Kudos and congratulations to Daniel Apai and Isamu Matsuyama on moving into the Associate Professor rank, and to Walter Harris on obtaining tenure!
On May 10, LPL Professor Dante Lauretta was inducted into the Boys & Girls Clubs of America's Hall of Fame. On May 12, Professor Lauretta was honored as the recipient of the University of Arizona’s Alumni Achievement Award for 2017. Lauretta received the award during the University's Commencement ceremony. He also will be named as the UA College of Humanities Alumnus of the Year at an event to be held on October 27. The Alumni Achievement Award is the highest honor the UA Alumni Association can bestow on graduates of the University. It is given to an alumnus or alumna who has attained prominence in his or her field of endeavor and demonstrated outstanding service to the UA.
Lauretta is principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission. He is an expert in the analysis of extraterrestrial materials such as lunar samples, meteorites and comet particles. His work contributes to our understanding of the chemistry of the early solar system and the origin of complex molecules that may have led to life on Earth. Under Lauretta's leadership, OSIRIS-REx aims to further public engagement in science. The mission's website features entertaining and engaging videos about planetary science, and mission staff appear as guest speakers at local conventions and in classrooms.
"I am honored to receive the UA Alumni Achievement Award," Lauretta said. "The University of Arizona has been an essential part of my career from my undergraduate days through my faculty appointment. I am proud to have studied here and to now be contributing to the UA's important education mission."
After 45 years of service to the University of Arizona as a faculty member and as Director/Department Head (LPL/Planetary Sciences, 1977-1981), Professor William Hubbard will transition to Professor Emeritus in May.
Professor Hubbard earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1967 from the University of California, Berkeley (Electron Conduction in Degenerate Stellar Matter with L.G. Henyey). He joined LPL in 1972 as Associate Professor, and was promoted to Professor in 1975. In No Longer Points of Light, Bill recalls his early days at LPL: "I was recruited by Gerard Kuiper. He was a very energetic person, especially given his age. He was very enthusiastic about his new department, and he took me on a tour of all of his observing sites around the area....He talked to me about where he thought the Laboratory was heading and what he thought my role would be in it....The way he expressed it to me was that the Department was going to be an essential component for keeping the Laboratory in existence. At that time it was only LPL; there was no Department. He thought that in order to ensure the longevity of the whole enterprise that we needed an academic arm; we needed to have graduate students, we needed to have a teaching program."
Professor Hubbard has been the recipient of many honors and awards throughout the course of his distinguished career, including election as a Fellow to the American Geophysical Union (1991) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2003). He was awarded the Gerard P. Kuiper Prize in Planetary Sciences by the Division for Planetary Sciences (AAS) in 2005. In 2012, Professor Hubbard received NASA Group Achievement Awards for the Juno (mission) proposal and for Juno mission development, launch, and early operations. He was honored with the Blitzer Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Physics and Related Sciences (University of Arizona) in 2013. Professor Hubbard's former students include Jonathan Fortney (Ph.D., 2004), Maki Hattori (M.S., 2008), Joseph MacFarlane (Ph.D., 1983), Robert Marcialis (Ph.D., 1990), Mark Marley (Ph.D., 1990), and Wayne Slattery (Ph.D., 1976).
 Mark Marley, Jonathan Fortney, Bob Marcialis, and Didier Saumon pose with their former advisor, Bill Hubbard.
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 LPL alum Cliff Stoll sent his greetings and a personalized Klein bottle.
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 Bill was gifted with a planetary orb created by Philabum Glass.
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 Didier Saumon and Ilaria Pascucci with the guest of honor.
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On April 15, Regents' Professor Renu Malhotra presented a TEDx Portland talk about Planet Nine.
Congratulations to Associate Professor Shane Byrne, who won second place for the 2017 Outstanding Faculty for Graduate and Professional Student Achievement Award, sponsored by the University of Arizona Graduate and Professional Student Council. The award is presented to faculty who have made outstanding efforts to mentor and advise graduate or professional students in their college or department; criteria include: creating opportunities for the graduate/professional students, faculty, and staff with whom they work to achieve excellence; demonstrating outstanding efforts of mentorship and develop mentees’ research and professional skills; mentoring a wide persity of students; assisting students to present and publish their work, to find financial aid, and to provide career guidance; offering psychological support, encouragement, and essential strategies for life in the scholarly community; demonstrating continued interest in the student's professional advancement.
Isamu Matsuyama recently joined PTYS/LPL as an Assistant Professor. Before joining LPL, Isamu spent three years as a Miller Fellow in the department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley. During his Miller Fellowship, Isamu developed theoretical treatments for the analysis of rotational dynamics and its effect on gravity, shape, and tectonic patterns. He used these formalisms to study the rotational stability of planets and moons in the solar system, and to propose explanations for their gravity field and tectonic patterns.
Isamu completed his undergraduate studies in Physics at Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia, and attended graduate school at the University of Toronto in Canada where he earned his Ph.D. in Astrophysics in 2005. During his Ph.D. studies, he developed models for the dispersal of protoplanetary disks to explain the observed disk life times, and proposed the dispersal of protoplanetary disks as a mechanism for halting the inward migration of planets.
Isamu's current research interests involve improving our understanding of (1) the formation and evolution of the Moon by analysis of the global lunar figure, which provides a record of prior orbital and rotational states; (2) tidal dissipation in the subsurface ocean of icy satellites; and (3) rotational perturbations due to large impacts.
Professor Matsuyama is teaching a core course, PTYS 505B, this spring semester.
Kudos to Dante Lauretta and Adam Showman, both of whom were promoted to Full Professor (from Associate Professor with Tenure), beginning with the 2012-2013 academic year. Kudos, also, to Peter Smith, who was granted tenure (from Full Professor). Our congratulations to Dante, Adam, and Peter!
Professor Joe Giacalone was the recipient of the 12th Annual Professor Leon and Pauline Blitzer Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Physics and Related Sciences. Jacob Mallott and Eric Blitzer presented Professor Giacalone with the award at a special afternoon program held on March 2, 2017. Professor Giacalone's award lecture was titled Solar Storms, Space Radiation and their Effects on Earth and Space Travel. A reception followed in the Kuiper Space Sciences atrium.
Joe has taught courses at all levels including introductory courses in planetary sciences, advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in the physics of the solar system, and an advanced graduate course on the physics of the Sun. His research focus is on understanding the origin and physical processes involved in creating high-energy charged particles near the Sun and how they move throughout the solar system. Joe earned a B.A. in Mathematics (1985) and B.S. in Physics (1986) from Ft. Lewis College; he completed a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Kansas in 1991. Joe began his career at LPL in 1993 as a post-doctoral research associate and joined the tenure-track faculty in 2004. He was a winner of a NASA Early Career award in 2005. He has been directly involved with number of NASA missions, including Ulysses, ACE, and Voyager, and is currently a Co-Investigator for the upcoming NASA mission Solar Probe Plus, launching next year, which will explore the outer atmosphere of the Sun.
The Blitzer Award is funded through the Blitzer Teaching Award Fund, and commemorates Professor Leon Blitzer and his wife, Pauline Meyer Blitzer.
At the beginning of October, Dr. Lynn Carter joined LPL as an Associate Professor, as part of the Earth Dynamics Observatory cluster hire. Lynn is a planetary scientist whose research interests include volcanism and impact cratering on the terrestrial planets, regolith development on the Moon and asteroids, outer Solar System moons, planetary analog field studies, climate change, and the development of radar remote sensing techniques. Lynn was previously a Civil Service research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for six years, where she began working with engineers on the development of a beamforming polarimetric radar system for orbital spacecraft. She is co-I on three spacecraft radar instruments: SHARAD on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, RIMFAX on the Mars2020 rover, and REASON on the Europa Flagship mission. She also recently became the Deputy PI of the Mini-RF radar on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. In addition to multiple current planetary geology projects, she has become interested in Earth science research and is part of a project to study permafrost loss in Alaska using a combination of ground penetrating radar, in-situ carbon and methane monitoring, and orbital atmospheric constituent retrievals. At LPL she plans to continue to pursue interdisciplinary projects using geophysical remote sensing techniques.
Dr. Vishnu Reddy joined LPL this fall as an Assistant Professor as part of space situational awareness cluster. Vishnu is a planetary spectroscopist with an interest in understanding the behavior of natural and artificial space objects using a range of remote sensing techniques and sensors. Prior to LPL, he worked as a research scientist at Planetary Science Institute, and as research faculty at the University of North Dakota working on ground-based physical characterization of near-Earth objects. He also worked as a scientist on NASA Dawn mission as a member of the Framing Camera team at the Max-Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany. At LPL, he will develop a new spectroscopy lab focused on characterizing space material in space-like conditions for both civilian and military uses, as well as exploring new ways to do low-cost planetary missions.
