Our Team Member

victoria.hartwick@swri.org

Victoria Hartwick

Sr. Research Scientist
Solar System Science and Exploration Division

About

Victoria Hartwick is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Space Studies of the Solar System Science and Exploration Division at Southwest Research Institute. Her research focuses on planetary atmospheres and the climate impacts of atmospheric aerosols, including mineral dust and clouds, across Mars, Titan, and terrestrial exoplanets. On Mars, her work has examined aerosol feedbacks on surface conditions, including the generation of global dust storms, and has highlighted the role of meteoric smoke particles as ice nuclei for mesospheric cloud formation. Building on this foundational Mars work, she has led research efforts to characterize the climate and habitability of terrestrial dust worlds: exoplanets whose climates are controlled by the radiative influence of atmospheric dust, including work on the stabilizing role of dust on tidally locked planets in the habitable zones of M-dwarf stars with tenuous atmospheres. Her exoplanet research is aimed at providing useful constraints for future direct imaging observations of Earth analogs, diverse habitable world candidates and potential Earth-like spectral doppelgängers. Her recent work has turned to Titan, where 1-D and large-eddy simulation studies of the Huygens and Dragonfly landing sites have evaluated how methane evaporation from regolith pore space shapes the development of the planetary boundary layer and the evolution of turbulent eddies. Hartwick received her BS in Astronomy and Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin Madison and her Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder.