Focus on Alumni

Michelle Thompson is one of the new generation of scientists working on the Apollo moon missions.

Eve Berger, Senior Research Scientist at NASA Johnson Space Center, discusses her research and the importance of sample analysis as a panelist for “Ask an Astrobiologist: Everything You Wanted to Know about the OSIRIS-REx Mission to Bennu & Back.”

At a time of growing diffidence toward some new scientific discoveries, the one and only Vatican institution that does scientific research, the Vatican Observatory, recently launched a campaign to promote dialogue between faith and science. LPL alumnus, Bro. Guy J. Consolmango, is the Director.

Dr. Ali Bramson examines factors involving future habitats on Mars. Bramson is co-author on a Nature Astronomy (Feb. 2021) paper about subsurface ice on the red planet.

Dr. Ali Bramson's research uses NASA spacecraft mission data to learn about the geology of other planets in our Solar System, and her work on Martian ice is helping to shape the future of human exploration of Mars.

LPL alumna Dr. Cecilia Leung is a planetary scientist specializing in the present-day water cycle on Mars. Her research combines the use of 3D numerical atmospheric models and spacecraft observations to study seasonal changes in the Martian weather and climate. Her work also supports the Entry-Descent-and-Landing (EDL) of recent Mars Missions such as the InSight Mars Lander and the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover.

Dr. Devin Schrader studies primitive meteorites that have remained relatively unaltered since they formed in the early Solar System ~4.5 billion years ago. He also works on samples returned from asteroids, including those returned from asteroid Itokawa by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), and is a collaborator on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission.

Michelle Thompson holds a sample of a carbonaceous meteorite, which may have similarities to material returned by the Hayabusa2 mission.

LPL alumnus Hamish Hay is lead author of a study that found that moon-moon interactions may be more responsible for the heating than Jupiter alone. 

Dr. Michael Sori (Ph.D. in Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Dr. Ali Bramson (Ph.D. in Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona) are Postdoctoral Scholars in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) at the University of Arizona. Both have recently accepted positions as Assistant Professors in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at Purdue University.