Focus on Alumni

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.

NASA's Dragonfly -- a robotic rotorcraft-lander that's designed to hop across the surface of an extraterrestrial body -- is set to voyage deep into the solar system to explore Titan, Saturn's largest moon, in 2026. Planetary scientist Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle shares how studying this mysterious moon that's thought to resemble the early Earth could bring us closer to understanding the habitability of other planets -- and the origin of life itself.

LPL alumna Dr. Margaret Landis is a post-doc at CU Boulder specializing in geology and icy bodies all over the Solar System. She has worked with spacecraft such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Dawn spacecraft that visited the dwarf planet Ceres, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the moon. Her current work looking at the chemistry of ices on the moon could be essential in determining what sort of water reservoirs our future human explorers could access for drinking, farming, and fuel.

NASA is on a mission to explore Titan — the largest moon of Saturn. To do that, scientists are building a nuclear-powered, self-driving drone (technically an octocopter) called Dragonfly, led by Principal Investigator and LPL alumna Dr. Elizabeth Turtle. Scheduled to launch in 2026 and arrive on Titan in 2034, Dragonfly could provide clues about how the building blocks of life started here on Earth.

Dr. Jamie Molaro is lead author on a paper documenting the first evidence for thermal fracturing on an object without an atmosphere. " The phenomenon, observed by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on asteroid Bennu, and evidence of thermal fracturing on the asteroid can help scientists learn about the geologic history not only on Bennu, but on other planetary surfaces as well.

LPL Alum Barbara Cohen (2000), in interviewed by Purdue College of Science's Superheroes of Science.