Congratulations to Abhinav Nishant and Laura Seifert, recipients of the Hitachi Electron Microscopy Scholarship for 2021/2022. Hitachi High Technologies established this award as part of their partnership with the University of Arizona in support of the Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility. Hitachi recognizes the need for advanced electron microscopy in addressing fundamental questions across the physical sciences and engineering. This competitive award is provided based on demonstrated ability for original scholarship and communication of research to the scientific community.

Abhinav Nishant is a Ph.D. student at the J.C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences. He is working with Dr. Robert Norwood in the study and development of optical polymers for integrated photonics applications. Being awarded the Hitachi Electron Microscopy Scholarship is a great source of encouragement for Abhinav, validating for him the importance of the research he has undertaken. Abhinav writes, “With the support of Hitachi and Kuiper Imaging Facility, I can further my study of low-cost optical materials, paving the way towards making high quality and inexpensive photonic devices, such as trace gas sensors.” In the coming months, Abhinav aims to publish his work to showcase the high-quality research being done at the University of Arizona.

Laura Seifert is a fourth year Ph.D. student at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Her research involves the chemical and structural characterization of circumstellar grains that formed in the ejecta of supernova explosions. These grains are preserved in primitive materials such as meteorites and Laura analyzes them using advanced electron microscopy techniques. The goals of Laura’s research are to understand the types of materials, structures, and compositions that are formed in supernova environments and use such information to understand their thermodynamic origins, transport, subsequent modification, and preservation in solar-system materials. Laura writes, “I’m honored to receive the Hitachi Electron Microscopy Scholarship, which will further support my research and dissertation.” Upon completion of the Ph.D., Laura aspires to a career working at a NASA center continuing her work with planetary materials and advanced electron microscopy.

This year's recipient of the LPL Staff Excellence Award is Keara Burke, Image Processing Engineer with the OSIRIS-REx mission. Keara began working with OSIRIS-REx as an undergraduate on a project that had her counting rocks. In 2019, after completing her degree in Systems Engineering, she went on to co-lead the OSIRIS-REx site-selection campaign's boulder counting effort, tallying more than 30,000 boulders over the course of the mission. This meant long hours of tedious analysis and some 60-hour work weeks due to staffing shortages.

In addition to nominal job duties, Keara regularly takes on special projects such as taking the lead on a now-published article that synthesized the OSIRIS-REx boulder-counting results. Over the past year, she has supported several large-scale proposal efforts and pitched in on high-value proposal development. Beginning in 2020, Keara has worked primarily as a systems engineer within LPL's spaceflight seismometer program, SIIOS PSTAR. In that role, Keara is responsible for generating, tracking, and verifying instrument requirements by reviewing design and test documentation for spaceflight seismic sensors.

Keara is an extraordinary engineer who has already made outstanding contributions to LPL and UArizona. The skills and experience she has cultivated will continue to play an important role in the future of research and exploration at LPL.

LPL Associate Professor Christopher Hamilton is a National Science Foundation (NSF)-Fulbright Arctic Scholar currently working from the University of Iceland to document the products and impacts of Icelandic flood lava eruptions. On February 21, 2021, an earthquake swarm began on the Reykjanes Peninsula, near the capital of Reykjavik, and on March 3, volcanic tremor was identified—signaling magma movement within the crust. Considering a volcanic eruption to be imminent, Christopher worked with Solange Duhamel, Associate Professor with UArizona's Molecular and Cellular Biology Department (with a faculty appointment in LPL), to obtain support to investigate the eruption.

With initial support from the university's Research, Innovation, and Impact Office and the NSF Rapid Response Research Program, Solange and Christopher have been developing times-series monitoring of the geomorphology and microbiology of the Reykjanes region, before and after the start of the eruption, which began on March 19 at 8:45 p.m. GMT. LPL graduate student Joana Voigt and Research Specialist Michael Christoffersen traveled to Iceland in April to conduct novel measurements of the active eruption using drones (i.e., Unoccupied Aircraft Systems) and other state-of-the-art instruments to contribute to Iceland's volcano monitoring effort and address fundamental questions related to planetary volcanism and astrobiology. The eruption will continue into the summer, providing additional opportunities for students to develop first-hand observations of this unique event as a planetary analog.