Vicki Hansen

Hansen graduated from Carleton College; she earned an M.S. from the University of Montana, and PhD from UCLA. She served as assistant to full Professor at Southern Methodist University before moving to the University of Minnesota Duluth where she is the McKnight Presidential Endowed Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Hansen participated in field-based research with the USGS in Alaska, Arizona, California and Washington. She has also conducted field work in Antarctica, Australia, Minnesota, and Yukon, and she has conduct ‘remote’ field studies across much of Venus. Hansen’s Venus research is ‘field-based’ in that her investigations are rooted in regional relations gleaned from detailed geologic mapping and structural analysis of the Venusian surface. This approach follows on Hansen’s training as a boots-on-the-ground geologist, in which the rock record forms the foundation. On Venus, Hansen employs NASA Magellan Mission data, with the goal to develop a comprehensive understanding of the global evolution of Venus through time. Venus preserves a unique and critical record of geodynamic processes through time that is, overall, a more complete geologic surface record than on Earth. Despite being similar in size, density, bulk composition, and distance from the Sun, Earth’s sister Venus never developed plate tectonics or a global water cycle. Today these siblings are extremely different but, like sisters, they were likely similar during their early years. Hansen’s research explores Earth and Venus in a powerful compare and contrast, using Venus’ geologic record to potentially fill in missing gaps in Earth’s early history; and using our rich understanding to Earth’s geodynamic processes as clues to understand Venus. Discovery of the nature of once active but now extinct tectonic processes that shaped Venus provides insight about operative processes during early Earth evolution.