by Teddy Kareta

As everyone returns to campus at the end of August, one of the first events on the LPL calendar is the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory Conference, or LPLC. LPLC is our graduate student organized and run internal conference which gives each member of the department and the Tucson space science community a chance to update each other on what they’ve been working on as of late. We are happy to say that LPLC 2019—organized this year by graduate students Teddy Kareta, Indujaa Ganesh, and Ben Sharkey—was a great success and continues the trend of the event growing in number of both attendees and presentations year over year.

This year had over 70 attendees and 43 presentations from high school age summer interns to esteemed emeritus researchers and included 15 presentations by graduate students. The winner of this year’s Best Graduate Student Talk award was Zarah Brown for her presentation, What’s Heating Saturn’s Thermosphere? Cassini Grand Finale Observations Show Connection Between Circulation and Heating. The invited speakers were 2018’s Best Grad Talk winners, Allison McGraw and Hamish Hay, as well as LPL Assistant Professor Tommi Koskinen and UArizona Gender & Women's Studies Professor Jennifer Croissant. The keynote was by new LPL Assistant Professor Jessica Barnes, titled Volatiles in the Inner Solar System: A View from Ureilites.

For the first time this year, LPLC was held in one of the newest and most environmentally friendly buildings on the University of Arizona campus, Engineering and Natural Resources 2 (ENR2). ENR2 is designed to look and feel like a slot canyon—the temperate sand-carved canyons seen in Northern Arizona and a favorite spot of many an LPL field trip. Professor Barnes’ talk was followed by a reception in the café and courtyard of the building, a beautiful green space fitting for the end of a long day spent talking about science and meeting new colleagues.