Fall

On December 4, Senior Research Specialist Dolores Hill was surprised with a Star Award from CoSSAC, the College of Science Staff Advisory Committee. Star Awards recognize staff members for outstanding achievement and contributions to teamwork on the job.

Dolores is a star at LPL, where she serves as laboratory safety manager and expert sample analysis technician, but she really shines in her role as outreach coordinator for LPL and OSIRIS-REx. Dolores is well known and always in-demand for her hands-on lessons about meteorites (and meteor-wrongs) and she is a respected colleague and liaison to amateur and professional meteoriticists alike. Dolores has been with LPL since 1981.

The Arizona Astrobiology Center (AABC) was launched in October with LPL Regents Professor Dante Lauretta as Director. AABC brings together more than 40 faculty members from 4 colleges and 13 disciplines to conduct cutting-edge research, train diverse future leaders and encourage collaborative dialogue with communities about the existence, origin and evolution of life in the universe. Part of what the center will explore – in addition to life's origins and existence on other worlds – is what such discoveries might mean to different cultures and traditions around the world. The center also seeks to share these grand ideas through public engagement efforts.

The OSIRIS-REx team was honored with the 2024 Robert H. Goddard Award  from the National Space Club and Foundation. The Goddard Memorial Trophy is the most prestigious award given by the National Space Club to honor a breakthrough discovery or achievement in rocketry and aeronautics within the calendar year. The trophy will be presented at the Goddard Memorial Dinner in March.

OSIRIS-REx also won the 2023 SpaceNews Icon Award for Civil Space Achievement of the Year.

OSIRIS-REx successfully returned its asteroid sample payload of approximately 250 grams of material from asteroid Bennu on September 24.

PTYS 590: Planetary Geology Field Studies, Petrified Forest, Navajo National Monument, Horseshoe Bend, Glen Canyon

Associate Professor Christopher Hamilton, Instructor

You can support the LPL Graduate Field Trip by donating to the Wilkening-Sill endowment.

PTYS 554: Evolution of Planetary Surfaces, Northern Arizona, Meteor Crater

Professor Shane Byrne, Instructor

You can support the LPL Graduate Field Trip by donating to the Wilkening-Sill endowment.

ZARAH BROWN

November 3, 2023

Saturn's Upper Atmosphere in the Ultraviolet: Temperature and Compositional Trends from Cassini UVIS with Implications for Energy Balance and Dynamics

Advisor: Associate Professor Tommi Koskinen

New position: Postdoctoral Research Associate, LPL
 

Xiaohang Chen

November 9, 2023

Solar Energetic Particle Acceleration and Transport at the Curved and Evolving Shock Driven by Coronal Mass Ejections

Advisor: Professor Joe Giacalone

New position: Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Michigan

Nathalia Vega Santiago is the recipient of a University Fellows Award, a prestigious fellowship offered only to the University of Arizona's highest-ranked incoming graduate students. The award provides an annual stipend, tuition scholarship, and health coverage, in addition to professional development and networking opportunities.

Nathalia completed a bachelor’s degree in natural sciences with a minor in mathematics from the University of Puerto Rico (Cayey) in June 2023. She began the PTYS doctoral program in August 2023. As an undergraduate, Nathalia was selected as a Diversity Scholar to attend the 2019 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech event. She was the co-founder and vice president of the first astronomy association at her university. And Nathalia was nominated by her peers to serve as lead scientist for the development of a preliminary design review for a lunar orbiter as part of the NASA L’Space Mission Concept Academy. Nathalia’s undergraduate research included work at the Arecibo Observatory, where she used remote sensing data to characterize near-Earth asteroids.

As a graduate student at LPL, Nathalia is pursuing research interests in astrobiology and cosmochemistry with advisor Dante Lauretta.

Melissa Kontogiannis was awarded the UArizona Richard A. Harvill Graduate Fellowship. Melissa graduated from UArizona in May 2023 with a major in chemistry and minors in planetary sciences and environmental studies. As an undergraduate, Melissa was an Arizona NASA Space Grant undergraduate research intern; she analyzed thin sections of a CM chondritic meteorite first to assist in the development of a database for cataloging and co-registering data collected from samples returned by OSIRIS-REx and additionally to understand hydrothermal processes and sequences that result in the alteration of primitive solar system bodies, including asteroid Bennu.

Melissa had the opportunity to use 3D imaging processing software as well as cutting-edge technology such as a digital microscope and SEM and an electron microprobe, FIB, and TEM. During her graduate career at LPL, Melissa will use the techniques and insight gained as an undergraduate as she pursues new research with Regents Professor Dante Lauretta on OSIRIS-REx sample science research.

Fifth-year graduate student Zoë Wilbur was recognized with two awards for her research on meteorites.

Zoë won the 2021-2022 Nininger Meteorite Award, presented by the Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University, for outstanding original student research paper in meteoritical science. Zoë’s paper was titled, The Effects of Highly Reduced Magmatism Revealed through Aubrites.

Zoë was also honored with the 2023 McKay Award, presented by the Meteoritical Society. The award recognizes the best student oral presentation at the annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society. The title of Zoë‘s winning presentation was, Unraveling the Volatile Story of Reduced Meteorites through Djerfisherite.