Starmus VI
Bethany Ehlmann is a Professor of Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology and a Research Scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is a President of the Planetary Society Associate Director, Keck Institute for Space Studies at Caltech. She received her Bachelor of Arts in 2004 from Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests include planetary surface processes, infrared spectroscopy, the evolution of Mars, chemical weathering and hydrothermal alteration, and the development of planetary science instrumentation. She was a Collaborator on the Mars Exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity during their primary and first extended missions. She is presently a Co-Investigator for the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, Participating Scientist on the Mars Science Laboratory mission Curiosity rover, Co-Investigator on the Mastcam-Z and SHERLOC instruments for the Mars-2020 rover, and an affiliate of the Dawn science team for its exploration of the dwarf planet Ceres. She is a 2013 National Geographic Emerging Explorer, a former Mineralogical Society of America Distinguished Lecturer, a recipient of the American Geophysical Union’s Macelwane medal, the American Astronomincal Society Planetary Science Division Urey medal, and COSPAR’s Zeldovich medal, as well as NASA Group Achievement Awards. Previously, she was a European Union Marie Curie Fellow at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay, France. She earned her Ph.D. and master’s in geological sciences from Brown University, holds masters degrees from the University of Oxford in Environmental Change and Management and Geography, and her undergraduate degree is from Washington University in St. Louis.
