Spring

PTYS graduate student Patricio Becerra is the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award for Fall 2012. Patricio earned the award for his work as a GTA for Professor Tamara Rogers' PTYS 170B1 course during the Spring 2012 semester.

The student nomination forms cited Patricio for his dedication to communicating the course content. Professor Rogers nominated Patricio for the award for his work in helping to design and implement "think-pair-share" and Lecture Tutorials; both these activities required Pat to prepare the activities with the instructor in advance. Professor Rogers writes that "Pat was invaluable to my ability to implement these [activities] successfully." Patricio also ran the lecture tutorials on his own and had to improvise a lecture when one version of the tutorial guide did not match the other. Patricio also assisted with the Media Reported Science (MRS) activity, and created and implemented an MRS of his own.

Recipients of the Outstanding GTA Award receive funds of up to $1,000 to support travel to a professional meeting of their choice. Congratulations, Patricio!

Professor William Hubbard was named the recipient of the Eighth Annual Professor Leon and Pauline Blitzer Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Physics and Related Sciences (PDF). Charles Blitzer presented Professor Hubbard with the award at a special afternoon program held on February 28, 2013. Professor Hubbard's award lecture was titled "Why Do We Have a Space Program?" A reception followed in the Kuiper Space Sciences atrium.

Bill Hubbard earned his B.A. from Rice University (Physics, 1962) and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (Astronomy, 1967), with a doctoral dissertation on the properties of dense stellar matter. During a postdoctoral appointment at Caltech, he found that his research had implications for the internal structure of Jupiter. He joined LPL in 1972 after accepting Gerard Kuiper's offer of helping to establish a graduate program in the brand-new Department of Planetary Sciences. From 1977 to 1981, Hubbard was Director of LPL and Head of the Department of Planetary Sciences. In 2005, Professor Hubbard joined the Juno mission team; Juno, which lauched in 2011, is scheduled for Jupiter orbit insertion in 2016. As a co-investigator, Hubbard will share responsibility for analysis of Juno gravity data. Professor Hubbard is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2005 he received the Gerard P. Kuiper Prize of the Division for Planetary Sciences, American Astronomical Society. Asteroid 11216 “Billhubbard” was named in his honor.

The Blitzer Award is funded through the Blitzer Teaching Award Fund, and commemorates Professor Leon Blitzer and his wife, Pauline Meyer Blitzer.

Dr. Shane Byrne has been notified by the UA Provost of his promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure beginning with the 2013-2014 academic year.

Shane earned his Ph.D. from CalTech in 2003 and joined LPL as an Assistant Professor in 2007. His research interests are surface processes on planetary bodies throughout the solar system, especially those processes which affect, or are driven by, planetary ices. He is a deputy-PI on HiSCI and a co-I on HiRISE. Shane teaches a core course in the department curriculum (PTYS 554), as well as a required undergradute minor course (PTYS 411), and leads the fieldtrip course each semester (PTYS 594A).

Congratulations, Shane! 

Former longtime LPL staff member Tom Teska passed away on March 15, 2013.  Tom was the Manager for Mike Drake's Microprobe Lab from the early 1970s until 1998, when he retired.

Thomas M. Teska 79, passed away March 15, 2013. He was born in Chicago in 1933 to Emma and Thomas Teska. Surviving are his wife, Shelley Esterquest; son, John Teska; daughter, Jennifer Teska; grandson, Andrew and five stepchildren. Tom will be remembered by the many people with whom he shared his life in loving marriages, service to the Unitarian Church, and work at the University of Arizona. Through his hobbies, his gifts of charity, his good humor and his love, Tom gave so much to the people around him. He will be dearly missed.

A Memorial Service and Celebration of his life was held on Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 4831 E. 22nd St., Tucson. Memorial gifts in Tom's honor may be made to the charity of your choice.

Friends may view the obituary notice and sign a guest book here.

LPL often gets mentioned alongside our well known colleagues across Cherry Street in Steward Observatory. It’s not so often that we are mentioned alongside our other well known colleagues across University Boulevard who play in McKale Center, but we did manage to rate a mention in Sports Illustrated this year. Check it out!

The first two installments of what is hoped will be a regular series of talks referred to as the LPL Staff Colloquium were held on Thursday, February 7, and Tuesday, May 7.

In February, members of Professor Alfred McEwen's HiRISE team spoke about their work and roles on the mission project. The colloquium was held in the Sonett Building and refreshments were served.

The May colloquium featured a talk by OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta and a tour of the Drake building and the meteorite collection housed there as part of the Southwest Meteorite Center.

Department Head and Director Tim Swindle initiated the Staff Colloquium Series to bring together personnel who are now located in three buildings (Kuiper, Sonett, and Drake) and do not have occasion often enough to meet colleagues on other projects and in other buildings.

OSIRIS-REx Deputy PI Ed Beshore talks OCAMS during a tour of the Drake Building.

Congratulations to Terry Forrester, recipient of this year's LPL Staff Excellence Award, and kudos to Bert Orosco, cited as an honorable mention for the award. 

Terry Forrester is Systems Programmer Principal for HiRISE. He has a long history of service to The University of Arizona and to LPL, having begun his campus career in 1983. His colleagues recognized his service and dedication to his work, citing his availability at all hours (evenings and weekends!) to manage systems issues, coordinates maintenance schedules to minimize disruptions (even with remote HiRISE investigators located around the world). Terry was also praised for his ability to reconcile conflicting need, resolves user concerns cheerfully, and to follow-up on issues and installations. His co-workers also wrote that Terry is proactive about maintaining desktop computers for staff. His quick response time saves time and resources. Terry consistently goes beyond assigned duties by assisting with troubleshooting problems with other systems/computers.

Compared to Terry, Bert Orosco has been at LPL a relatively short time. However, she has made her mark as the "face" of LPL in the Academic Office. Bert has distinguished herself with her creativity and has improved upon many office procedures, in addition to taking on new and ever-changing duties. 

We appreciate all you do, Terry and Bert! 

LPL alumna and E/PO lead for OSIRIS-REx, Anna Spitz, is one of the editors of a new volume (September 2013) from the University of Arizona Press.Encountering Life in the Universe: Ethical Foundations and Social Implications of Astrobiology, edited by Chris Impey, Anna H. Spitz, and William Stoeger, "examines the intersection of scientific research and socity to further explore the ethics of how to behave in a universe where much is unknown."

University of Arizona Press

September 2013
272 pp.
6 x 9
6 illustrations, 4 tables
ISBN 978-0-8165-2870-7 $39.95 paper

On Monday, March 25th, I had the honor to give two briefings on the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission to policy makers in Washington DC. OSIRIS-REx will visit asteroid 1999 RQ36, a carbon‐ and water‐rich object that is also one of the most potentially hazardous near‐Earth asteroids. This visit was scheduled in conjunction with the OSIRIS-REx Independent Assessment Review (IAR) on March 26th. The IAR is the last of a mission Preliminary Design Reviews and focuses on the credibility of the management, cost, and schedule plans.

My first stop of the day was at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), where I was scheduled to give a Brown Bag lunchtime seminar on OSIRIS-REx. Jim Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, Ed Beshore, OSIRIS-REx Deputy PI, and Shay Stautz, UA Vice President for Federal Relations joined me. We had a full house and several notable attendees including John Holdren, Director of OSTP, Philip Rubin, Principal Assistant Director for Science, and Tammy Dickinson, Senior Policy Analyst and our host. LPL alum Celinda Marsh (M.S., 2007), who now works at the Office of Management and Budget, was also able to join us. The meeting started out on a high note since I was able to pass around several fragments of the Chelyabinsk chondritic meteorite, which had exploded over Russia just one month prior to this presentation. Jim Green provided a nice overview of near-Earth objects and NASA’s wide-ranging efforts to study these bodies. I followed with a detailed overview of OSIRIS-REx, highlighting the exciting science and feed-forward technologies for the agency. Afterwards, Tammy let me know that everyone at OSTP was still talking about both the mission and the sample of Chelyabinsk that I left behind. It had several visitors that afternoon.

Later that afternoon, Shay and I traveled to Capitol Hill to provide a similar briefing for staff members of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. UA worked with both full committee staff director Chris Shank as well as with Arizona Representative David Schweikert to arrange that discussion. Our host for this briefing was J.T. Jezierski, Director of Coalitions and Member Services for the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Staff representing six Committee Members attended. Again, the samples of Chelyabinsk provided an excellent introduction to the scientific value of studying asteroids and meteorites. This venue provided for a more intimate setting, with Shay and I sitting around a conference table with the staff members. I presented a general overview of asteroid science and discussed the OSIRIS-REx mission. The conversation was dynamic and covered a wide range of topics from Solar System to formation to asteroid impact hazards, and resources of near-Earth space. I also left behind a sample of Chelyabinsk for J.T. to pass on the Chairman Lamar Smith. The Chairman used the asteroid fragment to highlight the Chelyabinsk airburst event and kick-off the Full Committee Hearing - Threats from Space: A Review of Private Sector Efforts to Track and Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors, Part II (see photo). 

Overall, the visits to OSTP and Capitol Hill were very successful. Asteroid research and exploration is emerging as a top priority for the United States. This avenue of research is critical to understanding Solar System origins, assessing the asteroid impact threat, and pursuing resource development in near-Earth space.

Kathryn M. Volk defended her dissertation titled "Dynamical Studies of the Kuiper Belt and the Centaurs" on April 1. Kat is a 2013 recipient of the Gerard P. Kuiper Memorial Award, presented each year to students of the Planetary Sciences who best exemplify, through the high quality of their research and the excellence of their scholastic achievements, the goals and standards established by Gerard P. Kuiper, founder of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the Department of Planetary Sciences. During her time as a graduate student, Kat also earned the Graduate Teaching Excellence Award (Fall 2006) as well as the department award for Service and Outreach (2010). She was a two-time recipient of a College of Science Galileo Scholarship (2009 and 2011). This spring, as recipient of the Kuiper award, Kat was the department's nominee for the College of Science Scholarship award. At the College of Science awards ceremony held on April 8, Kat was named as the college-wide awardee for Scholarship, an honor given to the single most outstanding graduate researcher in the entire College of Science. Professor Renu Malhotra was Kat's dissertation advisor.

Kat will begin a position as a CITA (Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics) postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia Vancouver in the summer of 2013. 

Congratulations, Kat!