Recent alumna Ingrid Daubar (2014) was the recipient of one of four Wiley-Blackwell Awards for outstanding presentations by students at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Casablanca for her talk on "New Dated Impacts on Mars and the Current Cratering Rate."

Catherine Elder (advisor: Adam Showman) and James Keane (advisor: Isamu Matsuyama) each received a 2014 AGU Outstanding Student Presentation Award. Catherine won for her paper titled, "Convection and Melt Migration in Io’s Mantle." James received the award for a poster titled, "The Contribution of Impact Basins and Mascons to the Lunar Figure: Evidence for Lunar True Polar Wander, and a Past Low-Eccentricity, Synchronous Lunar Orbit." Typically the top 3-5% of presenters in each section/focus group are awarded an Outstanding Student Paper Award.

Sarah Morrison (advisor: Kaitlin Kratter) advanced to the semi-final round of the 2015 UA Grad Slam competition. Sarah's Grad Slam topic was: “Mind the Gap: Hunting for Exoplanets." Grad Slam is a campus-wide competition for the best 3-minute talk about student research and discovery. All disciplines are encouraged to participate. More information and video about Grad Slam is online from UA News.

Sarah Peacock (advisor: Travis Barman) was included on the NSF Honorable Mention list for her Graduate Research Fellowship Program proposal. Although she did not receive a GRFP, Sarah’s name will be listed on the GRFP web site and she will be provided with enhanced access to cyberinfrastructure resources, including supercomputing time, in support of research toward completion of the graduate program of study.

Michelle Thompson (advisor: Tom Zega) was first author on a paper in Earth, Planets and Space that was named by the journal as one of their highlighted papers for 2014. The paper, titled, "Microchemical and structural evidence for space weathering in soils from asteroid Itokawa," was co-authored by Roy Christoffersen, Thomas J. Zega, and Lindsay P. Keller; Earth, Planets and Space (2014) 66:89 (13 August 2014).