Professor of Geophysics and Planetary Science
Over the course of my career, I have worked as an engineer designing rockets, as a scientist studying earthquake physics and asteroid impacts, and as an educator teaching geophysics and planetary science to undergraduate and graduate students.
For science and non-science majors to learn about how solar systems are born and die, the formation of rocky and giant planets, orbital mechanics, asteroid impacts, volcanism, atmospheres, planetary rings, moons, the hazards of space travel, and why Pluto IS a planet.
Geosciences in the Cinema is a science class about natural hazards for majors and non-majors based on the depictions of natural hazards in movies, focusing on the accuracy of the depictions, the underlying processes that control their formation, the dangers they present, and how students can prepare and keep themselves safe.
Students Taught Counter: 29,174 (as of 12/2024)
My group uses numerical models constrained by spacecraft observations to unravel the entire evolution of impact craters from excavation and modification of the first few hours through cooling and isostatic adjustment through the next hundreds of millions of years. Our studies have helped us understand the thermal and chemical properties of these bodies early in the Solar System and answer questions such as why lunar basins strong gravity signatures despite being basins and the origin of ghost craters form on Mercury.
My group using numerical models constrained by seismological and geodetic data to calculate stress changes caused by earthquakes and the resulting viscoelastic flow of deeper regions that follows. We use these stress changes to explain the triggering of earthquake sequences and to understand the rheology of the lower crust and upper mantle.
I spent the first decade of my career designing solid rocket motors and other space vehicles as an engineer working in industry. This included working on the fateful solid rocket boosters that lead to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster (not my fault) and the subsequent investigation and redesign effort.