Lindy Elkins-Tanton
| Lindy Elkins-Tanton | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Director, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) of the Carnegie Institution for Science; Director, School of Earth and Space Science, Arizona State University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Planetary Science |
| Institutions | School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University; Carnegie Institution for Science; Brown University; St. Mary's College of Maryland |
Lindy Elkins-Tanton is a planetary scientist with expertise in planet formation and evolution. She is the Director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona.
Lindy Elkins-Tanton earned her B.S. in geology, M.S. in geochemistry, and Ph.D. in geology, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was a professor at MIT, a research scientist at Brown University, and a lecturer at St. Mary's College of Maryland, and worked in the business world for a number of years. Within 10 years of completing her Ph.D. and serving as an associate professor in geology at MIT, she was recruited to the directorship position at Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Her appointment as Director of ASU’s School of Earth and Space Science took effect on July 1, 2014.
Lindy, the Principal Investigator, proposed a mission to NASA's Discovery Program called Psyche to explore the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche. On Sept 30, 2015, NASA announced that this mission was one of five finalist proposals, and on January 4, 2017, NASA announced the mission had been selected to proceed to mission formulation. The mission will launch in the summer of 2022 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026 with a Mars gravity assist in 2023.
Among her many awards, Elkins-Tanton was twice named a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow. She was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2008 and was named Outstanding MIT Faculty Undergraduate Research Mentor in 2009. In 2013, she was named the Astor Fellow at the University of Oxford in 2013. In addition to these prestigious honors, Asteroid 8252 Elkins-Tanton was named after her.
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