Iva is a Geobiology graduate student interested in unraveling the complex geochemical and physical records of time, life, and environments preserved in sedimentary rocks, especially carbonate sequences, which serve as archives of Earth's past. In the Grotzinger group, Iva is investigating the origins and formation of microbial carbonate structures called Thrombolites. Thrombolites have intriguing patterns and puzzling occurrences in the rock record. They are characterized by a clotted fabric at the mesoscale rather than a laminated fabric like their better-known counterparts, the Stromatolites. However, the mechanisms that lead to their diagnostic clot formation are subject to debate and remain, as of now, enigmatic.