Department Staff Growing

April 5, 2004

New staff members will join the Department of Space Studies between April 4 and May 15, 2004, and we also have had several new additions recently. First to come aboard will be Dr. Cathy Olkin, and MIT graduate will work on various planetary astronomy observing projects with Dr. Eliot Young and as a mission scientist on New Horizons with Drs. Alan Stern and Leslie Young. Two weeks later, Dr. Kandis Lea Jessup, a graduate of the University of Michigan and an expert in spectroscopy, will join the Department. Dr. Jessup will work with Dr. John Spencer, whom she had postdoced for at Lowell Observatory since 2002 before Dr. Spencer joined SwRI. Finally, in mid-May, Dr. Erika Barth will join the department to work with Dr. Scot Rafkin. Dr. Barth took her PhD training at the University of Colorado in Boulder, defending her thesis this year. Her specialty is the microphysical modeling of clouds, which she and Dr. Rafkin will together apply to a Titan general circulation model. Along with John Spencer, we also recently welcomed Dr. Bob Grimm, who is working on Mars geophysics and hydrogeology, and Dr. Keith Harrison.