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- Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science (APS) assistant professor Haley Sapers was announced as a new investigator for the Joint Genome Institute’s 2026 Community Science Program portfolio. Every year, the institute selects biological and environmental research proposals from investigators who have not led institute-accepted projects before. The decision will give Sapers access to five years of high-throughput metagenomic sequencing for her project, titled “Characterizing functional potential of microbial dark matter in permafrost hosted methane seep cold springs.”
- Multiple APS faculty members and students presented at the 57th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. Those who presented includes:
- Professor Christopher Edwards, research professor Will Grundy, Radiant Center senior research scientist Chris Haberle, professor Mark Loeffler, assistant professor Alicia Rutledge, associate professor Mark Salvatore and assistant research professor Jean-Francois Smekens.
- Graduate students Amelia Ascione, Anna Baker, Rachel Fry and Emily Kriner
- Undergraduate student Aubrey Schrameck
- APS graduate student Alicia Allen co-wrote the paper “Mobilization of Unconsolidated Granular Material on Asteroid (101955) Bennu by Spacecraft Interaction,” published in Special Communication. The paper uses data from the OSIRIS-REx mission and detailed modeling to make discoveries about granular material from Bennu, a small asteroid.
- APS doctoral students Sam Hemmelgarn and Katie Breeland-Newcomb; alumni Hanna Zigo, Mitch Magnuson and Brian Burt; postdoctoral scholar Annika Gustafsson; former postdoctoral scholar Michael Mommert; and associate professor Cristina Thomas co-wrote the paper “NEO Colors from The Mission Accessible Near-Earth Object Survey (MANOS),” published in The Planetary Science Journal. The paper presents data on the spectrophotometric griz colors of 189 near-Earth objects collected through MANOS.
- Thomas also co-authored the papers “Isotopic Signature of Organic Molecules from Beyond the Solar System: An Enriched Methane D/H Ratio in the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS” and “Coma Physics of an Interstellar Object: JWST Spatial-Spectral Mapping of 3I/ATLAS,” published in Nature Astronomy and The Astrophysical Journal Letters, respectively.