Rosaly Lopes
| Rosaly Lopes | |
|---|---|
| Born | Rosaly M. C. Lopes January 8, 1957 (age 60) Rio de Janeiro |
| Other names | Rosaly M. C. Lopes-Gautier |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Fields | Planetary geologist, volcanologist |
| Institutions | Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA |
| Alma mater | University College, University of London |
| Notable awards | 2005 Carl Sagan Medal; 2014 Lowell Thomas award from The Explorers Club |
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Website http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Lopes/ |
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 “Women at JPL - Rosaly Lopes, Planetary Geologist”, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA |
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“Through the Eyes of Scientists - Meet Rosaly Lopes”, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA |
Rosaly M. C. Lopes (born 8 January 1957 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a planetary geologist, volcanologist, an author of numerous scientific papers and several books, as well as a proponent of education. Her major research interests are in planetary and terrestrial surface processes with an emphasis on volcanology.
Early in life, Lopes lived near Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro. Inspired in part by NASA's Poppy Northcutt, she moved to London in England in 1975 to study astronomy at the University of London. She graduated with honours in astronomy in 1978. During her final semester, she took a planetary science course with John Guest – and three weeks into the course, Mount Etna exploded. Lopes decided to change her field of study to volcanoes, on earth and in space.
For her doctoral studies, she specialized in planetary geology and volcanology, completing her Ph.D. in Planetary Science in 1986 with a thesis on comparing volcanic processes on Earth and Mars. During her Ph.D. she travelled extensively to active volcanoes and became a member of the UK's Volcanic Eruption Surveillance Team. Her first experience of an active volcano was of Mount Etna in Sicily in 1979.
Lopes began her post doctorate career as the Curator of Modern Astronomy and Deputy Head of the Astronomy Section at the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, UK. In 1989 she performed hazard mapping at the Vesuvius Observatory in Naples, Italy as a Visiting Researcher.
She joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California as a National Research Council Resident Research Associate in 1989 and, after two years, became a member of the Galileo spacecraft project. She worked on the Near Infra-red Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) team planning and analyzing observations of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io from 1996 to 2001. She discovered 71 volcanoes on Io that had never before been detected as active.
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