Lindy Elkins-Tanton

Lindy Elkins-Tanton
Nationality American
Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Known for Director, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) of the Carnegie Institution for Science; Director, School of Earth and Space Science, Arizona State University
Scientific career
Fields Planetary Science
Institutions School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University; Carnegie Institution for Science; Brown University; St. Mary's College of Maryland

Lindy Elkins-Tanton is a planetary scientist with expertise in planet formation and evolution. She is the Director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona.

Dr. Elkins-Tanton is the Principal Investigator of NASA's Psyche mission to explore the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche. On January 4, 2017, NASA announced the mission had been selected to proceed to mission formulation.[1][2] The mission will launch in the summer of 2022 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026 with a Mars gravity assist in 2023.

She is also a Founder of and the Higher Education Lead for Beagle Learning, which provides software tools and coaching that make exploration-based learning techniques accessible.

Career

Dr. Elkins-Tanton earned her B.S. in geology, M.S. in geochemistry, and Ph.D. in geology, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was a professor at MIT, a research scientist at Brown University, and a lecturer at St. Mary's College of Maryland, and worked in the business world for a number of years. Within 10 years of completing her Ph.D. and serving as an associate professor in geology at MIT, she was recruited to the directorship position at Carnegie's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Her appointment as Director of ASU's School of Earth and Space Science took effect on July 1, 2014.[3]

Awards and honors

Among her many awards, Elkins-Tanton was twice named a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow. She was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2008 and was named Outstanding MIT Faculty Undergraduate Research Mentor in 2009.[4] In 2013, she was named an Astor Fellow at the University of Oxford hosted by Tamsin Mather. In 2016 she was named a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. In 2010, she was awarded the Explorers Club Lowell Thomas prize for Exploring Extinction[5]. In addition to these prestigious honors, Asteroid 8252 Elkins-Tanton was named after her.[6]

Selected publications

  • Elkins-Tanton, Linda (2010). The Solar System Six-Volume Set. Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-8160-8347-3.
  • Elkins-Tanton, Linda; Schmidt, Anja; Fristad, Kirsten (2015). Volcanism and Global Environmental Change. Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 978-1107058378.

References

  1. ↑ "NASA announces five Discovery proposals selected for further study". 2015-09-30.
  2. ↑ "NASA Selects Two Missions to Explore the Early Solar System". NASA/JPL. Retrieved 2017-01-19.
  3. ↑ "ASU News - Science & Tech: ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration appoints new director".
  4. ↑ "School of Earth and Space Exploration". sese.asu.edu. Retrieved 2016-09-14.
  5. ↑ "The Explorers Club - About - The Lowell Thomas Award". explorers.org. Retrieved 2018-10-13. line feed character in |title= at position 32 (help)
  6. ↑ "NASA/JPL Small-Body Database Browser: 8252 Elkins-Tanton (1981 EY14)".
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