Spring

Dr. Pranabendu Moitra joined LPL in August 2018 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Associate Professor Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna. Pranabendu is broadly interested in understanding magma migration and volcanic eruption on Earth and other planetary bodies. His current research focuses on explosive magma-water interaction and volcanic eruption dynamics on Mars. He combines observation and modeling to tackle his current research problems.

Pranabendu grew up in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He completed his M.Sc. in Applied Geology from Jadavpur University, India, in 2008. He received a Ph.D. in Earth Science with a focus on physical volcanology in 2015 from Rice University. His Ph.D. topic focused on the violent eruption of basaltic magma combining rheology experiments, field observation, and numerical modeling. Before arriving at LPL, Pranabendu was a postdoctoral researcher and an adjunct instructor at the University at Buffalo.

Allen W. Hatheway (M.S. ’66, Ph.D. ’71; Geological Engineering) was named by Gerard Kuiper as an LPL Research Associate to perform the terrestrial technical proof of Professor Robert Strom’s correct conclusion that the lunar dimple craters were, in reality, collapse depressions on basaltic lava fields. (As an unrelated yet interesting coincidence, Mrs. Kuiper had a first cousin, Sanford Dudley, who was Best Man at the 1930 marriage of Allen’s parents.)

Hatheway’s dissertation, Lava Tubes and Collapse Depressions, led to a long career in applied engineering followed by nineteen years as a professsor of Engineering at the University of Missouri.

In 1988, Allen began specializing in environmental remediation of former manufactured gas plants (1792-1990) and other coal-tar plants. Allen’s second gasworks technical monograph, co-authored by Tom B. Speight, was published in January 2018.