Recent Group News

• June 2026: Mariana Blanco-Rojas begins a summer internship with the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the United States Congress.  Thank you for your active support of federal science funding!

• May 2026: Brianne Checketts wins the Dwornik Award for Best Graduate Student talk at the March 2026 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference for her presentation "Porous water ice deposits at the Martian poles"!  

• April 2026: Ian Pamerleau defends his PhD thesis "Interior structures of non-tidally heated icy worlds from geophysical models".  Ian is moving to Cornell University to begin his postdoc!

• April 2026: Abbey Dunnigan's paper "Interior models of Mercury and conditions for iron snow formation in a Fe-S-Si core" is published in JGR-Planets.

• March 2026: The group attends the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, presenting on the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and physics informed neural network techniques applied to planetary geophysics.

• March 2026: Ian Pamerleau's paper "Asymmetric crater relaxation on an ice-rich Ceres driven by insolation" is published in JGR-Planets.

• March 2026: Mariana Blanco-Rojas gives an invited seminar to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory on the thermal evolution of the Uranian moons.

• February 2026: The paper "Distribution of buried volcanic deposits in the Schiller-Schickard region of the Moon" is published in PSJ – it is led by Mike Sori with contributions from undergrad researchers Shivani Patwardhan and Will Vanderwarker, grad student Brianne Checketts, and former postdoc Kristel Izquierdo.

• February 2026: Mariana Blanco-Rojas is recognized by AGU for science leadership as part of its Local Science Partners program.

• January 2026: Mariana Blanco-Rojas passes her preliminary exams to PhD candidacy! 

• December 2025: Mike Sori and fellow Purdue faculty Stephanie Olson published a perspective in Nature Astronomy on "Europa's thick lid" based on recent results from NASA's Juno mission.

• October 2025: Mike Sori's paper "An orbital gravity mission could decipher the global dichotomy on Mars" is published in Nature Geoscience.

• September 2025: Mariana Blanco-Rojas and Mike Sori attend the Keck Institute workshop on Interplanetary Laser Trilateration Networks in Pasadena, California.

• September 2025: The group attends the Europlanet Science Congress meeting in Helsinki, Finland, presenting on Mars, Ceres, and icy moons.

• July 2025: Ian Pamerleau discusses with the SETI Institute the evolution of Ceres and its ancient ocean.

• July 2025: Abbey Dunnigan is awarded a Fellowship from the Indiana Space Grant Consortium!

• June 2025: Stephanie Menten defends her PhD thesis "Geodynamic processes and volcanism on icy bodies in the outer Solar System".  Stephanie was awarded the Krimigis Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory and is moving to APL for her postdoc!

• June 2025: Ian Pamerleau begins the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Planetary Science Summer School, designing a mission concept to visit Neptune's moon Triton.

• May 2025: Ian Pamerleau is awarded the 2025 Pellas-Ryder Award for the most outstanding paper led by a graduate student in the past year!

• April 2025: Eva Petrini's paper "Layered remnant deposits in Hellas Planitia, Mars as the remains of ancient ice mounds" is published in Icarus.

• March 2025: The group attends the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, presenting on the Moon, Mars, Ceres, Europa, Callisto, and Mimas.

• February 2025: Mike Sori leads the first-ever "Advancing Space Exploration at Purdue" symposium, including speakers from across the community like JPL Director Laurie Leshin and Astronaut Drew Feustel.

• December 2024: Mariana Blanco-Rojas, Stephanie Menten, and Mike Sori attend the AGU Fall Meeting in Washington DC, presenting on icy moon geophysics.

• September 2024: Ian Pamerleau's paper "An ancient and impure frozen ocean on Ceres implied by its ice-rich crust" is published in Nature Astronomy.  The paper received additional coverage in Nature Astronomy and Nature.

• August 2024: Brianne Checketts and Abbey Dunnigan begin their PhDs in the group as graduate students. Welcome!

• August 2024: Mariana Blanco-Rojas AND (!!) Brianne Checketts win the Dwornik Awards for Best Graduate Student talk and Best Undergraduate Student talk at the March 2024 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference for their presentations.

• July 2024: Mike Sori attends the Mars Polar Science Conference in the Yukon, Canada.

• July 2024: Mike Sori attends the 10th Mars International Conference in Pasadena, California.

• July 2024: Stephanie Menten's paper "Volatile transport on Ariel and implications for the origin and distribution of carbon dioxide on Uranian moons" is published in JGR-Planets.  The paper received an Editor's Highlight in EOS.