Alumnus Petr Yakovlev (PhD, 2015, Marin Clark) is working as a post-doctoral scholar with Marin Clark, preparing his dissertation results for publication and leveraging existing datasets to provide new insight into the development of the Indo-Asian orogen. His ongoing work focuses on the timing and styles of deformation of the northern Tibetan Plateau, and shows that shortening there terminated in Oligocene time. This leaves a 20 million year gap between the end of compressional shortening and the onset of extension in middle Miocene, and implies that the northern Tibetan Plateau was at high elevations by Oligocene time. New constraints on crustal thicknesses from compiled geochemical datasets suggest that much of the plateau was thin prior to the onset of Indian collision in Eocene time, arguing against the prevailing hypothesis that much of the region reached modern elevations and thicknesses in the Cretaceous. These results will be submitted shortly to the journal Nature Geoscience, and are expected to have a significant impact on the understanding of the tectonics of the Indo-Asian orogen, and shifts in regional climate resulting from the development of high topography. In his down time, Petr is seeking future positions in academia, and investigating possible opportunities in the private sector.