Graduate Student News

2022 Curson Travel Awards

Xiaohang Chen, Emileigh Shoemaker, Lucas Smith, and Jada Walters are 2022 recipients of the Curson Travel Award.

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: https://give.uafoundation.org/science-lpl

 
Xiaohang Chen
Travel to Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab to present at the Parker Two 2022 Conference

 
Emileigh Shoemaker

 

Lucas Smith
Travel to Washington University to train on NanoSIM and Nanoprobe instruments
 
Jada Walters
Travel to work with mentors at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Joana Voigt Wins Kuiper Award

Joana Voigt is the recipient of the LPL Kuiper Memorial Award and College of Science Excellence in Scholarship Award for LPL for 2022. Joana is a fourth-year student whose research focuses on comparisons between volcanic processes on Earth and Mars.

Joana has an impressive publication record that includes 12 peer-reviewed articles, including 4 first-author and 1 co-first author papers. Three first-author articles from 2021 summarized her work studying the 2014–2015 Holuhraun eruption in Iceland, providing insight into: (1) geomorphological mapping of the lava flow-field to understand its lava emplacement dynamics during fissure-fed eruption; (2) statistical characterization of lava surface roughness to inform mapping studies of lava flow-field using remote sensing data (e.g., topography and radar); and (3) determination of the relationship between lava flow facies and time average effusion rates to determine how eruption rates influence the products of large fissure-fed eruptions. Joana has also published work related to the characterization of the InSight landing site, cryovolcanism on Europa, and impact melts on the Moon.

In 2021, Joana received the Amelia Earhart Fellowship to support her field work, and a NASA FINESST to complete a study related to the four-dimensional reconstruction of lava flow emplacement within Elysium Planitia using geological mapping and SHARAD radar analysis. She has also served on two NASA panels as an executive secretary and established a visiting studentship at Caltech with Professor Bethany Ehlmann.

Joana is the Deputy Principal Investigator of Associate Professor Christopher Hamilton’s RAVEN: Rover–Aerial Vehicle Exploration Network project to field test rovers and drones in Iceland to inform the next generation of Mars Science Helicopter mission. She also works with Hamilton, who serves as her dissertation advisor, on a JPL Strategic University Partnership Program to test science operational scenarios for the exploration of lunar lava tubes, in support of JPL’s Discovery Mission concept Moon Diver. Joana is also part of a newly selected proposal to investigate volcanic outgassing from flood lava eruptions on Mars and their effects on climate.

Joana plans to graduate in December 2022.
The citation for the Kuiper Award reads: "This award is presented to students of the planetary sciences who best exemplify, through the high quality of their researches and the excellence of their scholastic achievements, the goals and standards established and maintained by Gerard P. Kuiper, founder of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona."  To contribute to the Kuiper Memorial Award, visit https://give.uafoundation.org/science-lpl

2022 Leif Anderson Award to Amanda Stadermann

Amanda Stadermann is the recipient of the 2022 LPL Leif Andersson Award for Service and Outreach and the College of Science Excellence in Service Award for LPL.

Amanda is a Ph.D. candidate at LPL. Her thesis primarily focuses on rocks returned from the Apollo missions to the Moon in the 1960s and 70s. By studying these rocks with optical and electron microscopy techniques, she learns about the petrology and geochemistry of these rocks in effort to better understand their histories and formations, and gain insight into resolving remaining questions about the geologic history of the Moon.

Throughout her career as a graduate student, Amanda has been passionate about service to her fellow students, her professional colleagues, and the local community.

In her role as Graduate Representative to the Faculty, Amanda attends faculty meetings to represent student concerns and present data and other relevant information as needed. As Grad Rep, Amanda also welcomes prospective students with an orientation to LPL and the academic program, as well as the campus and life in Tucson.

Amanda has been active in her support of special programs and events like The Art of Planetary Science (2018-2020). She has been a regular volunteer for LPL outreach events such as Summer Science Saturday. In 2019, Amanda was invited to give a talk at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, and also made presentations at UArizona Special Collections (Moon) as well as at Tucson's Coronado K-8 School (Parker Solar Probe: Exploring the Sun).

Amanda has served the wider planetary science community in peer review roles and as an executive secretary for NASA proposal review panels (ROSES). She is the communications chair for NextGen, a community group of early career researchers who have a passion and vision for lunar science and exploration. With NextGen, Amanda maintains and revises the community web site, distributes information and announcements, and coordinates in-person and virtual meet-ups. She also helped to organize a community panel discussion on ethical lunar exploration. Amanda has been invited to give several oral presentations on NextGen initiatives. Amanda's work with NextGen helps to create a better sense of community among early career lunar scientists, engineers, and explorers.

The Leif Andersson Service Award is a great honor for Amanda, who finds that service and community-building within her department, as well as the planetary science community, are key to being a successful scientist. Throughout her graduate career, she has advocated for and worked to promote early career scientists and engineers in the lunar community. She also has worked hard to create and foster a community among graduate students in her department, an effort that was particularly necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic. With this award, Amanda hopes that others will also recognize the importance of service and community-building in a scientific career, and also work to foster a caring and supportive environment for all who take part in planetary science.

The LPL Andersson Award for Service and Outreach is awarded annually to a PTYS graduate student in recognition for attention to broader impacts and involvement in activities outside of academic responsibilities that benefit the department, university, and the larger community. The award is named for Dr. Leif Andersson, a scientist who worked at LPL in the 1970s.

2022 Galileo Circle Scholarships

Congratulations to LPL's 2022 Galileo Circle Scholarship recipients: Rachel Fernandes, Nathan Hadland, Kiana McFadden, Allison McGraw, Laura Seifert, Emileigh Shoemaker, and Joana Voigt. 

Galileo Circle Scholarships are awarded to the University of Arizona's finest science students and represent the tremendous breadth of research interests in the University of Arizona College of Science. Galileo Circle Scholarships are supported through the generous donations of Galileo Circle members. Galileo Circle Scholars receive $1,000 each and the opportunity to introduce themselves and their research to the Galileo Circle patrons.
Rachel Fernandes
(Advisor: Ilaria Pascucci)

Seeking to expand on our understanding of the primordial short-period population by detecting and measuring the occurrence rates of planets in young (<1 Gyr) stellar clusters with the Transiting Exoplanet Sky Survey.
Nathan Hadland
(Advisors: Solange Duhamel and Christopher Hamilton)

Studies planetary analogs in Iceland and elsewhere to evaluate the nature of life and their resulting biosignatures in extreme environments that have similar characteristics as Mars.
Kiana McFadden
(Advisors: Lynn Carter and Ellen Howell)

Studies asteroids and other small bodies using radar and thermal data.
Allison McGraw
(Advisor: Vishnu Reddy)

Researching the Gefion asteroid family.

Laura Seifert
(Advisor: Tom Zega)
Analyzes circumstellar grains preserved inside primitive meteorites using transmission electron microscopy.
Emileigh Shoemaker
(Advisor: Lynn Carter)

Studies volcanism and ice deposits using ground penetrating radar.
Joana Voigt
(Advisor: Christopher Hamilton)
Seeks a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between eruption dynamics and the final lava morphologies by using a combination of remote sensing techniques and instruments, unmanned aircraft systems, and field observations.

 

University Fellows Award for Rishi Chandra

Rishi Chandra 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.

Rishi graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in physics and planetary science. His primary research interests lie in the analysis of solar system materials, including meteorites and returned samples from asteroids and the moon. He also plans to develop cheaply accessible smartphone virtual reality field trips to exotic geologic locales, such as the Antarctic dry valleys and the lunar surface, to inspire the next generation of geoscientists and to engage the public as the scientific community explores these distant frontiers. Aside from his academic interests, Rishi enjoys virtual motorsports, flight simulation, running, and science fiction literature. 

by Rishi Chandra
The University Fellows Award goes to grad students from departments all over campus, and this year's cohort is a tight-knit group. We spent a night at Biosphere 2 for orientation and team-building, which was an unbelievable welcome to Arizona for me in my second week of classes. Through the semester, we have weekly seminars where experts speak with us about practical skills for grad students in any discipline: project management, human-centered design, mentorship and mentee-ship, and more. It's allowed me to connect with students in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and engineering, letting me to explore and present on topics I didn't expect myself to be curious about, such as human-ecosystem coevolution in the Sonoran Desert. It's also given me the opportunity to explore my own interests in new interdisciplinary ways, such as examining ways in which non-Western worldviews can inform Western scientists preparing for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Connecting with scholars from other disciplines has offered me new perspectives on familiar problems, so I'm excited to see where the connections I've made with my peers in the UF program lead me in the coming years.

Indujaa Ganesh Selected for the Mars Ice Mapper Science Definition Team

Indujaa Ganesh

Stefano Nerozzi

Graduate student Indujaa Ganesh and postdoctoral Research Associate Stefano Nerozzi have been selected to be part of the Early Career Team for the Mars Ice Mapper Reconnaissance/Science Measurement Definition group team. Indujaa is a fifth-year Ph.D. student advised by Associate Professor Lynn Carter. Her mission expertise is radar (SAR/Sounding/Modeling), lunar landing site characterization (hazards, ice favorability), and imaging. Stefano's expertise is radar (sounding/GPR), geophysical glacial surveys, geomechanical stability, geomorphology, analogues, and atmosphere.  

The Core Team includes Professor Shane Byrne (radar, ice detection, surface roughness, geology, imaging, landing site analysis, atmosphere, GIS) and LPL alumni Ali Bramson (radar, midlatitude ice distribution, polar studies, landing site analysis, analogues, ice coring) and Catherine Neish (radar, ice detection, surface roughness, analogues, imaging, astrobiology). 

NASA and three international partners have signed a statement of intent to advance Mars Ice Mapper, a possible robotic Mars ice mapping mission, which could help identify abundant, accessible ice for future candidate landing sites on the Red Planet. The agencies have agreed to establish a joint concept team to assess mission potential, as well as partnership opportunities. If the concept moves forward, the mission could be ready to launch as early as 2026.

Emily Shoemaker and the NASA GIFT Team in Iceland

Emileigh Shoemaker is a fourth-year Ph.D. student advised by Associate Professor Lynn Carter. Emileigh's research interests include planetary surfaces and analogs, radar remote sensing, and volcanology.
by Emileigh Shoemaker
In August 2021, the NASA Goddard Instrument Field Team (GIFT) led a group of scientists, engineers, and astronauts from various NASA centers and universities, including the University of Arizona, to conduct a variety of field investigations of a planetary analog site in the Icelandic highlands. GIFT traveled to Askja volcano in the Northern Volcanic Zone (NVZ) of Iceland. The Askja caldera and the surrounding region share a striking similarity to Mars and the Moon with its volcanic and largely unvegetated landscape. This site also serves as an excellent test bed for geophysical methods and tools that could be used by astronauts in the future on the surfaces of the Moon or Mars.
 

Four science and operations teams conducted a variety of scientific investigations and field equipment tests at sites in and around the Askja caldera. One science team investigated the soils in the region using handheld instruments similar to those onboard Mars rovers. This allows for a direct comparison between their field measurements and those on Mars to help determine what the rovers are observing. Another team operated a drone to take high-resolution images of the surface. They provided aerial imagery of other team’s field sites and continued their long-term monitoring of Mars-like aeolian processes like gravel ripple migration happening around the caldera.

The last science team was the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) team, which I had the opportunity to join. The team has been mapping the extent and thickness of ice deposits buried beneath pumice, ash, and other tephra from eruptions of Askja in 1875 and 1961. These ice deposits are potentially analogous to those found on Mars or the Moon. Combining the confirmed GPR observations of subsurface ice with airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) observations over the Askja caldera allows the team to simulate what future orbital radar systems could observe on Mars. This will be used to determine what a signal from ice would look like from orbital SAR systems in the future. The GPR team has also been monitoring these ice deposits over two field seasons to track any changes between 2019 and 2021 as the long-term stability of this ice is threatened by the warming climate. The ice deposits have been found to be as thin as 10 centimeters and thicker than 2.5 meters in some regions buried beneath up to 40 centimeters of tephra.

I am currently analyzing the collected radar data over the last two field seasons to calculate the thickness and extent of buried ice deposits across the floor of the Askja caldera. I'm also focusing on modifying existing GPR analysis techniques to aid in identifying the signature of buried ice and which radar frequencies are best suited for mapping shallow ice deposits such as these.

Top left: Zach Morse (NASA GSFC), Emileigh Shoemaker, and Jacob Richardson (NASA GSFC) take a traverse with the 900 MHz ground-penetrating radar (GPR) antenna over a tephra deposit from 1961 where they suspect buried ice is present. These systems take at least two people to operate with one pushing the antenna across the surface and the other monitoring the data in real-time for quality control.

Top right: GPR team lead David Hollibaugh Baker (NASA GSFC) confirms buried ice beneath pumice erupted in 1875 and takes a sample for later laboratory analysis. These trenches also help determine the depths at which the GPR is detecting ice.

Bottom: A hand sample of ice buried beneath 1875 pumice. This ice is fairly pure and has closed pore spaces, creating the solitary bubbles seen in the sample.

GSA Grant for Nathan Hadland

Nathan Hadland received a Geological Society of America Graduate Student Research Grant in support of his research on thermophilic life in hot springs in Iceland. The funding paid for the sequencing of DNA samples to determine the taxonomic diversity of those ecosystems. Nathan explains that it is possible that hot springs similar to those in Iceland may have formed on Mars in the past, and that characterizing the organisms that occupy similar environments on Earth can shed light into the types of life possible on Mars.

Nathan is a second-year doctoral student working with associate professors Solange Duhamel and Christopher Hamilton. His research interests include astrobiology and planetary surfaces.

Ganesh Wins Earhart Fellowship

Indujaa Ganesh is the recipient of an Amelia Earhart Fellowship for 2021. The $10,000 fellowship is awarded each year by Zonta International to up to 35 women pursuing doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering and space sciences. The fellowship was established in 1938 in honor of Amelia Earhart, famed pilot and member of the Zonta Clubs of Boston and New York. Indujaa is a fifth-year student working with Associate Professor Lynn Carter. 

In the spring 2021 newsletter, we reported that Indujaa received the 2021 Curson Travel Award; you can read more about her research and recent summer field work by visiting the the Curson Travel Award site. 

2021 Carson Fellowship Awarded to Michael Daniel

Michael Daniel is the recipient of the 2021 Carson Fellowship Award, which provides one academic year of support, including salary, tuition, and a supply stipend. Michael is a first-year graduate student at LPL.  

Michael has been interested in science, specifically space and Earth sciences, for as long as he can remember. He has enjoyed learning about science and the natural world through classes and extracurricular learning, especially through reading books on diverse subjects ranging from spaceflight history to paleontology. It's not surprising that planetary science, given its inherent interdisciplinarity, is the field of study that most interests him.

Michael graduated from Whitman College in 2020 with a combined B.A. in physics and astronomy. As an undergrad, he had the opportunity to conduct research during a 10-week REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) internship at the MIT Haystack Observatory, where he tested code for processing supermassive black hole data from the Event Horizon Telescope. After completing coursework on planetary science topics during his senior year at Whitman, Michael decided to focus on graduate studies in planetary science. At LPL, Michael plans to study planetary surface processes, with a focus on ices in the solar system. He is also interested in studying climate change through the lens of planetary science. Michael’s extracurricular interests include running and reading.

The Lt. Col. Kenneth Rondo Carson and Virginia Bryan Carson Graduate Fellowship is an endowment established by the estate of Virginia B. Carson, honoring her husband, a former member of the "Flying Tigers," a former member of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff Strategic Air Command, retired master navigator and enthusiast of space exploration. Colonel Carson greatly admired the professionalism and accomplishments of NASA's space program. The Carson Fellowship is awarded to students pursuing degrees in the Department of Planetary Sciences, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, selected on the basis of academic achievement and the promise of further scholarly endeavor.  You can help support students at LPL with a gift to the Carson Graduate Fellowship.
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