Faculty News

In August, Assistant Professors Jessica Barnes and Daniella DellaGiustina were recognized with a Women of Impact award by the University of Arizona's Office of Research, Innovation & Impact. Criteria for selection to this inaugural class of honorees included commitment to the mission and values of the university, an application of skills toward discovery and innovation, the enrichment of the community, and the empowerment of others to ensure lasting change.

Professor Jessica Barnes researches the origin and evolution of volatiles in the inner Solar System using nano and microanalytical techniques to study mineralogy, geochemistry, and petrological histories of extraterrestrial materials. She is preparing for the analysis of samples from asteroid Bennu, collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission. This much anticipated analysis is in part supported by a $1.5M gift that enabled the purchase of a nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometer. The contribution arose partly from admiration for Barnes' expertise in sample analysis and from an interest in supporting an early-career female scientist. In 2019, Professor Barnes was selected to receive funding to study previously unopened lunar samples collected by Apollo 17. She won a NASA Early Career Award in 2019, supporting and advancing her research and professional development. Also in 2019, Nature magazine named Professor Barnes as one of five young scientists who will shape the next 50 years of lunar research and exploration.

Professor Daniella DellaGiustina is Deputy Principal Investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission. She is responsible for oversight of extended mission activities. She is also Principal Investigator for OSIRIS-APEX, which will swing by near-Earth asteroid Apophis in 2029 for an 18-month campaign of investigation and discovery.

Professor DellaGiustina received her Ph.D. in Geosciences from UArizona in 2021 and holds a M.S. in Computational Physics (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and a B.S. in Physics from UArizona. She investigates the surface and near-surface structure of small airless worlds across the solar system by developing and utilizing remote-sensing and geophysical instruments deployed by spacecraft. She enjoys field testing and validating instrumentation techniques at analog sites across on Earth and is especially interested in water distribution throughout the solar system and how to establish its presence using remote-sensing and in-situ techniques.

In October 2022, Popular Science magazine named her as one of the brilliant 10 top up-and-coming minds in science, taking on the biggest challenges and succeeding.

By Mikayla Mace Kelley, University Communications - October 19, 2022

The University of Arizona's Daniella "Dani" DellaGiustina shot for the stars and has already landed among them. Today, the planetary scientist was named one of Popular Science's Brilliant 10 – an annual list of early-career scientists and engineers who are developing innovative approaches to problems across a range of disciplines.

DellaGiustina is an assistant professor of planetary sciences in the university's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and deputy principal investigator of NASA's LPL-led OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission. She is also principal investigator of the extended OSIRIS-REx mission, dubbed OSIRIS-APEX, which will visit the near-Earth asteroid Apophis.

DellaGiustina was chosen from hundreds of researchers across a variety of institutions.

Popular Science says its list aims to recognize the hard work, creativity and potential of those who are shaking up old modes of thinking, defining new disciplines and laying the groundwork for tomorrow's most groundbreaking research.

"For the Brilliant 10, we look for innovative thinkers and leaders whose work stands to reshape our understanding of our world. The insights Daniella's work will glean from asteroids will do just that," said Popular Science Editor-in-Chief Corinne Iozzio. "When Apophis makes its loop around Earth in 2029, the work she's prepping now will ensure we learn everything we can about our past, present and future as we possibly can."

"Dr. DellaGiustina is a brilliant planetary scientist whose work on the OSIRIS-REx and OSIRIS-APEX missions is expanding our knowledge of the makeup of asteroids and is laying the foundation for groundbreaking discoveries about the evolution of our solar system," said Carmala Garzione, dean of the College of Science. "Her journey through her education and career is inspirational and will support the next generation of female and Latina scientists. We are proud to have Dr. DellaGiustina representing our science community in Southern Arizona."

DellaGiustina is interested in water distribution throughout the solar system and how scientists can establish water's presence on different planetary bodies.

"Over the last year, I've been enamored with the scientific questions to establish how water got to the early Earth billions of years ago," DellaGiustina said. "I'm also interested in understanding the interiors of asteroids, moons and planets, because it's so difficult to do. We only have indirect measurements and techniques at our disposal, so we must pair those measurements with good assumptions to fully interpret the data. I enjoy that challenge."

DellaGiustina develops and deploys remote-sensing instruments to learn more about the surface and interior structure of small airless worlds, including asteroids and the moons of the outer solar system, where liquid oceans could be lurking beneath ice sheets.

She tests her technology in places like Greenland, which has a landscape similar to the planetary bodies she studies. Over the summer, she spent several weeks testing instruments at a lake beneath a glacier in northwest Greenland, where half a mile of ice overlays about 30 feet of salty water, providing a similar landscape to what is expected on Jupiter's moon Europa.

Following the water has also taken her to asteroid Bennu, from which the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected a sample in 2020 that will be returned to Earth in 2023. Bennu contained evidence of water in its past, and so drew scientific attention. After the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft jettisons its sample return capsule over the Utah desert in September 2023, the spacecraft will fly on to study Apophis, thanks to a $200 million mission extension by NASA that DellaGiustina will lead. The goal of the OSIRIS-APEX extended mission is to understand what lies just beneath the surface of asteroid Apophis. Researchers also want to understand how Apophis will be physically affected by the gravitational pull of Earth when the asteroid make a close approach to the planet in 2029.

DellaGiustina, 36, has rocketed from student to principal investigator in a short period of time. She said that what motivates her is her love of discovery.

"I get obsessed with scientific questions and like treating them like giant puzzles," DellaGiustina said. "I also just love being the first person to see the first image of a planetary surface, or the first to discover what is at the base of an ice sheet. I'm hooked on that feeling."

DellaGiustina earned a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Arizona in 2008. She got her master's in computational physics from the University of Alaska in 2011 and then returned to UArizona, where she completed a doctorate in geosciences in 2021.

Her career began to develop at LPL when she was an undergraduate in the Arizona Space Grant program, studying meteorites with Professor Dante Lauretta, who would become principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx.

Her work led to a student experiment on the Phase A Discovery OSIRIS Mission, which was a precursor to OSIRIS-REx that ultimately was not selected by NASA for spaceflight but paved the way for the OSIRIS-REx mission. She developed an experiment to measure the ability of asteroids to provide radiation shielding for future manned missions to Mars.

In graduate school, DellaGiustina combined remote observations of Earth's ice sheets with modeling techniques to understand how ice flow will respond to a changing climate. She now uses her knowledge of Earth's permanently frozen regions to perform field studies in Earth landscapes similar to icy bodies in the solar system.

In 2012, DellaGiustina became a research scientist in the UArizona Department of Physics, and she transitioned back to planetary sciences in early 2014. She led the OSIRIS-REx image processing team from 2015 to 2021 before becoming deputy principal investigator of the mission in 2021. In addition to her other roles, she teaches a course about asteroids and comets to undergraduate and graduate students.

"Being recognized as one of the Brilliant 10 is really rewarding because I am a Latina who has not taken a traditional path through my career," DellaGiustina said.

She put the pursuit of her doctoral degree on the backburner while she worked for a while to figure out exactly what she wanted to study — eventually settling on seismology. She finished her doctorate while working full time as a scientist, graduating the same semester she wrote the proposal that would lead to her appointment as the OSIRIS-APEX principal investigator. At the same time, she was growing a spaceflight seismometer instrument program at UArizona, called the Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure. The program develops instruments needed to support missions to icy bodies in the outer solar system that could provide a sneak peek into the interiors of other worlds.

"It's been a little bit of a gamble to do things in the way I have," DellaGiustina said, "so it's nice to get external recognition that the work I'm doing is impactful."

LPL Assistant Professor Dr. Kristopher Klein received the 2022 Landau-Spitzer Award for Outstanding Contributions to Plasma Physics from the American Physical Society (APS). 

The Landau-Spitzer Award recognizes an individual or group of researchers for outstanding theoretical, experimental, or technical contributions in plasma physics and for advancing the collaboration and unity between Europe and the United States of America by joint research or research that advances knowledge that benefits the two communities in a unique way.

Dr. Klein was recognized as part of a team with colleagues in Iowa and London for the theoretical development of the field-particle correlation technique and its application to spacecraft measurements directly showing that Landau damping heats electrons in turbulent plasmas that comprise Earth's magnetosheath.

"This work represents years of collaborations spanning a number of domestic and international institutions, combining theoretical predictions with measurements of near-Earth space in order to better understand fundamental processes at play in our solar system and throughout the Universe," said Dr. Klein. "I am honored to have been a part of this effort and am thankful that APS selected my colleagues and me for the 2022 Landau-Spitzer Award."

Dr. Klein's research focuses on studying fundamental plasma phenomena that govern the dynamics of systems within our heliosphere as well as more distant astrophysical bodies. He has particular interest in identifying heating and energization mechanisms in turbulent plasmas, such as the Sun's extended atmosphere known as the solar wind, as well as evaluating the effects of the departure from local thermodynamic equilibrium on nearly collisionless plasmas which are ubiquitous in space environments.

These systems are studied with a combination of analytic theory and numerical simulation, including large-scale nonlinear turbulence codes such as AstroGK, HVM, and gkyell. These theoretical predictions are compared to in situ observations from spacecraft including NASA's Helios, Wind, MMS, and Parker Solar Probe missions. Comparing theory with local plasma measurements enables answering a variety of questions about the behavior of plasma in our solar system.

Dr. Klein is also helping to lead the design of future heliospheric missions, and is serving as the Deputy Principal Investigator for the HelioSwarm mission, a planned observatory to launch by the end of this decade nine spacecraft to measure the dynamics and evolution of turbulent plasmas at multiple points across multiple scales.

“This award recognizes what we in LPL have long recognized: Dr. Klein is an exceptional young scientist who is making a major impact in the study of the Solar wind,” said Dr. Mark Marley, Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at UArizona. “Kris' research not only helps us to understand the complex dynamics of the plasma flowing through the Solar System, but he is also helping to build new collaborations between scientists in the United States and Europe. We are very fortunate to have him here at the University of Arizona."

The American Physical Society (APS) is a nonprofit membership organization working to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics through its outstanding research journals, scientific meetings, and education, outreach, advocacy, and international activities. APS represents more than 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories, and industry in the United States and throughout the world. 

Associate Professor Lynn Carter, a UArizona Distinguished Scholar, was selected to be the Science Team Lead for the NASA JPL VenSAR radar system onboard the EnVision mission to Venus. EnVision, a low-altitude polar orbiter, is the M5 mission candidate in the ESA Science Program. It will carry 5 instruments and 1 experiment (an S-band Synthetic Aperture Radar, a Subsurface Radar, 3 spectrometers and a radio science experiment). EnVision will investigate Venus from its inner core to its atmosphere at an unprecedented scale of resolution, characterizing in particular, core and mantle structure, signs of active and past geologic processes and looking for evidence of the past existence of oceans. EnVision will help understanding why the most Earth-like planet in the solar system has turned out so differently, opening a new era in the exploration of our closest neighbor.

LPL's Dante Lauretta delivered the UArizona commencement address on May 13, 2022. Professor Lauretta graduated from UArizona in 1993 with a Bachelor of Science in physics and mathematics and a Bachelor of Arts in Oriental studies with an emphasis in Japanese He earned his Ph.D. in Earth and planetary sciences in 1997 from Washington University. He is Principal Investigator of the OSIRIS-REx sample return mission.

Interspersed throughout Lauretta's speech, video clips showcasing OSIRIS-REx's biggest milestones played on the stadium's big screens. And before he shared tales of overcoming the monumental challenges that come with space exploration, Lauretta took graduates back to a time they could relate to a bit more.

Lauretta's first yes, he said, came one day in 1992, after a long shift as a short-order breakfast cook – before Lauretta, then a math, physics and East Asian studies major at UArizona, even knew planetary sciences was a discipline. He opened an issue of The Daily Wildcat, the university's student newspaper, to find a full-page ad emblazoned with, "Work for NASA." He applied and was accepted to NASA's Space Grant internship program, launching him into a career of yeses, he said.

The next significant yes, Lauretta said, was in 2004, when he received a phone call from Michael J. Drake, then the director LPL. Drake asked Lauretta to join him and some executives from Lockheed Martin to discuss a partnership on a new space mission. That mission was OSIRIS-REx, which would go on to launch in 2016, arrive at near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 2018 and collect a sample in 2020. Now on its return journey, it is expected to deliver the sample to Utah's West Desert in September 2023. The sample will likely yield fundamental knowledge about the origin of terrestrial planets and strategies to avoid potential asteroid impacts on Earth.

While the mission's successes are clear in hindsight, it was tough to say yes, at the time, to the opportunity that ended up defining his career, Lauretta told the graduates. Drawing up the mission plans and finding funding would be a monumental task, and it could all get canceled at any moment. But he couldn't shake the notion that he could play a role in answering some of humanity's toughest questions: "Where did we come from?" "Are we alone in the universe?" The urge to help find those answers, he said, was too strong for him to say no. Lauretta encouraged graduates to not overlook moments like these.

"On your journeys, remember that big things come from these small moments," he said. "I said yes to applying to the NASA Space Grant program. I said yes to joining Mike on the mission – even when it seemed like magic, like we were wizards trying to summon stones from outer space into our laboratories. By simply saying yes to what presented itself, I found myself at the helm of one of history's greatest scientific expeditions."

Lauretta urged the graduates to reflect on their time in college, imagine their paths ahead and understand that they are not alone. He asked them to take in their surroundings at the ceremony and to recognize that "this is your moment." Even after graduation, they won't stop learning, he assured them.

"It will be the opportunities along the way that you say yes to, the diverse people you meet, the mentors you seek to support (you), the invitations you accept and the challenges you embrace that will lead you toward your destiny and provide for you a much deeper understanding of how it all comes together, how it all fits, just by saying yes," he said. "Stop and take it all in," he added. "These are all the results of yes."

Read more: 'Say yes' to opportunities that call to you, Lauretta tells graduates

 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.