Research Projects

Professor Bruce Fegley, Associate Research Professor Katharina Lodders, and technical staff, graduate students, and undergraduates form the Planetary Chemistry Laboratory in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.  Their research activities can be divided into three areas:  

1. involvement with spacecraft missions

2. experimental studies of important chemical reactions in the solar nebula, in planetary atmospheres, and between planetary atmospheres and surfaces 

3. theoretical modeling of chemical processes in circumstellar envelopes, the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets, the early solar system, on planetary surfaces, and in planetary atmospheres. Many of these models involve calculations made with the CONDOR code, a thermochemical equilibrium program developed by Dr. Lodders and Dr. Fegley.

Professor Bruce Fegley is principal investigator of several grants from the NASA Origins, Planetary Atmospheres, and Planetary Instrument Definition and Development Programs.  He was also principal investigator of a NATO Collaborative Research Grant and is the author of over 100 refereed publications.  

Dr. Katharina Lodders is the author (with Professor Bruce Fegley) of one book, The Planetary Scientist's Companion, which was published by Oxford University Press in late1998. She is also the author of over 50 refereed publications.  She is currently principal investigator of a NSF grant for chemical models of brown dwarfs and was also principal investigator of a NATO Collaborative Research Grant.

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