Roger Clark
Senior Scientist
Professional History
Dr. Clark has made numerous discoveries throughout the Solar System as first author or co-author, including, adsorbed water and hydroxyl on the lunar surface, organic compounds and methane/ethane lakes on Saturn's moon Titan, water ice and the purity of ice on outer planet satellites and Saturn’s rings, phyllosilicate minerals on Mars and others. He has developed new algorithms for imaging spectroscopy analysis for detecting trace compounds in complex environments. He has led research on the optical properties of minerals for remote sensing applications on the Earth and planets. He has led research with imaging spectroscopy to map minerals, plants, and man-made materials on the Earth. Dr. Clark has long involvement with missions. He was a team member on the Soviet Mars 94 joint US/France/USSR Omega-VIMS instrument. He was a Team Member on the NASA Comet Rendezvous and Asteroid Fly-by mission (later cancelled), Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer. He was a member of the Flight Investigation Team for the NASA Earth Observation System, High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer. He was an Adjunct member of the Galileo NIMS team. He was a Co-Investigator on the NASA Mars Observer mission, Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Launch, 9/92), and replaced by the Mars Global Surveyor (launch 1996). He was a Co-Investigator on the Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (completed 2010). He is a Co-Investigator on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, CRISM (active mission). He is also a team member on the Cassini mission to Saturn, Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (active mission). Dr. Clark led the USGS environmental assessment of the World Trade Center disaster using imaging spectroscopy and field sampling (2001-2002). He also led the investigation and derived new methods to determine how much oil was on the ocean's surface in a rapid response action to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil spill.