Faculty News

 Dr. Ilaria Pascucci has been promoted to full professor. Dr. Pascucci's research is directed towards understanding how planets form and evolve; she seeks to understand if planetary systems like our own Solar System are common. She carries out observations aimed at characterizing the physical and chemical evolution of gaseous dust disks around young stars, the birth sites of planets. In addition, she uses exoplanet surveys to re-construct the intrinsic frequency of planets around mature stars. By linking the birth sites of planets to the exoplanet populations, the research contributes to building a comprehensive and predictive planet formation theory, a necessary step in identifying which nearby stars most likely host a habitable planet like Earth.

Dr. Pascucci earned her Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (Heidelberg) in 2004 and has been with LPL since 2011; she currently serves as Associate Department Head.

LPL will welcome two new faculty members for fall 2022: Dr. Sukrit Ranjan and Dr. Tyler Robinson.

Dr. Ranjan's work is focused on the origin of life on Earth, the search for life on other worlds, and the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets. He applies photochemistry to questions related to the origin of life on Earth and the search for life on other worlds. Sukrit works to constrain the palette of environmental conditions from which life arose on Earth to constrain and guide experimental studies of the origin of life. To search for life elsewhere, he works to determine observational tests by which life on other worlds may be remotely discriminated. In collaboration with experimental colleagues, Sukrit seeks to obtain the critical measurements of fundamental photochemical parameters required to build robust models in support of both goals.

Sukrit completed his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Harvard University, where he was the first student to earn a certificate in Origin of Life studies. Sukrit completed his undergraduate work at MIT, majoring in physics and minoring in astronomy and history. In addition to research, Dr. Ranjan values outreach and education.

Dr. Robinson is an alumnus of the University of Arizona, earning a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics in 2006. He completed a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrobiology from the University of Washington in 2012. Ty held prestigious postdoctoral positions as a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Ames Research Center and as a Sagan Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and he is a Cottrell Scholar (Research Corporation for Science and Advancement).

Ty uses sophisticated radiative transfer and climate tools to study the atmospheres of Solar System worlds, exoplanets, and brown dwarfs. He also develops instrument models for exoplanet direct imaging. He combines these areas of expertise in his work on the Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Science and Technology Definition Team, and in his contributions to the LUVOIR, WFIRST/Rendezvous, and Origins Space Telescope mission concept studies. He has had great success in building diverse research groups.

Kristopher Klein

Emily Lichko

Assistant Professor Kristopher Klein and Postdoctoral Research Associate Emily Lichko are co-authors on the paper describing the latest science results from the Parker Solar Probe.

On December 14, scientists confirmed that, for the first time in history, a spacecraft touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe flew through the Sun’s upper atmosphere—the corona—and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. As it dipped into and out of the solar corona, the probe confirmed that the outer boundary of the solar atmosphere is 8.1 million miles from the solar surface. The spacecraft also confirmed previous hypotheses that the boundary between the solar atmosphere and solar wind is not a smooth sphere but has spikes and valleys that wrinkle the surface. Discovering where these protrusions line up with solar activity coming from the surface can help scientists learn how events on the Sun affect the atmosphere and solar wind. The probe also discovered that the magnetic zig-zag structures in the solar wind, called switchbacks, originate from the solar surface (photosphere). The patches aligned with magnetic funnels that emerge from the photosphere between convection cell structures called supergranules. In addition to being the birthplace of switchbacks, the magnetic funnels might be where one component of the solar wind originates. The solar wind comes in two different varieties—fast and slow—and the funnels could be where some particles in the fast solar wind come from. Understanding where and how the components of the fast solar wind emerge, and if they’re linked to switchbacks, could help scientists answer a longstanding solar mystery: how the solar corona is heated to millions of degrees, far hotter than the solar surface below.

Dr. Daniella DellaGiustina will join LPL as an Assistant Professor this January (2022).

Dani is Deputy Principal Investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission, responsible for oversight of extended mission activities. Previous to being named Deputy PI, Dani served as the mission’s Image Processing Lead Scientist. Dani is an alumna of the University of Arizona, where she earned a B.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in Geosciences. She also holds an M.S. in Computational Physics from the University of Alaska. As an undergraduate at UArizona, Dani minored in planetary sciences at LPL and was an Arizona NASA Space Grant intern. Her Space Grant project on characterizing mineral phases in meteorites was supervised by Dante Lauretta, now Principal Investigator for OSIRIS-REx. Dani continued to work at LPL with Dante Lauretta and Michael Drake, leading a student experiment on the Phase A Discovery OSIRIS Mission until the end of her undergraduate career. In graduate school, she fused remotely-sensed observations of Earth’s cryosphere with the numerical modeling techniques to understand the dynamics of the Greenland ice sheet. Her Ph.D. dissertation was on the subject of Signal Processing of Seismic and Image Data for Planetary Exploration. In her spare time, Dani is an avid rock-climber and outdoor enthusiast.

In this Sci&Tell interview, Regents Professor and OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta discusses the patience required when working in science and how his passion for science stems from his love for exploring. 

A study led by Professor Erik Asphaug suggests that the protoplanet most likely hit Earth twice. The first time, the impactor (dubbed "Theia") only glanced off Earth. Then, some hundreds of thousands of years later, it came back to deliver the final blow.

Professor Amy Mainzer is Principal Investigator for NEOWISE and for NEO Surveyor, two space missions designed to survey the Solar System for potentially hazardous objects—so it's no wonder that she was selected to be the science advisor for the Netflix film, Don't Look Up. In this Wired interview, Professor Mainzer breaks down a few scenes from film and explores the science behind near-Earth objects. Read more about Professor Mainzer's work on the film in the article from Universe Today.

Daniel Apai is an astrophysicist specializing in studies of extrasolar planets with the long-term goal of identifying planetary systems capable of supporting life. He studies the interface of planetary sciences and astronomy and holds a joint appointment with Steward Observatory. Professor Apai is Principal Investigator for Project EOS: Earths in Other Solar Systems, a NASA-funded astrobiology research team exploring the potential of nearby planetary systems for supporting life. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Nautilus Space Telescope, a space mission concept designed for a very large-scale biosignature survey. Dr. Apai is founder of Project EDEN, one of the largest programs searching for habitable worlds in the solar neighborhood. He served on a variety of science advisory boards and steering committees. Professor Apai has been with LPL since 2011.

Tom Zega joined LPL in 2011. He applies a microscopy- and microanalysis-based approach to study the chemical and physical evolution of the early solar system and ancient stars, specifically the origin of the circumstellar grains that formed in ancient stars, refractory inclusions that formed the first solar-system solids, primitive organic compounds, and development of analytical techniques for investigations of such materials.

Tom has developed two courses for the Planetary Sciences curriculum at LPL: Planetary Materials (with Dr. Krishna Muralidharan, MSE) and Nanoscale Analysis of Materials Using Transmission Electron Microscopy. He leads the Planetary Materials Research Group at LPL and is the Scientific Director as well as TEM/FIB Instrument Scientist for the Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility.

Dr. Dante Lauretta has been confirmed as a University of Arizona Regents Professor.

Professor Lauretta is an expert in near-Earth asteroid formation and evolution and Principal Investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission to collect and return material from the asteroid Bennu. OSIRIS-REx, the largest sponsored project ever conducted at UArizona, will likely yield fundamental knowledge about the origin of the terrestrial planets. The recently acquired sample will be delivered to Earth in 2023.

Professor Lauretta has taught at all levels, from undergraduate general education to graduate classes. He also has taught in multiple formats, from large-audience lectures and a TEDx talk to small seminar classes. He has served on advisory boards for both the College of Humanities and the Honors College.

In 2002, Dr. Lauretta was awarded the Alfred O. Nier Prize of the Meteoritical Society for "his experimental studies of iron-bearing sulfide formation in the solar system." He was selected as a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2008 and was recognized by Discover magazine in 2004 for a top-100 science discovery. In 2006, the UArizona College of Science honored him with a Distinguished Early Career Teaching Award.

The designation of Regents Professor is an honored position reserved for faculty scholars of exceptional ability who have achieved national or international distinction. The Regents Professor title serves as recognition of the highest academic merit and is awarded to faculty members who have made a unique contribution to the quality of the university through distinguished accomplishments in teaching, scholarship, research or creative work.

Research Professor Dr. Gilda Ballester joined LPL in 2000. Her interests include exoplanets, planetary formation and evolution, planetary astronomy, and planetary atmospheres.

Gilda conducted early research on Io's atmosphere and plasma torus, as well as on the upper atmospheres, auroras, and magnetospheric interactions of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus using both imaging and spectroscopy.

Gilda's work with the Hubble Space Telescope Panchromatic Comparative Exoplanet Treasury program focused on characterizing ultra-hot to hot Jupiters, warm exoplanets from Jupiter to super-Earth masses and their host stars based on observations and modeling. During the course of her career, Gilda built a large network of international collaborators.

Professor William Boynton is a Mission Instrument Scientist with OSIRIS-REx. As a cosmochemist, his research focused on understanding the role of volatile materials, chiefly water, carbon dioxide and argon, as probes for planetary processes. Since beginning his faculty career at LPL in 1977, Professor Boynton has been a member of eight other NASA flight missions, including as Principal Investigator for instruments on the Comet Rendezvous/Asteroid Flyby (Comet Penetrator-Lander) and Mars Odyssey 2001 (Gamma-Ray Spectrometer, GRS). He served as Team Leader for the Mars Observer GRS and for Geochemistry on Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Shoemaker Mission to Asteroid 433 Eros. As Co-Investigator with MESSENGER, Bill was responsible for data from the X-ray and gamma-ray spectrometers. As Co-I of Mars Phoenix Lander, he managed the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). Bill was also Co-I for the Cassini-Huygens Surface-Science Package.

Professor Boynton is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society and the recipient of four NASA Group Achievement Awards. In 2005, he was awarded the NASA Public Service Medal for outstanding leadership of the 2001 Mars Odyssey GRS team; in 2010, he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal for leading the TEGA investigation with the LPL-led Phoenix mission to Mars.

Dr. Timothy Swindle joined LPL in 1986 and became Department Head and Laboratory Director in 2012. His research interests include cosmochemistry, lunar studies, and small bodies. He uses measurements of the noble gases in extraterrestrial materials (lunar samples and meteorites) to study the evolution of the solar system. He serves as Director of the Arizona Space Grant Consortium. Tim was awarded the Antarctic Service Medal (2000) and is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society (2008).

Highlights of Tim's tenure as Head and Director include his efforts in the formation of UArizona science clusters for Space Situational Awareness and Earth Dynamics Observatory and in the creation of the Arizona Space Institute; his active support and advocacy for increased diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and awareness; development of the Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility; and development and expansion of The Art of Planetary Science.