Kudos to these faculty, staff, students and programs.
Do you have a spotlight item to share with the NAU community?
E-mail your announcements to Inside@nau.edu, or use our online submission form.
- Cristina Thomas, associate professor in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science (DAPS), co-authored an article on a report of observations based on the effectiveness of the kinetic impactor for planetary defense and its coordinated campaign of lightcurve photometry.
- DAPS Ph.D. graduate Amber Young, former assistant professor, Ty Robinson, and DAPS Ph.D. student James Windsor co-authored “Inferring Chemical Disequilibrium Biosignatures for Proterozoic Earth-Like Exoplanets.” This article highlights their research detecting chemical disequilibrium biosignatures and its usefulness and metabolism-agnostic approach to biosignature detection.
- Recent Ph.D. graduates Will Oldroyd and Colin Chandler, associate professor Chad Trujillo, Ph.D. student Will Burris, undergraduate student Jarod DeSpain and graduate student Kennedy Farrell authored a new paper announcing the discovery of recurring activity on quasi-Hilda 2009 DQ118.
- Young and Robinson recently co-authored an article, “Retrievals Applied To A Decision Tree Framework Can Characterize Earth-like Exoplanet Analogs.” This astrophysics article details the development of a newly adopted biosignature decision tree strategy that enables the search for life beyond our solar system.
- Recent Ph.D. student Catherine Clark co-authored, “The POKEMON Speckle Survey of Nearby M dwarfs. II. Observations of 1124 Targets.” This article covers detailed observations on Stellar multiplicity measurements for M dwarfs using the POKEMON (Pervasive Overview of Kompanions of Every M-dwarf in Our Neighborhood) survey.
- Thomas co-authored a paper expanding on her recent collaboration article about the intentional impact on Dimorphos, “Near to Mid-infrared Spectroscopy of (65803) Didymos as Observed by JWST: Characterization Observations Supporting the Double Asteroid Redirection Test.” This article expands on the observed reflectance and physical properties that the Didymos system has, categorizing it as a good proxy for the type of ordinary chondrite asteroids that cross near-Earth space, and an accurate representative of future impactors.
- Faculty member Joshua Emery and Ph.D student Audrey Martin co-authored the article “JWST near-infrared spectroscopy of the Lucy Jupiter Trojan flyby targets: Evidence for OH absorption, aliphatic organics, and CO2,” which discussed the researchers’ observations of the five Trojan asteroids oribiting Jupiter that will be visited by the Lucy Spacecraft.
- MS alumnus Kyle Pearson co-authored “Mapping “Brain Coral” Regions on Mars using Deep Learning,” an article that discussed researchers using neural networks to analyze surface regions that have “Brain Coral” terrain, an indicator of freeze/thaw cycles on Mars, which may lead to evidence of life on the planet.
- Larry Sideman, clinical professor in the Clinical Psychology program at the North Valley campus was invited by Gov. Katie Hobbs to serve on the Board of Psychologist Examiners, pending Senate confirmation. The board regulates and licenses professions in psychology and behavior analysis.