone, Izumi said — more like checking a box on a to-do list that still has another major task immediately following it. But it has offered a brief moment for the always busy Izumi to slow down a bit and reflect on her journey so far.

“After my divorce, I just thought, that's it,” she said. “I didn't really have any direction in life, and between my friends, my family, my professors in the department, they’ve all just supported me. I couldn't ask for a better support system because it's taken me so far in life, and I'm grateful for that.”

Izumi isn’t yet sure what she’d like to do after graduate school, but she hopes to work in the clean energy sector. She’d like to work in town for at least a few years and plans to get her geologist-in-training license before later taking the professional geologist test.