People

Michelle Thompson

Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences

Dr. Thompson's CV (PDF), Email: mthompson@purdue.edu

Dr. Michelle Thompson grew up in Canada and received BSc degrees in Geological Engineering and Biology from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Her interest in planetary science was sparked when she completed internships in NASA Johnson Space Center and the Royal Ontario Museum. She then completed her MSc and PhD in Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona before moving on to a NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship at Johnson Space Center. Michelle came to Purdue as an Assistant Professor in 2018. The recipient of a NASA Early Career Fellowship, her work focuses on understanding the alteration of airless body surfaces, a process known as space weathering. Michelle uses experimental laboratory techniques to simulate airless body surface conditions and compares these results to the analysis of returned samples from the Moon and near-Earth asteroids.

Nicolas Bott

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Nicolas' CV (PDF), Email: nbott@purdue.edu

Nicolas spent the major part of his curriculum in France, where he was born. He received a BS in Fundamental Physics in 2014 from the Université Paris-Sud. Passionate about astrophysics since the high school, he specialized in planetary science before a PhD about Mercury’s surface at the Laboratoire d’Études Spatiales et d’Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA) in Meudon, France. At Purdue, Nicolas will analyze the microstructural and chemical alterations caused by both ions irradiation and pulsed-laser irradiation on Mercury analogs samples to investigate the space weathering occuring at the surface of the innermost planet of our Solar system.

James McFadden

PhD Candidate

James McFadden's CV (PDF), Email: mcfadde8@purdue.edu

Growing up in Venice Beach, California, James received his AA in General Sciences before honing the skills of his passion in Earth and Planetary sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz where he received his BS in Earth Science with a Planetary Focus. After graduating in 2017, he worked as an Earth and Space Science teacher while volunteering time to work with his undergraduate adviser analyzing spectral features on the Lunar surface with respect to space weathering. In 2019 he presented his work at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference and published his first paper. At Purdue University he is working with Apollo Mission lunar core samples to analyze regolith alteration due to space weathering.

Alexander Kling

PhD Candidate

Alexander Kling's CV (PDF), Email: klinga@purdue.edu

Alexander is originally from New York City and received his BS in Geology from Stony Brook University in 2020. His undergraduate research focused primarily on building reflectance and emission spectral libraries relevant to airless bodies and included two REU's at the American Museum of Natural History and Northern Arizona University. At Purdue, he is working to understand the origin of water within lunar soils using electron microscopy techniques and atom probe and relating those to space weathering features. This work will help constrain models mapping the distribution and abundance of water across the lunar surface. Alexander has a passion for science communication and enjoys cooking, hiking, drawing, and writing in his free time.

Lisette Melendez

PhD Student

Lisette's Personal Website, Email: melendl@purdue.edu

Lisette completed their B.S. in Geology and Astronomy at the University of South Florida in 2021. Their past research includes studying the boulder morphology of asteroid Bennu and its possible links to carbonaceous chondrites found within the collections of the Smithsonian NMNH, as well as examining the effects of paraglaciation across the mid-latitudes of Mars. Currently, Lisette is working on characterizing the effects of space weathering in samples from asteroid Ryugu - and soon, asteroid Bennu! - using transmission electron microscopy.

Kaitlyn Sycko

Senior in Geology & Geophysics and Planetary Science

Kaitlyn is working with PhD student Alexander Kling using scanning electron microscopy to characterize space weathered lunar grains and identify unique grain surface morphologies.

Laura Chaves

PhD in Planetary Science, 2023

Laura received her BS in Geology in 2018 from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. In 2017 she was a visiting scholar at EAPS and did her undergrad thesis in a mineral analysis of a Martian impact crater using remote sensing data. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student interested in how sulfides and Fe-oxides contribute to the space weathering of Asteroidal regoliths, using analog materials and naturally space weathered samples from S-type asteroid Itokawa. Besides academia, she enjoys music, visit art museums, collect colorful minerals, be involved in science communication and advocate for education. Laura graduated with her PhD in 2023 and will soon be starting as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona working on Bennu samples returned by the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Dara Laczniak

PhD in Planetary Science, 2023

Dara is a Las Vegas native. She received a BS in Geology from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2018. At Purdue, her research aims to understand how space weathering — more specifically, solar wind irradiation — alters the chemistry, microstructure, and spectral signature of carbon-rich asteroidal regoliths. To accomplish this goal, Dara analyzes experimentally space-weathered analog materials with a variety of microscopy and spectroscopy techniques. Results from her work will inform the laboratory analysis of returned samples from the OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 missions. Dara has a background in musical theater and enjoys using the skills she gained from her theater training to better communicate and teach science to public audiences. Dara graduated with her PhD in 2023 and is now a full-time Lecturer of Geology in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Queens College in New York.

• Maizey Benner '21 Planetary Science and Physics, Purdue University (now a PhD student at the University of Arizona)