What are
the main things you study? What are
the main things you study?
Volcanoes on Earth: How the lava flows erupt, flow and cool Volcanoes on Mars: Their shapes, topography, and how they are related to other landforms Impact Craters on Mars Other planetary surface and flow processes (wind, water...) to model surface features on Earth and Mars.
How did you get interested in this type of work?
I always was fascinated as a kid with the landforms around me and wondered how they got there. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, which has a LOT of geology visible in the mountains even to an untrained eye. Then, Mt St Helens erupted while I was in junior high school, and impressed me with its ability to alter life even far from its immediate surroundings. I went to college intending to major in geophysics to understand how the earth works. While there, I switched to a Geology major and astronomy and physics minors to accommodate a growing interest in geology on other planets. At the time, geology was a friendlier department to women than the physics department. My graduate degrees are in Earth and Planetary Sciences (MA) and Geophysics (PhD) from Johns Hopkins, and included a mix of traditional geology, planetary geology and geophysics, and quite a lot of engineering classes in flow and heat transfer to help me understand the physical processes I wanted to model.
What is your favorite thing about your research?
I love the fact that I can mix geology fieldwork, planetary missions and data, computational modeling, and experimental work to work on a problem from many different directions. I never get bored, and I really enjoy all of the different aspects of thinking about a research problem.
The picture is of me and my daughter Katrina (then 4 and a half) using differential global positioning system equipment to get detailed topography of a lava flow in the 2000-year-old Wapi lava flow field in the Snake River Plains, Idaho. Katrina has the GPS antenna, and I have the power supply and data logger. Katrina is-luckily-short enough that she does not interfere with the antenna top (I have to duck), and is a very patient field assistant.