Fourth-year student Margaret Landis used funding from the Curson Education Plus endowment for travel to Reykjavik, Iceland, to attend the 6th International Conference on Mars Polar Science and Exploration (Sept. 5-9), a conference typically held once every five years. The conference was small and included discussion sessions built into the flow of the conference. The poster sessions and additional moderated discussion times provided many opportunities for Margaret to interact with scientists from different institutions as well as representatives from the Mars Program Office: "In further discussing issues and ideas about my current project, I was able to not only present my work to the broader community at a key time in my graduate career, but also to get and give feedback on topics related to the polar layered deposits."

Margaret presented her current dissertation research on determining the surface age and current resurfacing rate for the North Polar Layered Deposits (NPLD), a geologic unit of the north polar ice deposit on Mars. Her research addresses a fundamental question in Mars polar science: what obliquity- and eccentric-forced climate record, if any, does the stratigraphy of the NPLD contain? By calculating the surface age using crater counts utilizing High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) data, Margaret has been able to determine the age of the surface and estimate the current resurfacing rate based on two models of crater production at Mars. 

Presenting this research at the conference in Reykjavik was a "key opportunity" for Margaret's professional development. New results presented by Mars climate modelers helped to expand her research focus from impact craters to thermal models, in order to understand the larger scale history of accumulation and ablation on the polar deposits—a critical step in the next stage of Margaret's work, which relies on temperature modeling of environments inside and outside of craters.

While in Iceland—an incredible analog laboratory for Mars—Margaret also participated in conference field trips to western Iceland, which has been shaped largely by the volcanic and glacial pasts of the island. The interaction between glaciers eroding volcanic landscapes as well as the current glacial retreat at Snaefellsjokull and examples of volcanic modification by water and ice were some of the topics discussed in the field. According to Margaret, "These types of modification features are difficult to find in the Tucson area, and attending the field trip portion of the conference expanded my understanding of glacial geologic features. Attending [the meeting] as a Ph.D. candidate provided me a chance to further develop my understanding of Mars polar science as whole, engage with the Mars polar science community, and attend field trips to analog sites that further developed my understanding of post-glacial landforms on Earth and Mars."