Department News

Nancy Ramos is the recipient of the LPL Staff Excellence Award for 2023.

In her role as Executive Assistant for the OSIRIS-REx management team, Nancy provides administrative, technical, and logistical support for the mission team. Nancy excels in her high-pressure role, making the organization of meetings, calendars, and large team events seem effortless. She ensures efficient team communication and manages special projects such as the team's recent move from the Drake building to the Kuiper building. In addition to her many professional contributions, Nancy volunteers to support department activities of all types and to foster a sense of community with LPL as well as the OSIRIS-REx team.

Prior to joining the OSIRIS-REx team, Nancy spent six years in similar administrative roles, first at Northern Arizona University and then at the University of Arizona. Nancy has a Bachelor’s degree in English from Northern Arizona University.

In her free time, Nancy enjoys spending time with her husband and two cats. Nancy adores all things feline and was founding president of Northern Arizona University’s student-run “trap, neuter, vaccinate, return, manage” organization, the Feral Cat Alliance.

Asteroid 47862 Nancyramos was named in her honor.

The Department of Planetary Sciences wrapped up the academic year with a count of 23 undergraduate minors in Planetary Sciences and 29 in Astrobiology. On April 28, LPL hosted a lunch for graduating seniors. Congratulations to graduating ASB minors Michelle Burr and Brooke Carruthers and to PTYS minors: Jared Bartunek, Morgan Cryder, Charlie Goldberg, Nicole Kerrison, Melissa Kontogiannis, Kevin May, and Bennett Skinner. 

Michelle Burr

Michelle majored in Cellular and Molecular Biology, minoring in Astrobiology for the opportunity to work with LPL scientists with HiRISE, OSIRIS-REx and NIRCam. She has been accepted into the Arizona Biological Biomedical doctoral program for fall 2022 and plans to earn a Ph.D. in Cellular Molecular Medicine. Her career goals include working for NASA on radiation and nucleic acid research.

Michelle cites two courses from the ASB minor program as particular favorites. She says that being able to learn from Regents Professor Alfred McEwen, Principal Investigator for HiRISE and instructor for PTYS 442 (Mars) was a "once in a lifetime experience." One of the assignments required her to provide a scientific rational for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to use HiRISE to take a high-resolution image of her assigned Martian surface coordinates. The result was a one-of-a-kind framed high-resolution image of the Martian surface that hangs now in her room.

Professor Ilaria Pascucci's ASTR 450 (Origin of the Solar System and Other Planetary Systems) class was also a favorite. Michelle says, "This class was one of the most difficult classes I took in the minor, but...it made everything finally click for the formation of our solar system....I was able to link birth sites of planets and their formation with our solar system, and that was extraordinary."

Michelle is currently studying the effects of ionizing radiation on a species of the common house mosquito, a project she began at Pima Community College while in their ASCEND program. After transferring to UArizona, Michelle joined SEDS/ASCEND team and continued perfecting a model that allows mosquitos to enter near space and become introduced to ionizing radiation; she then analyzes their post-orbit DNA anomalies and protein disparities. In the course of this research, Michelle began volunteering with Dr. Julie Ledford (Cellular and Molecular Medicine) on research with asthma and airway diseases, specifically on a novel menopausal asthmatic model to understand the molecular pathways involved in onset of uncontrolled asthma post-menopausally.

Michelle enjoys hiking and rock climbing and takes advantage of Arizona dark skies for stargazing.

Bennett Neil Skinner

Bennett graduated with a major in Astronomy and Physics and minors in Computer Science and Mathematics in addition to Planetary Science. He will pursue an M.Sc. in Physics and Astronomy with collaborative work in Astrobiology at McMaster University beginning this fall and hopes to move into a Ph.D. program and an academic career in astronomy.

As an undergraduate, Bennett's favorite course was PTYS 450 (Origin of the Solar System and Other Planetary Systems), taught by Professor Ilaria Pascucci. The course inspired him to push his knowledge beyond the classroom, resulting in an honors thesis that looked at CI emission from protoplanetary disks using the Atacama Compact Array as a check on previous studies reporting CO depletion. Bennett writes, "We detected CI in half our sample, the highest rate of any protoplanetary disk CI survey thus far, nearly doubling the total number of CI detections. We found that CI fluxes are consistent with protoplanetary disk models assuming an ISM-like gas:dust ratio of 100, implying that CO is not depleted in the disk. We also found that CI flux correlates with CO isotopologue fluxes that trace the upper layers of the disk, showing that CI traces the upper layers of the disk where CO dissociates but CI has not yet ionized." Results of the project have been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal for publication. Before starting graduate school, Bennett will work on a project using disk wind data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Bennett has wide-ranging hobbies, with particular interests in history, politics, geopolitics, and biology. He tries to track every major election in the world, make predictions, and watch the results as they roll in. He enjoys museums, hiking, and documentaries and is a fan of the sci-fi and fantasy genres, as well as video games.

By Shane Byrne, Brett Carr, and Christopher Hamilton

Thanks to the generosity of donors and support from LPL, the PTYS 590 planetary geology field studies course was able to venture further and longer than usual this semester. Arizona and its surroundings is gifted with exceptionally diverse geology, but there are some processes, such as active volcanism and new lava flows, that are best seen elsewhere. This March, thirty of us packed our bags for the Big Island of Hawaiʻi to explore at some of the freshest lava flows in the world. Led by Professor Shane Byrne, we spent eleven geology-filled days on the trip and we needed every one of them! We were especially fortunate to have the expertise of Associate Professor Christopher Hamilton and Dr. Brett Carr, who have researched many of these field sites.

Our group stayed in Kona one night before departing for Volcano Village and our base of operations at the Holoholo In (yes, there’s only one ‘n’). Volcano village is ideally located and we had the entire hostel reserved for our group, so it made an excellent headquarters. Although Hawaiʻi is made up of several large shield volcanoes, we spent most of the trip on the nearby Kīlauea Volcano on the south side of the island and its rift zones. Much of the recent volcanic activity has been concentrated there in an area that is largely covered by Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and off to the east.

The summit area of Kīlauea in the national park has many interesting sites. We started at the old site of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (now derelict) at the Uēkahuna Overlook, where we heard from a living legend of volcanology, Dr. Don Swanson. Our group had the opportunity to walk through the Kīlauea Iki caldera, which hosted a lava lake during an eruption in 1959. There’s still a lot of heat under the surface—fissures there continue to vent steam over 60 years after the eruption. The next day, we headed through the park to the coast, stopping at the devastation trail (devastated by tephra from the same 1959 Kīlauea Iki activity). We stopped at Maunaulu, a shield volcano that was built during an eruption in 1969–1974, and saw a perched lava pond on its flank. Our group got thoroughly drenched in the rain, but luckily that was the worst of the weather for the rest of the trip. We were able to dry out a little down on the coast looking at the Hōlei Sea Arch.

Occasionally, eruptions and lava flows wipe out neighborhoods in Hawaiʻi and that occurred near Pāhoa in 2018. Some enterprising landowners now provide tours of the area, giving us a chance to see a very young cone and lava field up close. We toured the Ahuʻailāʻau cone (Fissure 8 of the eruption), which is one of many eruption sites powered by activity many miles away at the Kīlauea caldera.

Lava–seawater interactions lead to spectacular explosions and we observed the results of those in several locations. Fine-grained debris from these explosions piles up in littoral cones that later can be eroded away by the waves. One of these cones near Southpoint is so rich in the mineral olivine that the sand on the adjoining beach is green. Other beaches we visited had the more common black sand (one of which came from the 2018 eruption above), which is basically the volcanic rock basalt that has been mechanically pounded into small pieces. Although it is not widespread on the Earth, this black sand has a special planetary connection as it’s quite similar to what we commonly see on Mars.

Hawaiʻi has a lot of other interesting sites to offer such as waterfalls, lava tubes, and incredible night-sky viewing. Fortunately, we were able to sample all these and more. The West Hawaii Astronomy Club met us with telescopes at the Mauna Kea visitors center one evening and wow’ed us with gorgeous views.

Hawaiʻi has a rich history that informs the modern culture. The many sites we visited provided an opportunity to learn about the history of Hawaiʻi. Footprints preserved in ash at Kaʻu desert attest to the long history of human habitation. Contact with Europeans began at Kealakekua Bay and set in motion a chain of contentious events that made Hawaii a U.S. state 180 years later. As planetary scientists, an issue of great relevance to us is telescope building on Mauna Kea. A complex dispute about how best to balance the science, economics, and sensitivity to Hawaiian customs and beliefs there continues to this day. A solution is elusive, but one can hope that education and understanding can lead to respect and ultimately agreement on a path forward.

Congratulations to Rachel Fernandes, Allison McGraw, Laura Seifert, Amanda Stadermann, Tarunika Ramprasad, and Brandon Tober, and Weigang Liang LPL's newest alumni!

Rachel Fernandes
April 20, 2023 

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Weigang Liang
May 18, 2023

An Investigation of Early Lunar History Using Gravity Data

Advisor: Associate Professor Jeff Andrews-Hanna

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Allison McGraw
April 14, 2023

Asteroid-Meteorite Linkages through Infrared Spectroscopy

Advisor: Professor Vishnu Reddy

New position: Physics Laboratory Manager, Texas A&M (Physics & Astronomy)

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Laura Seifert
April 12, 2023

Dust Condensation in Circumstellar Environments: Insight from Chemical and Microstructural Analyses of Presolar Grains

Advisor: Professor Tom Zega

New position: NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow, Johnson Space Center

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Amanda Stadermann
February 6, 2023

From Earth to Neptune: The Mineralogical Properties of Small Planetary Satellites and Co-orbital Objects

Advisor: Assistant Professor Jessica Barnes

New position: NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow, Johnson Space Center

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Tarunika Ramprasad
Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering

Minor in Planetary Science

April 10, 2023

Reverse Engineering the Thermochemistry of the Early Solar Nebula through Transmission Electron Microscopy and Thermodynamic Modelling of Refractory Planetary Materials

Advisor: Professor Tom Zega

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Brandon Tober
Dept. of Geosciences

Minor in Planetary Science

April 24, 2023

Radar Sounding Analysis of Mountain Glaciers in Alaska: Revealing Ice Thickness, Subglacial Topography, and Geologic Structure

Advisor: Professor Jack Holt