Spring
Welcome to the Spring 2016 LPL Newsletter. This has been one of those periods of transition, a time for looking back with pride, and some sadness, and looking forward with optimism for great things to come.
In terms of the past, Melissa Sevigny’s history of LPL, Under Desert Skies, has been published, allowing those who were here in the early days to relive their glory, and allowing those who weren’t here to learn something about how we got to be what we are today. But there has been some sadness, too. Professor Elizabeth Roemer, who chaired the task force that set up the Department of Planetary Sciences based on the research-focused Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, passed away this spring. So did Mildred Matthews, who shepherded the University of Arizona Press Space Science series when it was headquartered here.
But the future looks as bright as the past.
On September 8, OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center, on its way to asteroid Bennu to perform the most detailed study of an asteroid ever, and then to return a sample. The instruments have been delivered, the spacecraft is passing every test so far, and we’re all trying to figure out how best to get to the launch and/or celebrate the mission.
Meanwhile, the faculty, staff and students have had a grueling interview schedule, as multiple opportunities to hire new faculty converged on a single six-month window, bringing lots of candidates for faculty positions. None of those searches is complete yet, but they brought excellent candidates, the kind of men and women who will make LPL as much of a center for planetary science in the 2020s as it ever was in the “golden days” that Melissa Sevigny recounted.
And, of course, we have had the usual amount of first-rate science, award-winning faculty, students and staff, and inspiring outreach.
Enjoy the newsletter. And as always, for alumni, retirees, and others who have been a part of the LPL family but are no longer at LPL, if you have news about you, your career, or your family, please let us know, so that we can pass it along to all the people who would be interested.
Timothy D. Swindle, Ph.D.
Department Head and Laboratory Director
The following faculty have been notified by the University of Arizona Provost of promotions effective August 2016:
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Dr. Travis Barman, from Associate Professor to Associate Professor with tenure |
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Dr. Ilaria Pascucci, from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure |
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Dr. Tom Zega, from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure |
Congratulations to Travis, Ilaria, and Tom!
Jamie Molaro is the 2016 recipient of the Gerard P. Kuiper Memorial Award, the department's highest award for graduate student scholarship. Jamie defended her dissertation titled, "Stress, on the Rocks: Thermally Induced Stresses in Rocks and Microstructures on Airless Bodies, Implications for Breakdown," in July 2015. She is currently a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at JPL, where her research focus is modeling thermally induced breakdown on the Moon, asteroids, and comets.
While a graduate student at LPL, Jamie was the recipient of a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (2012-2015) and a University of Arizona (UA) College of Science Galileo Circle Scholarship. She was active in the LPL community, serving on several departmental committees and volunteering with numerous recruitment and outreach programs and events. Jamie completed the UA Certificate in College Teaching. For fall 2014, she developed and taught "Introduction to Planetary Science for Teachers."
Jamie was founder and organizer (2013-2015) of The Art of Planetary Science at LPL. This annual art exhibition features science and space-themed artwork from local artists alongside artwork from scientists, made from scientific data. The event has grown each year and is much anticipated by the campus, as well as the larger Tucson community. In 2015, the UA College of Science recognized Jamie with the College of Science Graduate Student Service Award.
The citation for the Kuiper Award reads: "This award is presented to students of the planetary sciences who best exemplify, through the high quality of their researches and the excellence of their scholastic achievements, the goals and standards established and maintained by Gerard P. Kuiper, founder of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona."
Margaret Landis and Sarah Sutton have been announced as recipients of funds from the 2016 Curson Travel Scholarship.
Margaret is a third-year graduate student working with Associate Professor Shane Byrne. Her research focus is on icy processes on Mars and Ceres. She plans to use the Curson travel funds to support travel to the 6th International Conference on Mars Polar Science and Exploration, at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, September 5-9; a one-day field trip is also scheduled as part of the meeting. Attendance at the meeting, held only once every five years, will provide Margaret with the opportunity to observe Earth analogs of the martian features she is studying and to discuss Mars polar science with experts from around the world.
Sarah is a first-year graduate student advised by Assistant Professor Christopher Hamilton. She will travel to Iceland for Professor Hamilton's four-week international workshop on planetary volcanism. This field work supports Sarah's research on a comparative study of channelized lava flows on Earth and Mars using field and remote sensing data. Sarah will work toward two goals: 1) morphologic and topographic characterization of flow and channel features at Laki and Holuhraun to validate channel flow models; 2) repeat topographic surveys at Holuhraun to measure mass-wasting and erosional processes. She will collect data and generate high resolution topography with a terrestrial scanning LiDAR and unmanned aerial vehicle photogrammetric images. These data, along with thermal images collected by the University of Iceland and remote sensing instruments on Landsat 7/8, will be used to constrain lava flow models. Data from Laki and Holuhraun will be inputs to lava/fluid flow models. These terrestrially validated models will then be used to test if flow morphologies on Mars are consistent with lava flow, or if aqueous processes are involved.
We'll report on the summer travel and research in the LPL Fall Newsletter!
LPL and the city of Tucson are the subject of a new book titled Under Desert Skies: How Tucson Mapped the Way to the Moon and Planets. The book's author is University of Arizona (UA) alumna Melissa Sevigny, who grew up in Tucson. As an undergraduate, Melissa studied creative writing and environmental sciences; she went on to complete a M.FA. in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University, and is currently a science and technology reporter for KNAU (Arizona Public Radio) in Flagstaff. As an undergraduate Arizona NASA Space Grant intern in 2006, Melissa and her mentor, Professor Michael J. Drake, began an oral history project with LPL as the topic. The interviews and research continued beyond the Space Grant year, thanks to funding from Mike Drake, and were eventually transcribed into the text for the book, which has been published by The University of Arizona Press. Melissa has donated the royalties to LPL for outreach activities.
On April 25, UA Library Special Collections, The University of Arizona Press, and LPL hosted a panel discussion and reception to introduce Under Desert Skies. The panel discussion was moderated by Melissa Sevigny and featured William K. Hartmann, Peter Smith, and Ewen Whitaker, with opening remarks from Tim Swindle. The event, available for viewing online, was a wonderful opportunity to honor those who pioneered planetary science and to inspire planetary scientists of the future.
To purchase a copy of Under Desert Skies, go to:
http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid2594.htm
| Images courtesy of University of Arizona Libraries | |
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Congratulations to Peng Sun, who defended his dissertation on April 25! The research topic was titled, “Charged Particle Transport in the Turbulent Magnetic Field in Space and a Transport Model for the ENA Ribbon.” Peng's advisor was Regents' Professor Emeritus Randy Jokipii.