Welcome to my website. I am a planetary scientist working at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C., where I am the Deputy Program Scientist on the Mars2020 rover mission. My fields of research include Mars, astrobiology and remote sensing spectroscopy. On this website you'll find an introduction to my research, including my community products, as well as my research papers and projects.

Recent News

+August 2025 - Happy Science Week Australia, and here's a little note from Syracuse!

+March 2025 - Happy to announce the arrival of a new paper at Earth and Space Sciences on Resolving Asymmetric Spectral Bands!

+ November 2024 - I was very happy to speak in person to the Sydney Girls Schools that designed an ISS experiment that flew to space the day I was there. I also spoke to Dr Lucy and Dr Karl on JJJ and gave them the latest Mars news!

+ August 2024 - For Australian Science Week, I was very happy to speak to Cameron Furlong at 2SER - here is the audio! I also gave a talk at the Melbourne Planetarium on the latest Mars2020 news!

+ March 2024 - I have made material for the springtime CROCUS line calculations of my 2010 south polar and 2012 north polar papers available on Harvard Dataverse, have is a link to north pole calculations and here is a link to south pole calculations!

+October 2023 - I did an online chat on JJJ with Dr Karl and also recorded another shirtloads of science episode with him too, here is a link to our JJJ conversation !

+May 2023- I did an interview with the American Geophysical Union Story Corps, you can find it here!

+February 2023 - We have finished the first cache for the Mars Sample Return mission. See the blogs here and here.

+December 2022 - Dr. Karl just bought out an inteview we did about the progress of the Mars2020 rover Part 1 and Part 2 here!

+October 2022 - It was great to talk with Dr. Lucy and Dr. Karl on JJJ!

+ 20 Feb 2022 - It was a great opportunity to talk to kids about the M2020 Mission at USS Intrepid Museum! Thanks to the Intrepid staff and Sarah Marcotte at JPL for organising!

+6 Nov 2021 - Just recorded an instructional video for Physics students with Dr Karl Kruszelnicki! Thanks Ben Newsome and Scott Sleep for organising!

+18 Feb 2021 - We've arrived at Mars at our spectacular new home! Check out more details here.

+ 2 Feb 2021 - I gave the public talk at the virtual COSPAR congress, check out the trailer here.

+ 17 Jan 2021 - Perseverance is almost to Mars - Landing on 18 Feb 2021 - check for progress here!

+ 13 Oct 2020 - Perseverance is now 42% of the way to Mars and we are now at opposition, so look for Mars in your evening sky!

+ 30 July 2020 - Congratulations Perseverance Team on an awesome launch!

+ 29 Jul 2020 - Go Perseverance! Launch day is tomorrow morning, and everyone is getting pumped Go to the launch site here for an out of this world experience. Also coming up is a talk to Australian school kids, here.

+ 02 Jul 2020 - Our EOS article just came out, it is a short 1500 word summary that highlights some of the findings of the JGR paper published earlier this year, and also talks about the similarities and differences between the ancient Pilbara rocks and the ancient Nili Fossae rocks. It also makes the point that both Earth and Mars were more similar at that time than they are today.

+ 28 Apr 2020 - I am now working on a Decadal Survey white paper focused on the science that could be gained by sending a multichannel, polarization sensitive LIDAR to Mars, as discussed in this paper. If you are interested in being a co-author or even just a collaborator on this white paper, feel free to email me and let me know! If you are working on a White paper that you think I might be interested in, please contact me!

+ 10 Apr 2020 - Dr. Carol Oliver, a Senior Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales, made me aware of a fantastic video that was made by her students regarding their investigations into the history of our understanding of the 3.5 billion year old Pilbara Region of Western Australia. If you are interested in the beginning of life and our history on this planet, I highly recommend you view it - they've made an effort to capture the science behind the ancient rocks as we understand it today, and still present a compelling and strongly resonating message that will stay with you long after you've closed up your computer. The students are Ashleigh Ford, Davey Dor and Mira Jordan (all University of New South Wales students).

Here is the link to the video on YouTube.

All three were students in Carol Oliver's final year astrobiology elective, BEES6741 Astrobiology: Life in the Universe. This unit is fully online, you can reach it here at the online course page. (BEES is School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences).

+ 8 Apr 2020 - NASA Astrobiology published a new article on the 'Serpentinisation and Astrobiological Potential of the Mars2020 landing site', which is a summary of our 2020 paper, please some more details.

+ 12 Mar 2020 - The SETI Institute published a new report on the paper, which is the result of work with the NAI node at the Institute. ' Mineral Link Identified Near Mars 2020 Landing Site ', SETI Institute News

+ 3 Mar 2020 - The Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) Planetary News published a short summary of the paper- An Olivine Protolith for Carbonate in Nili Fossae, Mars', LPI Planetary News

+ 21 Feb 2020 - AGU published our latest paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, available online as a free PDF here: 'Olivine-Carbonate Mineralogy of the Jezero Crater Region'

+ 24 Apr 2019 - We submitted our first version of the manuscript to JGR.

My current research focuses on the analysis of data from the Mars instrument "CRISM" which is onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (Mister Oh).

Here are two Wordle maps showing the frequency of usage of words in the abstracts of my first 10 scientific papers.

My scientific work involves understanding the way light interacts with solid surfaces. I'm interested in furthering our understanding of all aspects of the way electromagnetic waves interact with particulate surfaces (especially snow or ice packs, where we can characterise the components better than soils or rocks).

I completed my PhD studies at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology. If you are interested in my PhD research on hyperspectral mapping of ancient hydrothermal systems in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, you will find the web site, and many linked resources, here.