Thanks to everyone for supporting research, education, and outreach at LPL.
We are thrilled to announce the establishment of the Dr. Gordon Bjoraker Graduate Student Award. Dr. Bjoraker (or “Gordy” to his many friends and colleagues) is an LPL alumnus (1985) who specialized in the study of the atmospheres of giant planets and brown dwarfs and made many scientific contributions through James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and ground-based observations during his 39-year career at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The Bjoraker Award is aimed at helping LPL graduate students who are recognized with external fellowships, grants, or awards that may not fully cover their graduate expenses. Award funds will be dispersed to help make sure that such excellent students are not placed at a disadvantage by winning an external recognition. We thank Gordy for his exceptional generosity and support of LPL students in the establishment of this new award.
By Joe Schools and Jack Holt
Twenty-one LPL graduate students enjoyed three days in beautiful Owens Valley, California. This trip was a ten-and-a-half-hour drive both to and from the site. It was one of the longest drives that LPL students have done to get to a field trip location. Faculty and staff on the trip included Jack Holt, Lynn Carter, Stefano Nerozzi, and Joe Schools as part of the PTYS 590 Planetary Geology Field Studies course.
Activities included exploring the relatively young volcanic terrains associated with the Long Valley Caldera. We stood in the main caldera which formed in a supereruption event ~760,000 years ago. We also explored a lava tube in a ~50,000 year old volcanic field, and hiked around Panum Crater, a rhyolite dome which erupted only 600-700 years ago. Magma likely still exists at depth beneath where we were standing, as evidenced by the active hot springs which were shut down for being too hot.
The students also learned about the glacial processes which carved out the mountains of the area, discovered the history of the California Water Wars, and hunted for trilobites in the ancient White-Inyo mountains.
Everything went absolutely smoothly, and there were no vehicle-rock incidents. For anyone who did not get to experience the field trip, we brought a bit of Owens Valley home with us in the form of the mantle xenolith sample currently outside the Kuiper building. If you get a chance to stop by and see it, note the clusters of green olivine, that’s the mantle!
Some of the PTYS 590 field trip students were also enrolled in PTYS 549, Radar Remote Sensing. Radar activities for that class were conducted in collaboration with a University of California Los Angeles group led by Professors Dave Paige and Mackenzie Day, who met us in the field along with some of their colleagues and graduate students. This joint effort focused on planetary analog features at three localities that overlapped with the PTYS 590 itinerary, including aeolian bedforms in volcanic cinder deposits at Fossil Falls, a rock glacier at a 9,000 foot elevation in the Eastern Sierras near Bishop, California, and ash fall deposits adjacent to Mono Lake. Students ran ground-penetrating radar on the surface to compare with drone-based radar sounding, complemented by drone-based LiDAR mapping and photogrammetry of the surface.
Photos courtesy of Joe Schools
FINESST solicits proposals for graduate student-designed and performed research projects that contribute to NASA's Science Mission Directorate’s science, technology, and exploration goals.
Naman Bajaj
Decoding the Evolution of Protostellar Outflows with JWST MIRI
Advisor: Ilaria Pascucci
Devin Hoover
Cassini/UVIS observations of Titan's variable atmosphere
Advisor: Tommi Koskinen
The purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is to ensure the quality, vitality, and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who have demonstrated the potential to be high achieving scientists and engineers, early in their careers.
Earth as an Exoplanet for the Era of Exo-Earths
Advisor: Tyler Robinson
Maizey’s paper entitled Microstructural analysis of phosphorus (P)-bearing assemblages in type 3 chondrites: Implications for P condensation and processing in the early solar nebula is one of the two papers selected for this award.
Her paper addresses the chemical behavior of phosphorous in chondritic meteorites and in samples returned by the Hayabusa2 mission. She has been using a combination of electron- and ion-beam techniques in the Kuiper-Arizona Laboratory for Astromaterials Analysis (K-ALFAA) to study P-bearing materials in petrologic type-1 through type-3 carbonaceous and ordinary chondrites, and thermodynamic modeling and density functional theory to better understand the materials formation conditions.
Advisor: Tom Zega
The fellowship is awarded annually to up to 30 women in doctoral programs in aerospace engineering and space sciences.
Anna’s research examines how hydrogen and helium escape from hot Jupiter-sized exoplanets under intense stellar radiation, using hydrodynamic simulations, stellar flux models, and spectroscopic observations to explore planetary evolution and star–planet interaction.
Advisor: Tommi Koskinen
