The University of Arkansas has produced many graduates who have gone on to successful careers in the space and planetary sciences.  Here is a partial list.  If you wish to be added to the list, or know someone who should be added to the list, please let us know.

Julie Chittenden (Ph.D. (2007))

Julie graduated with a Ph.D. in chemistry in May 2007.  She is a graduate of Arkansas State University with a bachelor's degree in chemistry.  Julie's thesis title was, "Investigation of the effect of dissolved salts, soil layers, and wind on the evaporation rate of water on Mars."  Her mentor was Dr. Derek Sears.

Lisa Billingsley (M.S. (2007))

Lisa graduated with a M.S. in space and planetary sciences in May 2007.  Lisa is a graduate of the University of Tulsa with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.  Lisa's primary research interests were the use of instruments and engineering for possible use on Mars.  Her thesis title was, "The Formation of Gullies on Mars."  Lisa's mentor was Dr. Larry Roe.

Donald D. Bogard (B.S. (1961), Ph.D. (1965))

Don’s wits were honed and his accent was refined at the University of Arkansas, where he received three degrees in chemistry, radiochemistry, and isotope geochemistry working with Paul Kuroda.  After a postdoctoral appointment at Caltech, he became a staff scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where he has spent his professional career.

Judging from the more than 40 papers he has published on the subject, Don’s chief interest lies in determining the chronologies and thermal histories of meteorite parent bodies.  By my count he has measured the 40Ar-39Ar ages of at least a hundred meteorites, which include samples from virtually all meteorite classes.  Working with numerous collaborators, he has deciphered the overlapping igneous, metamorphic, and collisional events that these meteorites experienced.  This research has documented that the ~4 Ga heavy bombardment that scared the face of the Moon affected the whole inner solar system.

Don has made substantive contributions to our understanding of noble gas nuclides produced by cosmic-ray exposure of meteorites in space, especially variations in nuclide production rates resulting from differences in chemical composition and shielding.  In 18 papers with long-time colleague Larry Nyquist and other collaborators, he has also catalogued the cosmogenic and trapped solar noble gases in Apollo soils and breccias, thereby elucidating the irradiation and mixing history of the lunar regolith.

At a Meteoritical Society meeting two decades ago, Don astounded a packed session by showing that a shergottite contained shock-implanted gas having the same composition as the martian atmosphere.  This discovery was to become the prime evidence that SNC meteorites are martian rocks.  Since then, he has published a dozen papers dealing with cosmogenic and trapped martian atmospheric gases in SNC meteorites.  He has used the noble gas composition of the trapped atmospheric component to constrain outgassing of the martian interior and evolution of the atmosphere through loss of light isotopes.

If that were not enough, Don has published papers on the composition of the solar wind and characteristics of energetic solar protons, the behavior of noble gases during shock implantation, the isotopic composition of fission and cosmogenic xenon and krypton, classical K-Ar dating of iron meteorites, and neutron capture effects in meteorites.  And all this while remaining one of the nicest, most unassuming and approachable people in the business.  In 2003, the Meteoritical Society awarded Don its highest scientific award, the Leonard Medal.

Melissa Jones (Ph.D. (2006))

Melissa graduated with a Ph.D. in space and planetary sciences in May 2006.  Melissa is a graduate of Loras College with a bachelor's degree in chemistry.  Melissa's research project focused on the investigation of surface processes on asteroids through laboratory and mission analyses and the development of sample collectors for asteroid sample return.  Her thesis title was, "Investigation of Surface Processes on Asteroids Through Laboratory & Mission Analyses."  Melissa's mentor was Dr. Derek Sears.

 

Shauntae Moore (Ph.D. (2005))

Shauntae Moore graduated with her Ph.D. in chemistry in May 2005.  The title of her thesis was, "Laboratory Studies in Planetary Science and Quantitative Analysis of Evaporation Rates Under Current Martian Conditions."  She now works as an analytical chemist at Bioengineering Resources in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Laurie Nash (M.S. (2006))

Laurie Nash graduated with her M.S. in space and planetary sciences in May 2006.  Laurie Nash is a graduate of the State University of New York in Buffalo with a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering.  She is employed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston at NASA's Mission Operations Directorate Division "Flight Design & Dynamics".  Laurie's research project focused on rendezvous dynamics.  Her thesis title was, "A survey of optical navigation techniques for autonomous rendezvous & a review of stratospheric ozone depletion studies due to rocket motor exhaust."  Laurie's mentor was Dr. Larry Roe.

Marvin Rowe (Ph.D. (1966))

Marvin Rowe obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Arkansas in 1966, having earned a B.S. at New Mexico Technology.  Between 1966 and 1968 he held a Miller Fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley after he obtained a faculty position at Texas A&M University where his research has concerned direct dating of prehistoric rock paintings; chemical analysis of archaeological artifacts for provenance determinations; study of solar system through mass spectrometric analysis of noble gases; scanning electron microprobe analyses of archaeological artifacts and meteorites.

He is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society and has received the Castleton Award and the Association of Former Students Teaching Award.

Office: (979) 845-1929  Fax: (979) 862-4719
Email:  Rowe@Mail.Chem.Tamu.Edu


James Sudermann (B.S.E.E. (1978))

Jim graduated from Acorn High School in rural Polk County in 1971 as a member of a class of 25 students.  He went on to receive his B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Arkansas in 1978 and an M.S. in space technology from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1987.

After graduating from the U of A, Jim took a job with the Hughes Aircraft Space and Communications Group in beautiful El Segundo, California, where he worked designing and operating test equipment for the Galileo Probe and the Ion Auxiliary Propulsion System projects.  Hungry for affordable housing closer to home, Jim and wife Beverly moved to Huntsville, Alabama, in 1981 to work for McDonnell Douglas on the Spacelab Project at the Marshall Space Flight Center.  In 1984, Jim accepted a position with NASA at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida working on the Spacelab program as a science experiment integration engineer.  He became the manager of the Spacelab Experiment Checkout Branch in 1991 and stayed in that position (with a small, temporary detour to the Space Station project) until the Spacelab program ended in 1997.  He currently works as a Control Systems Analyst for the Expendable Launch Vehicle Program Office and is greatly enjoying the return to technical engineering work.  His main area of interest is the modeling of the dynamics of spinning spacecraft and how their stability is affected by on-board fuel slosh.

James E. Sudermann
Control Systems Analysis
VB-A3, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Kennedy Space Center, Florida 32899
(321) 476-3669 office
James.Sudermann-1@ksc.nasa.gov

John Wasson (B.S. (1955))