Kuiper Award to Theodore Kareta

Teddy Kareta is the recipient of the Gerard P. Kuiper Memorial Award and the College of Science Excellence in Scholarship Award for LPL for 2021. He is a fifth-year student whose dissertation will focus on the near-Earth asteroid Phaethon. Teddy has presented his analysis of Phaethon observation data in well-received talks at Lowell Observatory and a 2018 Division for Planetary Sciences press conference, resulting in a press release for a first author paper (Kareta et al. 2018. Rotationally Resolved Spectroscopic Characterization of Near-Earth Object (3200) Phaethon). Teddy has extended this work by completing observations of the related asteroid 2005 UD, which led to an invited talk at the International Dust and Parent Body conference in Tokyo in 2019. His research also extends to Centaur objects.

Teddy can currently claim four published first-author papers and one accepted, with nine published co-author papers. In addition to his productive research, Teddy has been an effective mentor for undergraduates. His advisor, Associate Professor Vishnu Reddy, writes, “The diversity of Teddy’s published research speaks to his command over the knowledge and skills required to answer key questions about solar system origin.”

The citation for the Kuiper Award reads: "This award is presented to students of the planetary sciences who best exemplify, through the high quality of their researches and the excellence of their scholastic achievements, the goals and standards established and maintained by Gerard P. Kuiper, founder of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona."