I am a second-year graduate student in the Department of Planetary Sciences at The University of Arizona under the research advisement of Dr. Vishnu Reddy. My research resides in searching for linkages between the meteorites that fall onto Earth to their parent asteroids in the Solar System. Meteorites that arrive to Earth carry with them the history and chemical composition of various objects in the Solar System. They provide us with direct samples of their parent asteroids to be remotely studied here on Earth. To discover the linkages between meteorites and their parent asteroids I use spectroscopic techniques in visible and near-infrared wavelengths.

One of my major science career inspirations is to teach and give back to the community that helped foster my own love for planetary science. The Flandrau Science Center & Planetarium fosters such an environment here at The University of Arizona, and I am honored to be partnering with them in addition to NASA Space Grant for this project. My NASA Space Grant project is the construction of a ‘Meteorite Planetarium Module’, where I have the opportunity to teach the public about meteorites, and more specifically to visualize real meteorite data and information in a full 40-foot planetarium dome. My goal is to teach the public and young students the strange wonders of meteorites and the information they encompass about the Solar System through the various types of meteorite data and techniques. Meteorite data will be visualized and displayed in the full dome, and will be offered within planetarium shows to the general public as well as local Southern Arizona school groups. Much of the meteorite data will be from here at The University of Arizona, highlighting the longstanding involvement of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory towards planetary and space sciences. As an undergraduate student, I worked at the Flandrau planetarium and also participated in the undergraduate NASA Space Grant program. Now as a graduate student in the program, I can bring these two critical components that nurtured my own career into a merged experience between science education and research.