Shirley D. Curson Education Plus Fund

The Shirley D. Curson Education Plus Fund in Planetary Sciences and LPL (formerly the Shandel Education Plus Fund) was established by Shirley Curson, a generous donor and friend of LPL, for the purpose of supporting travel expenses outside the state of Arizona during summer break. The award is open to students in the Department of Planetary Sciences and Lunar and Planetary Laboratory who propose to fund study, museum visits, special exhibits, seminars, instruction, competitions, research and other endeavors that are beyond those provided by the normal campus environment and are not part of the student’s regular curriculum during the recipient’s school year.

YearStudentProject/TRAVEL
2024Baijal, NamyaBern SPH Mentoring Workshop and (16) Psyche Collaboration Meetings, University of Bern (Switzerland)
2024Aguilar-Martinez, RobertoMars Polar Conference 2024, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada
2024Kontogiannis, MelissaSummer School for Sample Return, Observatoire de Haute-Provence
2023Nguyen, FudaTravel to the Sagan Exoplanet Summer Workshop, Caltech
2022Walters, JadaTravel to work with mentors at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
2022Smith, LucasTravel to Washington University to train on NanoSIM and Nanoprobe instruments.
2022Shoemaker, EmileighTravel to the 19th International Conference on Ground-Penetrating Radar.
2022Chen, XiaohangTravel to Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to present research at the Parker Two 2022 Conference.
2021Ganesh, IndujaaSupport for two weeks of field work in western Nevada to study the Nine Hill Tuff pyroclastic density current deposit.
2020No award (COVID) 
2019Fernandes, Rachel3rd Advanced School on Exoplanetary Science (ASES3), Vietri sul Mare (Salerno), Italy
2018Cambioni, SaverioTwo months at Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur
2018Ganesh, IndujaaWorkshop in Geology and Geophysics of the Solar System, Petnica, Serbia
2018Mitchell, AdrianaSix weeks at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
2017Stadermann, AmandaInternational Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) General Assembly, Portland, Oregon
2016Sutton, Sarah2016 Terrestrial Analogs for Planetary Surfaces field campaign, Iceland
2016Landis, Margaret6th International Conference on Mars Polar Science and Exploration, held in Reykjavik, Iceland
2015Bramson, Ali2015 Terrestrial Analogs for Planetary Surfaces field campaign, Iceland
2015Miller, KellyGordon Research Conference on Origins of Solar Systems, South Hadley, Mass.
2014Thompson, MichelleMicroscopy & Microanalysis Conference, Hartford, Conn.
2013Elder, CatherineTwo weeks at ETH Zurich to study with Professor Paul Tackley (Io mantle convection code)
2012Daubar, Ingrid7th European strategic Meteor Workshop, Moscow
2012Leung, CeciliaSummer at Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.
2012Lora, JuanSummer School on Atmospheric Modeling hosted by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton
2011Sun, Peng32nd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Beijing