In April 2014 we launched our first call for grant applications. This opportunity was to help award grant funds for planetary science graduate students to use for travel expenses to present their research.

In June we reviewed all of the applicants and were thrilled to award 11 students with travel grants.

As an update, we want to share an example of an experience of one of our winning students.

Catherine M Elder is a graduate student at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at University of Arizona working with Adam Showman. As an undergraduate, she majored in astronomy at Cornell University.

Her thesis work focuses on understanding how Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io loses its internal heat. Most rocky bodies lose their internal heat through mantle convection beneath a stagnant lid (a crust), but Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, loses most of its internal heat through volcanic eruption. For her PhD. work, Catherine is studying convection and the generation and migration of magma in Io’s mantle to understand how the presence of magma affects mantle convection and planetary heat loss. In our solar system this process is only important on Io right now, but it may have been important for other rocky bodies earlier in solar system history, and it could be important on exoplanets today.

Catherine’s Uwingu travel grant was used to enable her attendance at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting where she presented a talk entitled, “Convection and Melt Migration in Io’s Mantle.” She also won the “outstanding student paper award” in the plenary science category, congratulations Catherine!

For more information about Catherine’s work, you can read her AGU presentation abstract here: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm14/meetingapp.cgi#Paper/27691

We are pleased to have supported Catherine and congratulate her again on her success!