Ben Cardenas
I am excited to have established the Planetary Sedimentology Lab (PSL) at Penn State. Members of the PSL work to understand how the sedimentary record reflects the evolution of ancient landscapes on Earth, Mars, and other rocky planets and moons. We take a wide array of approaches to understand Earth’s sedimentary record including field geology, 3-D seismic interpretation of Earth’s subsurface, numerical modeling, remote sensing, and the investigation of modern sedimentary systems. The Earth-based research we do continually proves to be useful in our reconstructions of the histories of Mars and other planets and moons from satellite and rover data, and the data limitations in planetary science often motivate interesting investigations of Earth’s sedimentary record.
I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and received my B.S. in geology from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2012. During this time, I developed an interest in planetary geology, geomorphology, and remote sensing. I pursued and expanded these research interests in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, where I received my M.S. in 2014 and Ph.D. in 2019. During my postdoctoral appointment at the California Institute of Technology, I became involved in rover operations and science, and received an NSF postdoctoral fellowship.
Antonia Hadjimichael
I am an interdisciplinary scientist studying complex human-earth systems, with a particular interest in water resources planning under uncertainty. My toolkit includes multiobjective evolutionary optimization, machine learning, visual analytics and high performance computing. My research tries to shed light on how human and earth systems interact across scales. I am most interested in how their interactions shape human impacts, such as drought conditions in the Southwest or sea-level rise at the coasts. At Penn State, I hope to interact broadly with water and climate experts on campus and contribute to the college’s curriculum with new courses on data analytics and visualization.
I hold a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Leicester, and an M.Sc. in environmental modeling from University College London, both in the United Kingdom I also earned a Ph.D. in water science and technology from the University of Girona in Spain. I have also been a postdoctoral associate in the Reed Group at Cornell University. I serve as chair of communications for the Society for Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty, on the facilitation team for the MultiSector Dynamics Community of Practice, and I have recently been elected to Penn State’s Water Council.
In my spare time I enjoy foraging, cooking, and online communities. I grew up on the beautiful island of Cyprus, and have lived in the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, and now the United States.
Tushar Mittal
I am a geophysicist who uses geophysics and fluid dynamics to investigate a wide range of problems on Earth and on other planets and moons. When I was growing up, my dream was to become an astronaut, which transitioned as I got older into an interest in everything related to space. During my undergraduate studies in physics at Johns Hopkins University, I conducted research in planet formation processes and asteriod/Kuiper belts around other stars while starting to learn about earth science on our own planet as well doing lab experiments. These introduced me to magmatic processes, and I was immediately excited in working on these processes both on Earth as well as in the solar system. In graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley my Ph.D. dissertation project focused on developing process-scale models of magmatic processes, especially for the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth history—continental flood basalts. I still have kept a few astrophysics projects going—including studying Mars’ moons, icy ocean worlds such as the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn), as well as studying the dust mineralogy in protoplanetary disks using various space telescopes.
My primary research focus at present is investigating the evolution of magmatic systems—thermo-mechanical evolution, mush melt transport, and eruption dynamics of crustal magmatic systems both on land and underwater. On the astrophysics side, I have active projects on icy satellite geophysics and ocean-hydrothermal dynamics, geochemical evolution of planetary cores, and planetesimal/asteroid formation. Alongside my research at Penn State, I am looking forward to teaching courses in volcanology and geophysics.
My long-term research goal is to understand how the environment and ecosystems on Earth, and other planetary bodies, evolve through time. My research encompasses two primary topics: volcano science (magmatic processes, submarine volcanism) and planetary geophysics (planet formation and geodynamics, planetary science), along with cross-disciplinary work on volcano/tectonic-climate interactions (climate interactions). I use two complementary approaches: 1) developing idealized models and 2) analyzing large observational datasets. I specialize in using fluid dynamics and thermo-mechanical theory, and some analog experiments, from earth science, astrophysics, and engineering, as well as data-driven approaches like machine learning to develop intermediate complexity models that span a wide range of material properties and dynamics.
Anastasia Piliouras
I grew up in the Hudson Valley in New York. Despite the beautiful setting, I never had much appreciation for or experience with the outdoors during my childhood. I initially pursued an undergraduate degree in systems engineering but quite randomly happened upon a geomorphology class during my sophomore year that set me on a new path. I earned a B.A. in earth science and a minor in music from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011. During my undergraduate career, I completed an internship at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which instilled my interest in coastal processes. Following graduation, I attended the University of Texas at Austin, where I earned a Ph.D. in geological sciences in 2016. Though I had always been interested in a career in academia, I chose to pursue a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory, drawn by their extensive research in Arctic and Antarctic climate change. I worked at Los Alamos for more than five years, first as a postdoc and then as a staff scientist, expanding my research into high latitude processes and remote sensing, before joining the faculty at Penn State in January 2022.
My research utilizes physical experiments, modeling, field work, and remote sensing to better understand the morphodynamics of fluvial, deltaic, and coastal systems; and interactions between vegetation, hydrology, climate, and surface processes. Understanding these complex interactions is essential for predicting landscape change, especially in a changing climate, and requires investigation across a broad range of temporal and spatial scales using a mixture of observational and modeling techniques. The goal is to understand not only how landscapes evolve but also how the processes and process interactions that shape landscapes change under different conditions. Given the rapid warming in the Arctic, much of my work is focused on high latitude landscapes, but I’m interested in morphodynamics, ecogeomorphology, hydrologic connectivity, and coastal change at
all latitudes.
NEW STAFF
Nicole Cambridge, Administrative Support Assistant
Suzanne Godissart, Alumni Relations and Stewardship Coordinator
Amy Hasan, Administrative Support Coordinator 5