Spring

The Shandel Education Plus Fund in Planetary Sciences and LPL provided travel funding for three students this year.

Ingrid Daubar received funds for travel to Moscow for the 7th European Strategic Meteor Workshop. Ingrid will present her work on the impact flux inferred from the fresh martian craters. Ingrid's advisor is Alfred McEwen.

Cecilia Leung will spend up to a month in Boulder working with Scot Rafkin (SWRI) being trained on use of the Mars Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (MRAMS). She will also attend the Comparative Climatology of Terrestrial Planets Workshop to be held in Boulder in June. Cecilia is working with Peter Smith.

Juan Lora, who is working with Joellen Russell (Geosciences), received support to attend the Summer School on Atmospheric Modeling at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, N.J.

The Shandel Fund was established to support travel expenses outside the State of Arizona during summer break for undergraduate or graduate students in the Department of Planetary Sciences and Lunar and Planetary Sciences.

Congratulations to Ingrid, Cecilia, and Juan!

Congratulations to LPL's 2012 Galileo Circle Scholarship recipients: Kathryn Gardner-Vandy, Tiffany Kataria, Ethan Schaefer, Devin Schrader, and Rob Zellem. Galileo Circle Scholarships are awarded to the University of Arizona's finest science students and represent the tremendous breadth of research interests in the College of Science.

Galileo Circle Scholars receive $1,000 each; these awards are supported through the generous donations of Galileo Circle members. The Galileo Scholars were honored at an early evening reception held on April 19, 2012.

Read more information about the Galileo Circle.

Congratulations to all our 2012 Galileo Scholars!

Nikole K. Lewis, doctoral student in the Department of Planetary Sciences, is the recipient of the 2012 Gerard P. Kuiper Memorial Award. The award is presented to University of Arizona (UA) students in the field of planetary sciences who have excelled in academic work and research. The award is presented in memory of Gerard P. Kuiper, the founder of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Department of Planetary Sciences. Kuiper died in 1973, shortly after the department was established. The Kuiper Award consists of a $1,000 stipend and an award plaque. Nikole was presented with the Kuiper Award at the LPL Awards and Recognition Ceremony held on April 13, 2012. She successfully defended her dissertation, titled "Atmospheric Circulation of Eccentric Extrasolar Giant Planets," on April 16, 2012.

Nikole enrolled in the Department of Planetary Sciences in 2007 after earning a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and mechanical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic University (2002) and a Master of Science degree in astronomy from Boston University (2004). Her doctoral research has spanned multiple, diverse topics: three-dimensional atmospheric circulation modeling of hot Jupiters using a state-of-the-art atmospheric general circulation model; with a collaborator, reduction and analysis of infrared lightcurves of hot Jupiters collected during the warm Spitzer mission, culminating in the successful analysis of the full-orbit lightcurves of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-2b; investigation of the atmospheric circulation of hot Jupiters, emphasizing those on eccentric orbits.

Nikole's advisor, Adam Showman, writes that her "simulation results have strong implications for observations of `warm' Neptunes and Jupiters generally as well as GJ 436b specifically....Her work has also shown that hot Jupiters on highly eccentric orbits exhibit dynamic, time-variable atmospheric circulations and that infrared lightcurves should contain significant information about the circulation regime and the pressure from which infrared photons escape to space." Nikole pioneered a new method to correct for the Spitzer IRAC intrapixel sensitivity variation, resulting in the best constraints obtained on the atmospheric structure of any hot Jupiter on a highly eccentric orbit. Adam concludes that, "the analysis methods developed by Nikole will also prove essential in analyzing lightcurves for a variety of other planets observed with warm Spitzer."

While a graduate student, Nikole won a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF), which funded most of her exoplanet research for three years. She is a three-time recipient of a UA College of Science Galileo Circle Scholarship. Nikole was the recipient of the 2012 PTYS/LPL Graduate Student Award for Scholarship and was selected by the UA College of Science as the college-wide recipient of the Graduate Student Award for Scholarship. Also in 2012, Nikole was awarded a prestigious NASA Sagan Fellowship (only 5 awards were made this year). Nikole will continue her exoplanet research as a Sagan postdoctoral scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Congratulations, Nikole!

Congratulations to Christa Van Laerhoven, recipient of the Fall 2011 Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award!

For Fall 2011, Christa was a GTA for Joe Spitale's PTYS 214 (Astrobiology) section. Christa was recognized by her student nominators as "a phenomenal TA...easily one of the top two GTAs in 4 years at UA" and as "a dynamic lecturer."

As recipient of the LPL GTA Excellence Award, Christa receives the award of conference/travel expenses (up to $1,000) to a professional domestic conference.

Christa is also the recipient of the 2012 College of Science Graduate Student Award for Teaching; her work as a mentor and TA will be recognized at the CoS Graduate Student Awards (April 27, University Park Marriott); she is eligible for the $500 college-wide award.

Nikole K. Lewis has been named a 2012 Sagan Fellow. These highly competitive NASA fellowships, which provide a generous salary and travel budget for three years, are aimed at supporting the top recent Ph.D. graduates nationwide in the area of exoplanets. They can be hosted at any U.S. institution; Nikole will be doing her work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Nikole's successful proposal is to perform atmospheric circulation modeling and analyze observations of the hot Jupiters---giant planets at 0.1 AU or less from their stars---with the aim of characterizing the dynamical and chemical behavior of their atmospheres. Nikole, who worked with Adam Showman, successfully defended her dissertation (Atmospheric Circulation of Eccentric Extrasolar Giant Planets) on April 16, 2012, and plans to start at MIT in late summer or fall 2012.

Congratulations, Nikole!

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!

The media is buzzing about Planetary Resources and its recently announced plan to mine asteroids. LPL is proud to claim three alumni and an emeritus professor on the Planetary Resources team:

Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, graduated from the University of Arizona in 1997 with a degree in Aerospace Engineering; he completed his M.S. from the same program in 2000. Chris is an alumnus of Arizona Space Grant and the UA chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (both headquartered at LPL); Chris was also JPL Flight Controller for the Phoenix mission;

Advisors Thomas D. Jones and Mark V. Sykes are both LPL alums. Tom earned his Ph.D. from LPL in 1988 (with John Lewis) and Mark earned his in 1986 (with Don Hunten).

PTYS/LPL Professor Emeritus John Lewis is also a member of the team.

From the Arizona Daily Star, April 25, 2012: Bold plan goes for asteroid gold

Space miners seek riches in nearby asteroids

Is it really cheaper to mine platinum from an asteroid?

In Pursuit of Riches, and Travelers' Supplies, in the Asteroid Belt

The OSIRIS-REx mission, selected as the third NASA New Frontiers mission in May 2011, launched its hub website. Visit http://osiris-rex.lpl.arizona.edu.

This site provides basic information about the mission and links to resources within NASA, to partners and to other sites of interest. This site is the hub for our web presence on various platforms and outlets. The mission is also on Twitter (@OSIRISRex) and Facebook (Osiris Rex). Mission presence will evolve over the 14-year mission so plan to continue to explore the website and social media.

Professor Timothy D. Swindle has been named the new Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Head of the Department of Planetary Sciences, replacing the late Michael J. Drake, who served in that role for 17 years.

Tim has been on the faculty at LPL since 1986, arriving shortly after receiving his Ph.D. in Physics from Washington University in St. Louis. While at LPL, he has won a Provost's General Education Teaching Award and a College of Science Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2008, he became the first Assistant Director of LPL, and served as Acting Department Head and Director in early 2010 and again in late 2011.

His research is on extraterrestrials materials like meteorites and lunar samples, and he has had a noble gas mass spectrometry laboratory on campus since 1990. He is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, and has served the Society as a member of the Council, the Treasurer, and a member (and later chair) of both the Awards Committee and Endowment Committee. As anyone who has gotten him started on Antarctic stories knows, he has served as a member of the Antarctic Search for Meteorites field party on the Polar Plateau four times, as many times as any volunteer in the program.

When not at work, he can often be found riding his bicycle around Tucson (usually avoiding getting hit by cars) or going to baseball games.