Fall

Fourth-year Ph.D. student Galen Bergsten was selected for a six-month Visiting Graduate Fellowship at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) on the campus of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He will be working with Dr. David Ciardi on a project using high-resolution imaging data to understand the effects of stellar binarity on the frequency of small planets orbiting low mass stars.

The fellowship program was established to provide doctoral students with applied research experience with leaders in research areas such as exoplanets and stellar formation. The program hosts between two and four students per year. Galen begins his fellowship in February 2024.

Ph.D. candidates Maizey Benner and Zoë Wilbur each received a 2023 Amelia Earhart Fellowship from Zonta International; they are two of only thirty scholars selected for the honor, which recognizes outstanding academic record and demonstrated initiative, ambition, and commitment to pursuing a career in space sciences.

Maizey Benner studies the origin and evolution of phosphorus-bearing materials in ordinary and carbonaceous chondrites. These chondrite groups represent two reservoirs of material from the beginning of solar system history that are mostly unaltered since their formation. Probing these pristine materials allows her to evaluate the most primitive phosphorus-bearing materials and evaluate their thermodynamic conditions of formation for refinement of the solar condensation sequence.

Maizey’s research couples experimental cosmochemistry and computational thermodynamics to better understand the origins and evolution of moderately volatile elements in the early solar system. She uses electron microscopy techniques such as electron microprobe, focused ion beam scanning-electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy to probe the chemistry and structure of materials from the micro- to nanoscale. Maizey also uses density functional theory to calculate the thermodynamic properties of materials for use in models of solar condensation. These two are linked by comparing experimental results to computational models of materials and iterating until they replicate the natural system.

Zoë Wilbur seeks to understand the history of degassing (volatile loss) among the sample suites, how eruption dynamics are preserved in lunar basalts, and to what extent volatile behavior is dependent upon a basalt’s chemical composition.

Zoë investigates the volcanic histories of Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 basalts and, in particular, an Apollo 17 basalt that was stored frozen and has been released for study for the first time after 50 years. This frozen sample is part of the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program. Zoë and her advisor (Dr. Jessica Barnes) are the first researchers to study this sample since its return from the Moon. This frozen sample offers a direct comparison to other basalts curated using traditional methods at room temperature and gives the opportunity to search for volatiles (like water) using improved, 21st century techniques. To analyze this specially curated sample, Zoë is utilizing a novel combination of 2D and 3D methods, including the measurements of water, chlorine, and fluorine in lunar minerals and 3D gas bubble structures.

Assistant Professor Jessica Barnes is the recipient of the 2024 Curie Award. Sponsored by the UArizona College of Science Galileo Circle, the Curie Award recognizes early-career scientists who are advancing science with innovative work and also adding to the diversity within the scientific community. Professor Barnes strives to understand the origin and evolution of volatiles in the inner Solar System utilizing a combination of nano and microanalytical techniques to study mineralogy, geochemistry, and petrological histories of a wide range of extraterrestrial materials.

In 2023, Dr. Barnes received the 2023 Nier Prize, awarded to young scientists for outstanding research in meteoritics. She was selected by NASA in 2019 to study the previously unopened Apollo sample 71036 and received a $1.5M gift in support of the sample analysis. Also that year, Dr. Barnes was named by Nature magazine as one of five young scientists who will shape the next 50 years of Moon research. In 2020, NASA named her to the Early Career Award program. In 2022, Dr. Barnes was selected as a Woman of Impact by the UArizona Office of Research, Innovation & Impact.

Mike earned his Ph.D. at LPL in 1997 with a dissertation titled, A Spectrophotometric Survey of Comets and Earth-Approaching Asteroids. He moved on to work at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as a postdoctoral research associate and then as research scientist from 1998 until 2022. His research specialty was the physical properties of comets and asteroids. He served on the science teams of the DART Project, the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) Project, the Dawn Mission, and the NASA Deep Space 1 Mission. He was the author of over 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers.

Read the complete memorial from the AAS Division for Planetary Sciences.

Dale Cruikshank (1968) was awarded the 2023 Masursky Prize by the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Science (DPS) in recognition of his outstanding service to the planetary science community.

Dr. Cruikshank served as the first historian of the DPS until 2020; the position was created after he undertook efforts to document and preserve DPS history. He worked to build international bridges between scientists through outreach to USSR scientists during the Cold War and participation in the International Astronomical Union (IAU), including serving as President for IAU Commission 16. He was Associate Editor of Icarus and a member of multiple decadal studies in both Planetary Science and Astronomy. More about Dr. Cruikshank's career as an astronomer and planetary scientist is available from NASA.