COSMOCHEMISTRY AND REMOTE SENSING
Staff Scientist, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution for Science
My primary research interests are in the laboratory analysis and scientific implications of extraterrestrial materials, including meteorites and interplanetary dust particles. I am very interested in presolar grains in meteorites and in the development of new techniques for isotopic analysis and mapping of small samples. I am actively involved in the analysis of cometary samples returned by NASA's STARDUST mission and solar wind samples returned by the GENESIS mission. I am the Director of the DTM ion microprobe facility, which includes both a Cameca ims-6f and a Cameca NanoSIMS 50L ion probe, each equipped with a Hyperion RF plasma oxygen source.
I also work on X-ray and Gamma-ray spectrometers for planetary missions. I was Deputy Principal Investigator on the Science Team for the MESSENGER mission, which orbited the planet Mercury from 2011-2015. I am also a member of the X-ray spectrometer team for the ESA/JAXA Mercury mission, BepiColombo, which was launched in November 2018. and I am a NASA Participating Scientist on JAXA's Hayabusa2 asteroid sample return mission.