As a research assistant, you are typically assigned a research topic with questions that the lead wants answered, but you can typically also add your own questions to be answered. As a research assistant to Dr. Lynnae Quick, I was assigned to explore the cryovolcanic domes that formed on Europa. More specifically, I am looking at the physical characteristics of the domes like their sizes (area, radius, height, etc), and I try to find if there are patterns of the domes like if they are constricted to a certain area of Europa. Also, I note the physical attributes of the domes to constrain models, so they do not use parameters that do not exist. After exploring correlations and the physical characteristics of the domes, I apply my own flexure (the process of the lithosphere bending from a weight, like a volcano/ dome) models to understand if local thinning exists and heat flow which helps gauge the activity on Europa. This work will aid Europa Clipper, a mission to have an orbiter at Europa, so the team can select specific locations to focus measurements/ imagers to image. This work will also aid any future missions including an Europan lander.

As a graduate student/ research assistant at the University of Alabama, I will be using the magnetic field data currently available from Messenger, a mission to Mercury, and Galileo, a mission to the Jovian system, to create high resolution crustal magnetic field models for local sections of Mercury and Ganymede. This will be done using the method that my advisor, Dr. Alain Plattner, and Dr. Frederick Simmons which use cognizant gradient vector Slepian functions. We want to learn about the magnetization of a body’s crust to understand crustal geology, regional tectonics, and more. This work will help predict crustal magnetization on Mercury and Ganymede, and it will serve as a precedent to future work that will be done with the European missions (BepiColombo to Mercury and JUICE to Ganymede).