2023 Pierazzo International Student Travel Award Winners Announced

The Pierazzo International Student Travel Award was established by PSI in memory of Senior Scientist Betty Pierazzo to support and encourage graduate students to build international collaborations and relationships in planetary science.

Bea Baharier will receive the award for a non-U.S.-based graduate student going to a planetary-related conference within the U.S., and Sarah Henderson will receive the award as a U.S.-based graduate student going to a planetary-related conference outside of the U.S.

Bea Baharier

Bea Baharier of Open University (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom) will attend the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, March 13-17, 2023. Her research title is "Terrestrial Aqueously Altered Magmatic Dike Forming Sulfate-Rich Hydrothermal Fluids to Constrain Martian Habitability.” Baharier's work contemplates putative past Martian hydrothermal environments' habitability as Mars evolved to the drier, colder environment of today, and lays constraints for identifying these changing Martian environments. Her work can be used as a comparison to future returned sample properties from Jezero Crater.

Sarah Henderson 

Sarah Henderson of the University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa) will attend the European Geophysical Union in Vienna, Austria, April 23-28, 2023. Her research title is "Influence of Magnetic Fields on Precipitating Solar Wind Hydrogen at Mars." Henderson's work explores the consequences of charge exchange collisions in the outer reaches of the Martian atmosphere, which were first detected by MAVEN, representing a source of energy to the Martian upper atmosphere with potentially significant chemical consequences, and producing a unique ultraviolet auroral emission.

A PSI representative will present each awardee with a certificate and check for $2,000 at their respective conferences.

Betty Pierazzo was an expert in the area of impact modeling throughout the solar system, as well as an expert on the astrobiological and environmental effects of impacts on Earth and Mars. In addition to her research, she was passionate about education, teaching and public outreach, developing planetary-related classroom materials, professional development workshops for teachers, and teaching college-level classes herself. Betty believed in the strength of broad collaborations in all of her research and education activities. This award memorializes the scope of how she lived her life and the good she sought to bring to our profession and communities.