Dr. Lior Rubanenko

The surfaces of Earth and the terrestrial planets record the history of their formation and evolution in an archive of cryogenic, hydrologic, and atmospheric interactions. As a planetary scientist, my goal is to decipher this archive by employing physical theory and computational models, machine learning (ML) and data science techniques to characterize geophysical processes on a global scale. As a co-investigator on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft, I study the link between topographic roughness, radiation and temperature – and the stability of ice within cold traps: extreme thermal environments that preserve water and cometary organics for billions of years.