Dr. Elisabetta Pierazzo Senior Scientist Planetary Science Institute betty @psi.edu

Research Interests:

• Impact cratering of planetary surfaces
• Role of impacts in the development and evolution of Planetary Biospheres
• Climatic Effects of large impacts
• Equations of state of materials of geologic interest

Dr. Pierazzo has been modeling impact events on the Earth and other planetary surfaces. The advantage of modeling real terrestrial impact events, like those that produced structures like Chicxulub, Vredefort, Ries, and Canyon Diablo, is that there is ample observational data to compare the modeling results to. She is also involved in modeling impact cratering on other planetary surfaces, like Mars, the Moon, Europa, and asteroids.

In particular, Dr. Pierazzo has been interested in the effects of impacts on the evolution of the environment and climate, and on the origin and evolution of life.

For more information, see Elisabetta Pierazzo's Home Page .