First-year graduate student Christina Singh was awarded the Robin Fellowship by the University of Arizona College of Science. The fellowship is awarded for academic excellence, exceptional potential to advance knowledge in the discipline, and ability to broaden perspectives and inquiry based on life experiences.
Christina's research interests include astrobiology, photogrammetry, and planetary surfaces. Professor Shane Byrne is Christina's advisor.
Kiana presented her award talk, entitled Size and Albedo Constraints for (152830) Dinkinesh Using WISE Data, at the Fall 2023 meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists. Her presentation described work that was critical for helping the NASA Lucy mission plan their November 2023 encounter with this small main-belt asteroid.
Ph.D. candidate Samantha Moruzzi received a 2024 Amelia Earhart Fellowship from Zonta International; she is one of only thirty scholars selected for the honor, which recognizes outstanding academic record and demonstrated initiative, ambition, and commitment to pursuing a career in space sciences.
Samantha Moruzzi is developing geophysical models of impact basins in data-limited environments such as Pluto as windows into planetary interiors. She utilizes the topography data of the Sputnik impact basin and the widespread surface fractures returned from NASA’s New Horizons mission to understand the interior structure of Pluto, its formation and its geophysical evolution. The first part of her thesis showed that Sputnik basin’s topographic structure is morphologically and statistically consistent with large impact basins in inner solar system objects. This discovery has been a key study in understanding the universal processes governing impacts on rocky and icy solar system objects.
Samantha is currently generating a local gravity field over the Sputnik basin based on an approach that was once used to study the gravity signatures beneath Earth’s oceans. Her work has put constraints on surface properties and interior composition, calling into question whether Pluto has a subsurface ocean like other icy moons in the outer solar system.
After completing her Ph.D., she intends to pursue a postdoctoral position in geophysics and planetary science, pursuing a career as a research scientist at a NASA-funded research institution. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, reading and amateur astronomy.
Kayla Smith is the recipient of a University Fellows Award. This prestigious fellowship is offered to the University of Arizona's highest-ranked incoming graduate students and includes a competitive financial package, professional development, mentoring, and community engagement opportunities.
Kayla is a first-year graduate student; her research interests include astrobiology, exoplanets, and planetary atmospheres. Kayla's advisor is Professor Mark Marley.
LPL graduate student Nathalia Vega won 3rd place in this year's UArizona Grad Slam Competition.
Grad Slam is a campus-wide competition for the best three-minute graduate student presentation of a research or creative project; it is sponsored by the UArizona Graduate Center. Nathalia's presentation was titled Unlocking Extremoverse: Behind the scenes of a Pokemon-inspired game.
Ruby Fulford will spend Summer 2024 at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where she will work with Dr. Bob Craddock on MARSSIM, a complex Martian landscape evolution model, to explore fluvial activity on pre-Noachian and early Noachian Mars.
Ruby is a first-year graduate student advised by Associate Professor Jeff Andrews-Hanna. Her research interests include astrobiology and planetary geophysics.
Jada Walters was selected for the Department of Energy’s SCGSR Program to pursue plasma science research at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The DOE Science Graduate Student Research Program provides world-class training and access to state-of-the art facilities and resources at DOE National Laboratories.
Jada's research focus is solar and heliophysical science; she is advised by Associate Professor Kristopher Klein.
The Kuiper-Arizona Laboratory for Astromaterials Analysis awards the Hitachi Scholarship in Electron Microscopy annually to two graduate students generating cutting-edge research and publications in the area of electron microscopy. The scholarship was established by Hitachi High-Technologies as part of their partnership with the University of Arizona.
Maizey BennerMaizey is a third-year Ph.D. student at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Her research focuses on unraveling the thermodynamic history of phosphorus- and sulfur-bearing minerals in aqueously altered carbonaceous chondrites using coordinated electron microscopy techniques. Maizey uses the Hitachi HF5000 S/TEM and S-4800 SEM to characterize the structure and chemistry of these materials from the millimeter to atomic scale. About the award, Maizey says, "Receiving the Hitachi Electron Microscopy Scholarship has given me great confidence in my work, and encouragement to pursue further training in electron microscopy. I am honored to receive such an award and look forward to completing my Ph.D. research using the Hitachi microscopes."
LPL graduate student Lucas Smith uses the Hitachi instruments in the Kuiper-Arizona Laboratory for Astromaterials Analysis to study presolar stardust grains in aqueously-altered meteorites. In particular, he says, "the Hitachi HF5000 TEM allows me to obtain critical information on the chemical composition, structure, and mineralogy of presolar grains in the context of their host meteorites. This information also allows me to understand the conditions under which the presolar grains formed in their parent star as well as how aqueous processing on asteroids affects presolar phases."
The Curson Education Plus Fund in Planetary Sciences and LPL was established by Shirley Curson, a generous donor and friend of LPL, for the purpose of supporting travel expenses outside the state of Arizona during summer break. The award is open to students in the Department of Planetary Sciences and Lunar and Planetary Laboratory who propose to fund study, museum visits, special exhibits, seminars, instruction, competitions, research and other endeavors that are beyond those provided by the normal campus environment and are not part of the student’s regular curriculum during the recipient’s school year.
To donate to the Curson Travel fund, visit the University of Arizona Foundation.
Advisor: Jack Holt
Mars Polar Conference, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.
Studying the formation and evolution of glaciers on Mars and their potential as water resources for future human landing missions.
Read about Roberto's travel to the Mars Polar Conference.
Advisor: Erik Asphaug
Psyche Collaboration Meetings, University of Bern.
Seeking to understand how collisions have shaped the surface of asteroid (16) Psyche.
Read about Namya's collaboration while in Bern.
Melissa Kontogiannis
Advisor: Dante Lauretta
Goldschmidt Conference, Chicago
Analyzing samples of asteroid Bennu, recently returned by the OSIRIS-REx mission.
Read about Melissa's presentation at the Goldschmidt Conference.
The Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award is an LPL initiative which is intended to promote, recognize, and reward exemplary performance among graduate teaching assistants assigned to PTYS undergraduate courses. The award consists of funding intended to be used toward travel and expenses to professional meeting chosen by the recipient. All graduate teaching assistants assigned to PTYS courses are eligible, whether or not their home department is PTYS.
Nicole Kerrison won this year’s Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award for her support of PTYS/ASTR 170A1 Alien Earths, with instructor Dr. Steve Kortenkamp, during the Fall 2023 semester.
Nicole had a large number of students attend her office hours, which speaks to her willingness and ability to help students with revisions of their assignments but also to her ability to make students feel at ease with visiting a TA for help with the class. The 170A1 section was taught in the Flaundrau Science Center theater (planetarium dome), so Nicole learned how to use the digital planetarium projection software and gave several full-dome presentations to the class related to concepts, including extrasolar planets, asteroids, and moons of giant planets. Nicole became so adept with the full-dome system that she volunteered to give a public planetarium talk for the solar eclipse that occurred on April 8.
Nicole also played a lead role in facilitating evening telescope observing sessions for the class on UArizona Mall. Thanks to her support, the course offered 18 consecutive nights of observing, with 60 students participating in each session. Nicole also helped to supervise the undergraduate TA/preceptor group involved with this class. Because Nicole herself had been an undergraduate preceptor, she was able to maintain a comfortable and professional atmosphere for the class teaching team.
