Faculty News

Kudos to Jonathan Lunine, who was awarded the International Academy of Astronautics' 2009 Basic Science Award. This award is given annually for outstanding achievement in basic science. Previous recipients include Robert Wilson, Roger Bonnet, Rashid Sunyaev, and Lennard Fisk. Information about the award is available on the International Academy of Astronautics site. Congratulations, Jonathan!

Congratulations to Professor Renu Malhotra, who has been named a 2010 College of Science Galileo Circle Fellow, one of the highest honors bestowed upon faculty in the College of Science.

These awards, established through the generosity of Galileo Circle members, recognize outstanding accomplishments in academic scholarship. Each Fellow receives $5,000 and lifetime membership in the Galileo Circle.

Galileo Circle Fellows are the epitome of the academic scholar, with a deep understanding over a broad range of science, a willingness to think in a truly interdisciplinary way, and an ability to inspire colleagues and students alike.

Dr. Malhotra's research is directed towards understanding planetary systems. Her research topics include the Kuiper Belt, the bombardment history of the planets, the formation and evolution of our solar system and other planetary systems, and the astronomical conditions for habitable planets. One of her earliest theories explained Pluto's peculiar orbit, something that had puzzled scientists since the planet's discovery. The idea of planet migration introduced in that work is now widely accepted in solar system studies. In 2001, Dr. Malhotra and her collaborators discovered what is now recognized as the edge of the primordial solar system. Dr. Malhotra also makes time to share her passion for science through numerous public outreach activities.

Marcia Neugebauer, LPL Adjunct Research Scientist, has received not one, but two prestigious awards. She is the recipient of the 2010 Arctowski Medal, a distinguished award presented by the National Academy of Sciences to honor outstanding contributions to the study of solar physics and solar-terrestrial relationships. This prestigious medal also comes with a cash prize and a designated amount of institutional research support. Dr. Neugebauer is also the recipient of the Hale Prize of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society, awarded for outstanding contributions to the field of solar astronomy.

Marcia has been the recipient of many awards throughout her distinguished career. In 2005, Marcia was named by the AGU as recipient of the 2004 Kaula award; the AGU citation for that award reads: "Marcia Neugebauer is one of the pioneers of the Space Age. She started work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in June 1956 and contributed directly to the first identification and studies of the solar wind using some of the first space missions. Later Marcia brought her enthusiasm, thoroughness, and broad impact to the American Geophysical Union, including working for the AGU publications program as editor-in-chief of Reviews of Geophysics and then serving as president of the AGU."

Please join us in congratulating Marcia Neugebauer on being selected as the 2010 recipient of both the National Academy of Sciences' Arctowski Medal and the AAS Solar Physics Division Hale Prize.

More information about Dr. Neugebauer and her career is available on UA News.

Congratulations, Marcia!
 

Professor Tom Gehrels was recognized for his 50 years of service at the annual University of Arizona Service Awards luncheon, held on April 13, 2011.

Professor Tom Gehrels joined the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) in 1961 as an Associate Professor. He earned his B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from Leiden (Netherlands) University in 1951, and his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Chicago in 1956. While in Chicago, he worked with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Gerard P. Kuiper (who founded LPL in 1960). Dr. Gehrels' distinguished science career features many highlights. During the 1950s, Professor Gehrels pioneered the first photometric system of asteroids and discovered the opposition effect in the brightness of asteroids. In the 1960s, he pioneered wavelength dependence of polarization of stars and planets. His research interests then migrated to imaging photopolarimetry of Jupiter and Saturn, and Dr. Gehrels was named principal investigator for the Pioneer 10 and 11 Imaging Photopolarimeters, which discovered Saturn's F ring.

In 1980, Tom Gehrels founded the SPACEWATCH® Project, which uses telescopes on Kitt Peak to survey the sky for dangerous asteroids; he led the project until 1997. Professor Gehrels also founded the well known and well respected Space Science Series, still published by the University of Arizona Press. He served as general editor for the first 30 volumes of the series. At its start in the 1980s, the Space Science Series represented a new way of producing research textbooks.

In 2007, Tom Gehrels was the recipient of the Harold Masursky Award, presented by the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in recognition of meritorious service to planetary science. Professor Gehrels' current research interest is universal evolution. Each fall, he teaches an undergraduate course for non-science majors and each spring, he presents a brief version of that course at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India, where he is a lifetime Fellow.

Dr. Ilaria Pascucci recently joined PTYS/LPL as an astrophysicist and Assistant Professor. Before joining LPL in March of this year, she was working at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore as instrument scientist for the STIS spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Ilaria completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Bologna in Italy and obtained her Ph.D. in astrophysics in 2004 at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

Professor Pascucci's research focuses on observations and modeling of the formation and evolution of planetary systems. She is particularly interested in merging the cosmochemical constraints on the solar nebula evolution with the astronomical perspective of protoplanetary disk evolution and planet formation.

Her research activities include studies of the mineralogy of protoplanetary disks, the evolution and dispersal of the pre-planetary material around young stars, and the evolution of volatiles in protoplanetary disks in relation to their delivery to terrestrial planets. For her research, Dr. Pascucci is using state-of-the-art ground- and space-based facilities including the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, the Herschel Space Observatory, and 8m-class ground-based telescopes such as Keck and the VLT.

Welcome, Ilaria!

My research involves trying to understand the gas motions and magnetic field generation in the solar interior. I generally approach this problem using large scale numerical simulations. The Sun is an excellent testbed for hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic theory because of the strict observational constraints provided by helioseismology.

I was a University of Arizona undergraduate, did my Ph.D. in Santa Cruz and a postdoc in Boulder, so I have been able to live in a lot of nice places. Before I was a student I was in the Air Force, where I was in intelligence. I was stationed in Alaska, so you can imagine what kind of work I did. When I am not working I spend most of my time exercising in one form or another. I particularly like running, climbing and crossfit. I have two dogs, Io and Genius, not appropriately named, and a boyfriend who lives across an ocean, so I spend a lot of time in an airplane. 

I've been an assistant professor at the PTYS/LPL since fall of 2007. I moved from Ireland to the United States in 1998 to pursue graduate studies in planetary science at the California Institute of Technology. After five enjoyable years in Pasadena, I spent two years in both Boston (at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Flagstaff (at the U.S. Geological Survey) as a postdoc. My wife and I now live in Tucson with our three kids, two cats, one dog and assorted fish. Despite (or maybe because of) growing up on an island where billions of tons of water fall out of the sky each year, I like the desert and enjoy hiking and camping when possible.

During my stays in Flagstaff and Tucson, I have worked mostly with data from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). My research interests encompass surface processes on planetary bodies throughout the solar system. I am especially interested in those processes that affect, or are driven by, planetary ices. Current work includes modeling of landscape evolution of the martian polar caps, concentration of volatiles in the polar craters of the Moon and Mercury, fractal descriptions of topography as deduced from Titan's shorelines and seasonal volatile transport on large asteroids such as Ceres.

On Monday, October 19, Professor Robert Strom received the Geological Society of America's G.K. Gilbert Award at the GSA meeting in Portland. Jay Melosh presented the award.

The G. K. Gilbert Award is presented annually by the Planetary Geology Division of the Geological Society of America for outstanding contributions to the solution of fundamental problems in planetary geology in the broadest sense, which includes geochemistry, mineralogy, petrology, geophysics, geologic mapping, and remote sensing.

Such contributions may consist either of a single outstanding publication or a series of publications that have had great influence in the field. The award is named for the pioneering geologist G. K. Gilbert.

Please join us in congratulating Javier Martin-Torres (Associate Staff Scientist) on his receipt of the Earth and Planetary Physics Special Award from the Spanish Royal Society of Physics.

This award was given in recognition of Javier's "contributions to radiative transfer modeling in Earth and planetary atmospheres and outstanding contributions in ESA and NASA space missions, which help us understand the physical processes of the Earth's atmosphere."