Jesse Reimink

Jesse Reimink, Ph.D. - Class of 2005

2024 Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame Inductee

Career Achievements 

Dr. Jesse Reimink began his career path while studying Earth Science and Geology with high school instructor Chris Bolhuis. This led to his participation in the Summer Science Institute, an annual trek to National Parks with other Hudsonville students interested in science. After graduating from Hudsonville High School in 2005, he majored in Geology and minored in Biology at Hope College, where he also played basketball, was team captain for high final two years, and finished with All-American honors his final year. From Hope College, the path took him to the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, where he earned a PhD studying the oldest rocks on Earth. He then spent several years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (now Earth and Planets Laboratory).

Dr. Reimink is currently the Rudy L. Slingerland Early Career Professor of Geoscience at Penn State University, a top-ranked geology university. His research interests span igneous petrology, the early history of Earth, exploration for critical minerals, and working to understand when continents formed on Earth. He has conducted fieldwork in remote locations around the world including the Yukon, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories, Sweden, northern Michigan, and various locations across the western United States. 

Dr. Reimink has authored dozens of research articles in top journals such as Nature, Geology, and Nature Geoscience, and raised nearly $2 million dollars in research funding for his work. His research has been recognized through awards such as the Penn State EMS Research Breakthrough of the Year Award, the Journal of the Geological Society’s Young Author of the Year Award, and as a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists. He leads a research group with several undergraduate and graduate students, manages the Penn State LionChron geochronology facility, and is leading initiatives around Geoscience entrepreneurship in education and beyond. 

In 2020, Dr. Reimink, along with Chris Bolhuis, launched a Geoscience podcast called PlanetGeo as an outreach project to convey passion and excitement for the geosciences to a general audience. The weekly delivered podcast is available online at no cost and is regularly ranked as the top geoscience podcast in the US. In 2023, Dr. Reimink again teamed up with Chris Bolhuis, to launch GampGeo mobile app which is a conversational textbook designed to reach even more people in promoting the Earth sciences. The app utilizes images and conversational audio to convey important concepts. The app is patent pending and is available at no cost.

Dr. Reimink, along with his wife, Tess, and son, Shepard, are outdoor and sports enthusiasts. They enjoy camping, hiking, rugby, basketball, and fishing, while Jesse may collect an “odd rock” here and there on a hike. Despite his young age, Shepard seems to enjoy rock collecting as well.