The Department of Planetary Sciences/Lunar and Planetary Laboratory was pleased to honor the following students as recipients of the 2019 College of Science Graduate Student Awards (Associate Graduate Council for the College of Science). Students were recognized at the College of Science reception held on April 11 and the LPL spring awards reception on April 17.

Outstanding Scholarship: Hamish Hay

Hamish Hay, recipient of the 2019 LPL Kuiper Award, was also named as the LPL recipient of the College of Science Graduate Student Award for Scholarship. Hamish studies how planets and moons deform in response to tidal forces. Periodic tidal deformation in both the solid and liquid parts of any planet/moon result in heating via friction which has consequences for how their interior structures evolve over time. This is particularly important for the ocean worlds Europa and Enceladus, the most sought after astrobiological targets of future space missions. In particular, Hamish studies how tidal heating occurs in the oceans of icy moons, and how this is affected by miles of ice sitting on top of the ocean’s surface.  Hamish received a Master of Science in Geophysics from Imperial College London, 2014. He is a fifth-year student working with Associate Professor Isamu Matsuyama.

• Hay and Matsuyama, “Tides between the TRAPPIST-1 planets”, The Astrophysical Journal, 2019, 875:22.
• Hay and Matsuyama, “Nonlinear tidal dissipation in the subsurface oceans of Enceladus and other icy satellites,” Icarus 2019, 319:68-85.
• Matsuyama, Beuthe, Hay, et al., “Ocean tidal heating in icy satellites with solid shells,” Icarus, 2018, 312:208-230.
• Hay and Matsuyama, “Numerically modelling tidal dissipation with bottom drag in the oceans of Titan and Enceladus,” Icarus 2017, 281:342-356.

Outstanding Service and Outreach: Alessondra Springmann

Alessondra Springmann, fifth-year student, was the LPL nominee for the College of Science Award for Service and recipient of the LPL Leif Andersson Award for Service and Outreach. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Astrophysics (Wellesley College) in 2007 and a Master of Science in Earth & Planetary Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011. 

Alessondra's service work includes: Lunar & Small Bodies Graduate Conference co-organizer; LPL department colloquium graduate organizer; service as moderator for a forum of 1200+ Wellesley alumnæ in academia; outreach volunteer at Spacefest and Tohono O’odham Rodeo; organizer for a supply drive after Hurricane María for surrounding communities of Arecibo, Puerto Rico; Women in Optics “Launching Your Career” panel participant; Instigator of Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society Allyship Auxiliary; discussion lead on harassment in astronomy at LPL and NOAO; Executive Secretary for three NASA Planetary Science review panels; Arecibo Observatory colloquium organizer.

Alessondra is advised by Associate Professor Walt Harris. She studies the effects resulting from thermal processing on asteroids and comets, including release of labile elements from primitive meteorites similar in composition to asteroid (101955) Bennu, and outbursts of dust grains and gases from Jupiter-family comets as observed with ground-based planetary radar and visible-wavelength telescopes. 

Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring: Tracy Esman

Tracy Esman was named the recipient of the College of Science Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring award for LPL, specifically for her work in Professor Steve Kortenkamp's spring 2018 section of PTYS/ASTR 170B2, for which she received the LPL Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award. 

Tracy received a bachelor's degree in Astronomy-Physics from the University of Virginia in 2015. She is a fourth-year student advised by Professor Joe Giacalone and Dr. Jared Espley (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center). Her research interests are the magnetic environments of planets. Specifically, Tracy studies plasma interactions between the solar wind and the Martian system, including the resulting waves. These interactions can affect ion escape and create instabilities in the induced magnetosphere. Tracy also studies the crustal magnetic fields on Mars. Many questions remain about how they affect escape of the Martian atmosphere. These regions of increased magnetic fields provide limited protection from the solar wind and a unique area of plasma interactions—the crustal fields may be the key to creating an environment capable of producing lightning 

Joshua Lothringer was honored as the recipient of the 2019 Theoretical Astrophysics Program (TAP) Graduate Student Research Prize. He presented his prize talk, Extremely Irradiated Hot Jupiters: Non-Oxide Inversions, H- Opacity, and Thermal Dissociation of Molecules, on April 1. Joshua defended his dissertation on May 31; his advisor was Professor Travis Barman. In August, he will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.

Congratulations to LPL's 2019 Galileo Circle Scholarship recipients: Rachel Fernandes, Hamish Hay, Daniel Lo, Joshua Lothringer, Kyle Pearson, and Shane Stone. 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; the Galileo Scholars were honored at an early evening reception held on April 15, 2019.

Rachel Fernandes (Advisor: Pascucci)	Hamish Hay (Advisor: Matsuyama)	Daniel Lo (Advisor: Yelle)
Joshua Lothringer (Advisor: Barman)	Kyle Pearson (Advisor: Griffith)	Shane Stone (Advisor: Yelle)

Maureen Palmer is the recipient of the 2018 Carson Fellowship Award, which provides one academic year of support, including salary, tuition, and a supply stipend. Maureen is a first-year graduate student at LPL.  

Maureen grew up in Shoreview, Minnesota. Her interest in a scientific research career was ignited by her experience competing on Mounds View High School’s Science Olympiad team. Maureen attended St. Olaf College from 2012 to 2016 and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry. She had the opportunity to participate in a variety of research experiences, including ecology projects (in St. Olaf’s Natural Lands and in Tamil Nadu, India) and organic chemistry lab research. She competed on St. Olaf’s Parliamentary Debate team and, in addition to science, took a significant amount of coursework in philosophy.

Maureen first became interested in space sciences after reading The Eerie Silence (a book about astrobiology, which she recommends to everyone). This book explores astrobiology concepts such as estimating the chances of life on other planets and the possibility of a “shadow biosphere,” chemically distinct from our type of life, on Earth. After reading this book, Maureen was inspired to pursue academic research in astrobiology. She spent two summers working as an Undergraduate Research Associate in Astrobiology at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. There, she worked with Dr. Martin Cordiner using Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-mm Array (ALMA) calibration data to detect and study new molecules in Titan’s atmosphere. After graduating from college, Maureen returned to Goddard for two years, continuing to use ALMA data to study Titan’s atmosphere and cometary comae. In her spare time, she also volunteered as an astronomy educator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s public observatory.

Maureen’s detection in Titan’s atmosphere of vinyl cyanide (C2H3CN), which had been suggested as a possible component of cell-like membranes in Titan’s lakes, was published in July 2017 in Science Advances. She also worked on developing a new technique to analyze existing ALMA datasets, treating the ALMA array as a collection of single-dish telescopes, which improves its sensitivity to large-angular-scale objects like comets. In addition, she has been developing methods for systematically utilizing the wealth of data available in the ALMA Science Archive.

Maureen looks forward to continuing observational study of astrobiologically-interesting icy moons.

Two PTYS graduate students and a PTYS undergraduate minor were awarded 2018 Curson travel awards. 

Saverio Cambioni. The Curson Travel Award supported my expenses for airfare to visit the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur (OCA) during the last summer. I visited OCA for two months from June to July 2018, where I collaborated with Dr. Marco Delbo on thermal modelling of asteroids. Working in Marco’s group allowed me to learn that infrared measurements are crucial for the characterization of airless bodies. While at OCA, I learned how to master the TPM code (Delbo et al. 2015), which turned out to be a very important tool for my present and future research.

Thermophysical models simulate the insolation and the consequent infrared emission from an asteroid surface. Direct measurements of emitted infrared fluxes therefore allows constraining the surface properties of asteroid. The total emitted infrared flux is contributed both by the rocks and regolith components. These materials have different thermal inertiae—the resistance of a material to change its temperature when perturbed by a heat input—and their abundance can vary according to the type and magnitude of processes occurring on the surface (e.g., thermal fatigue, micrometeoritic bombardment). Thermal inertiae, rock abundance and surface roughness play an important role in determining the orbital evolution of the asteroid (i.e., through the Yarkovsky effect) and are a proxy for understanding the processing occurring in the thermal skin depth. The listed properties are also instrumental to spacecraft design and operation planning. Thermal inertia defines the thermal environment in which a lander or a touch-and-go spacecraft has to operate; (macroscopic) surface roughness and rock abundance factor in the selection of landing sites from an hazard avoidance perspective; typical sampling mechanism (e.g., TAGSAM on the OSIRIS-REx mission) have stringent requirements for the maximum size of the regolith and therefore to the thermal inertia of this component.

At OCA, my project consisted in creating a neural network representation of Dr. Delbo’s TPM code, trained on a (4-D) grid of simulations performed using the TPM code. The developed surrogate model predicts the infrared flux associated with an asteroid whose surface is modeled by means of 4 parameters: thermal inertia of the regolith, thermal inertia of the rock, rock abundance and surface roughness. Once validated, the surrogate model can be statistically inverted using Markov Chain Monte Carlo inversion methods. This new methodology has been proved to be able to constrain the properties of the surface of bodies such as asteroid (101955) Bennu—target of the OSIRIS-REx mission, for which we inverted simulated fluxes—and (25143) Itokawa, for which we successfully inverted observed ground-based infrared data (Cambioni et al. 2018, in preparation). Our research is particularly timely as both the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission and JAXA Hayabusa II mission will start begin operations around the respective targets. In addition to the above, I also contacted other researchers involved in planetary formation studies, such as Dr. Alessandro Morbidelli and Dr. Paolo Tanga, and I had the opportunity to give a seminar about my research regarding machine learning application to characterize similar-sized collisional event (Cambioni et al. 2018, EPSC).

Overall, the visiting has been a success and hopefully just the first step of a fruitful collaboration.

Indujaa Ganesh. The Curson award helped me travel to Serbia to participate in the Workshop in Geology and Geophysics of the Solar system. This workshop was held from 23rd June to 1st July 2018 in the Petnica Science Center in the village of Petnica in Serbia and was attended by planetary science graduate students and research scientists from different parts of the world. This is the first workshop of its kind that brought together new and experienced scientists in the field of planetary geology from many international institutions. The workshop was structured around a series of lectures by participating faculty and scientists. The talks covered several topics related to geology, geophysics and geochemistry of solar system objects. The speakers also talked about their ongoing research work, some of it unpublished, which was very exciting to hear about. As a graduate student in the early stage of my program, this was very helpful in understanding the various research problems that are currently being addressed in our field. In addition, it was also a great opportunity for networking with a small group of international researchers. 

Two other LPL graduate students, Hamish Hay and Amanda Stadermann, were also present for the workshop. The list of speakers included my advisor and LPL Associate Professor, Dr. Lynn Carter who spoke about the geology of icy moons and Venus. Another exciting talk was by Dr. Kevin Walsh of the Southwest Research Institute discussing the ongoing Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx missions. A few of my other favorites were Dr. Matija Ćuk of SETI Institute talking about formation and evolution of moons, an overview of NASA’s plans for future exploration of Mars by Dr. Vlada Stamenković of Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lectures about the interiors of terrestrial planets by Dr. Mark Wieczorek from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

The talks were scheduled during daytime and the evenings were dedicated to poster presentations and lab demonstrations. I have been studying the near subsurface structure of the caldera of Arsia Mons volcano on Mars using SHAllow RADar (SHARAD). The radar sees layered structure in the subsurface which is unusual in volcanic terrains. I got the chance to present a poster and discuss my results with other researchers during these poster sessions.

The Petnica Science Center also has its own meteorite lab and a diverse collection of beautiful meteorites that we were given access to one of the evenings.

The workshop also turned out to be a huge cultural learning experience. We visited the neighboring city of Valjevo which stands out for its rich Balkan history, quaint vineyards and pre-World War architecture from the time of Ottoman Turks. The highlight of this cultural experience was the organizers treating everyone to a traditional Serbian dinner on the night of June 27th, with traditional food, drinks and local musicians.

Attending this workshop was a big cultural and scientific learning experience. I would highly recommend this workshop to early stage planetary science graduate students. It is a fun and friendly learning environment where one can make lasting connections with upcoming researchers who share similar interests.

Adriana Mitchell. The Curson Travel Award supported my travels to Tokyo, Japan to work at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for six weeks. During the summer of 2018, I was given the rare opportunity to work at JAXA on their asteroid sample-return mission, Hayabusa2. I arrived at the mission headquarters just as the spacecraft was approaching the target asteroid, Ryugu. Working with Dr. Lucille Le Corre, a Hayabusa2 participating scientist from the Planetary Science Institute, I created 3D topographic models of the asteroid’s surface in real time using observations from the instruments onboard the spacecraft. 

These models were used by JAXA to select a sampling site on Ryugu and to investigate the geology of various surface features. On September 22nd, 2018, the two MINERVA-II1 rovers (called 1A and 1B) were deployed and successfully touched down on asteroid Ryugu. It was amazing to see how my work, a small piece in the puzzle, combined with the tireless hours of work from both the international scientists and JAXA scientists, resulted in a successful touchdown. The samples returned from both the Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx missions will go a long way in helping scientists understand the environment at the beginning of the Solar System.

I also prepared and selected different terrain models for efficient use during the approach phase and preliminary mapping phase of the mission. I was able to successfully collaborate with international scientists from Japan, France, Germany and Italy as we worked towards a common goal. I have also been able to discuss about my work in Japan numerous times since returning to the University of Arizona. Moreover, one of my goals during my time at JAXA was also to understand the organization and communication of a science team during a mission-critical event, as this experience will be beneficial to my future career at NASA. My experience and observations at JAXA made me realize how beneficial international collaborations can be in pushing the frontiers of science and exploration. My goal is to one day manage a fleet of spacecraft that will investigate new Solar System destinations. My time at JAXA helped me prepare for my future career by allowing me to observe and compare JAXA’s Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return mission to University of Arizona’s very own asteroid sample-return mission, OSIRIS-REx.

I also had an amazing experience living in Japan for over a month and was able to enjoy the food and culture on the weekends. A few choice experiences include visiting the MORI Building Digital Art Museum in Tokyo, feeding polite deer in Nara, and exploring temples in Kyoto.

Tracy Esman is the recipient of the PTYS Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) Award for Spring 2018. Tracy was a GTA for PTYS/ASTR 170B2, with Dr. Steve Kortenkamp as instructor. Tracy carried a significant workload after a change of instructors early in the semester, helping to transition students to new assignments and assisting the instructor in bridging expectations. One of the student nominators wrote that, during the transition, "...things were crazy for a while! But Tracy was like a rock!" Tracy also prepared and presented a course lecture on the topic of the Moon, and was solely responsible for the term paper assignment, in addition to grading and review session responsibilities.

Recipients of the Outstanding GTA Award receive funds of up to $1,000 to support travel to a professional meeting of their choice. 

Kudos to three of our grads on receipt of the following awards from the College of Science:

Outstanding Scholarship: Sarah Horst (Roger Yelle)

Outstanding Mentor/Teaching: Kathryn Gardner-Vandy (Dante Lauretta)

Outstanding Service: Kathryn Volk (Renu Malhotra)

Sarah, Kathryn, and Kathryn received cash awards and were recognized at a College of Science reception. Congratulations!

Congratulations to John (PTYS graduate student) and Laura Weirich, who became first-time parents with the birth of their son Hugh Bernard Weirich! Hugh was born on January 29, 2010, at 5:12p.m. Vital stats: 8lbs. 4oz, 19 inches. Best wishes to the Weirich family!

Tiffany Kataria, second-year graduate student, was awarded the Fall 2009 GTA Excellence Award for her work with Elisabetta Pierazzo's PTYS 214 course. Tiffany will receive a trip to the conference of her choice. Congratulations, Tiffany!