Associate Professor Lynn Carter is the recipient of a Distinguished Scholars Award from the University of Arizona. The award recognizes outstanding mid-career faculty who create transformative innovations in their disciplines and make highly valued contributions to the teaching, research, and outreach priorities set out in the University of Arizona's Strategic Plan. In 2016, Dr. Carter received the Presidential Early Career Award, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to outstanding scientists who show exceptional promise for leadership and for contributions to public education and outreach.

Dr. Carter is an expert in the use of radar to explore planetary surfaces and subsurfaces; she is currently a team member on six spacecraft instruments. Dr. Carter has held advisory and leadership positions both nationally (NASA steering committees and advisory panels) and locally, serving on the Executive Committee of the Earth Dynamics Observatory and as a member of the inaugural Executive Panel for the Arizona Space Institute, organized from the Strategic Plan call to provide a systematic approach to compete for spacecraft instruments and missions.

Dr. Carter's contributions to UArizona extend to her service as an exceptional mentor and advisor to graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and her ongoing and demonstrated advocacy for inclusiveness, especially in STEM fields.

With support from the Curson Travel Award, fourth-year graduate student Indujaa Ganesh will spend two weeks in the Nine Hill paleovalley region in Western Nevada to research and understand the emplacement of the Nine Hill Tuff (NHT) there. The Nine Hill paleovalley hosts six different units of the NHT, one of the many extensive and long runout pyroclastic density current (PDC) deposits in the Great Basin. Indujaa's work will involve using anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility to estimate flow directions and also measuring outcrop thicknesses, grain size distributions, and lithofacies to understand the flow properties.

This research is relevant to Indujaa's current research on the mechanics of long runout PDC deposits on Venus. Indujaa adds, "This is also an opportunity to gain field experience in volcanic landscapes and build valuable geophysical skill sets, both of which will open up potential planetary analog research avenues in the future."

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.

The 2021 LPI Career Development Awards were presented to students for first-author abstracts submitted to the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Award selection is made by a panel of planetary scientists. Students receive support for cost of conference registration. LPSC allows students to showcase their research and provides excellent networking opportunities.

Apparently Layered Boulders with Multiple Textures on Bennu's Surface (Advisor: Dante Lauretta)

 

 

 

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Amanda Stadermann 

Apollo Sample 12032,366-18: Characterization and Experimental Investigation of a Chemically Evolved Lunar Basalt (Advisor: Jessica Barnes)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Fifth-year student Zarah Brown is the recipient of the 2021 LPL Andersson Award for Service and Outreach and the College of Science Excellence in Service Award for LPL.

Zarah has been active in service and outreach throughout her career as a graduate student and the Andersson award recognizes her many service and mentoring activities and dedication to communicating planetary science to the public.

Zarah is a frequent volunteer for events like Science City at the Tucson Festival of Books and STEAM Room at SpaceFest. She has participated in multiple outreach efforts to local schools, including Sahuarita Middle School, where she was part of an LPL graduate student effort to gather and design activities for the Math in Science program, with a goal of inspiring students about space science studies and applying themselves in math classes.

But Zarah's passion for education and communicating science goes beyond volunteering. She completed a Graduate Certificate in Science Communication, which included an independent study course to study and suggest methods of communicating effectively to a range of audiences (e.g., experts, grad students, K-12, general public) in order to make space science more accessible. Zarah put her studies into practice by sharing her experience with others through outreach events and a blog and reaching out to varied audiences---from working on a terraforming project with San Diego grade school students to lecturing about her own research to the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association.

This year, The Art of Planetary Science (TAPS) will feature a children's art component, thanks to Zarah's leadership and coordination. Zarah, a long-time TAPS volunteer, is collaborating with a local 6th grade teacher to engage local students with the artwork and writing themes of TAPS, specifically the topic of space travel, and encourage submissions to the exhibit.

Zarah’s dedication to accessible outreach for the broader public is perhaps best evidenced by her project as an Arizona NASA Space Grant Graduate Fellow---a fellowship that has just been renewed for a second year. Zarah is developing a scale model of our solar system on the University of Arizona’s campus. Zarah’s scale model solar system will communicate the roles that LPL and the university have played in space exploration and will have a lasting physical legacy that educators on campus and in the community can use for years to come.

Congratulations to LPL's 2021 Galileo Circle Scholarship recipients: Claire Cook, Indujaa Ganesh, Kana Ishimaru, Tyler Meng, Patrick O'Brien, Laura Seifert, Amanda Stadermann, and Zoe Wilbur. 

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.

	Claire Cook (Advisor: Shane Byrne) Seeks to understand climate and habitability throughout the solar system using remote sensing and modeling of icy deposits.
	Indujaa Ganesh (Advisor: Lynn Carter) Studies volcanic landforms on planets like Mars and Venus to understand how a planet’s volcanic past and changes in volcanic style through time shaped its surface that we see today.
	Kana Ishimaru (Advisor: Dante Lauretta) Analyzing asteroid Bennu’s layered boulders using OSIRIS-REx remote sensing data to understand the implications for the geologic processes that occurred there in the early solar system.
	Tyler Meng (Advisor: Jack Holt) Research interests include geophysics, glaciology, and surface processes.
	Patrick O'Brien (Advisor: Shane Byrne) Using numerical modeling to study surface processes, creating a generally applicable landscape evolution model for atmosphereless bodies like the Moon, Mercury, and Ceres.
	Laura Seifert (Advisor: Tom Zega) Analyzes circumstellar grains preserved inside primitive meteorites using transmission electron microscopy.
	Amanda Stadermann (Advisor: Jessica Barnes) Studies lunar basalts to better understand the Moon in preparation for future sample return missions.
	Zoe Wilbur (Advisor: Jessica Barnes) Investigating the history of volatile loss in Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 basalts utilizing a coordinated analysis campaign.

Congratulations to Shane Stone and Daniel Lo, LPL's newest alumni!

Shane Stone's dissertation defense was held on April 23. The title of his dissertation is Martian Upper Atmospheric Thermal Structure, Composition, and Water and Their Significance for Atmospheric Escape and Evolution. Professor Roger Yelle was Shane's dissertation advisor.

Shane has accepted a position as a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Daniel Lo defended his dissertation, Carbon Photochemistry and Escape in the Present-day Mars Atmosphere, on May 6. Daniel was advised by Professor Roger Yelle.

Daniel has accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Michigan.