Melissa Rice, assistant professor of planetary science at Western Washington University, will be the 12th speaker in the annual Class of 1953 Lectureship Series in April. Her lecture will be titled “Driving Cars on Mars: An Inside Look at the Science and Engineering of NASA’s Mars Rover Missions.”
“We are very excited to have Dr. Rice join us for this year's lectureship and are thankful to the Class of 1953 for providing this incredible learning experience to our students," said Vicki Vincent, director of alumni relations. "This is a special opportunity for them to connect with someone who has an exciting career in science."
A collaborator on the active NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity and Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity missions, Rice teaches in Western Washington’s geology and physics/astronomy departments. Her research focuses on the sedimentology, stratigraphy and mineralogy of planetary surfaces; the current aim of her work is to help constrain the habitability of ancient environments on Mars.
“It wasn’t until I was well into college that I realized that working in the space industry was the most exciting thing I could possibly do,” Rice said. “My junior year, I took a class on space exploration for fun, and one day we had a guest lecture on new discoveries from Mars given by Dr. James Garvin from NASA. He showed us new pictures from the Mars Global Surveyor mission, which revealed layered rocks and gullies carved by ancient rivers on Mars. This meant that Mars was once a wetter and more dynamic place that we had thought, and that there was a chance life might have been able to survive there. After learning this, I was immediately hooked on Mars and have been ever since!”
Rice holds a B.A. in Astrophysics from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Cornell University. Prior to her move to Western Washington last year, she was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the California Institute of Technology’s division of geological and planetary sciences.
The Class of 1953 Lectureship Series was established in 2003 to commemorate the class’s 50th reunion.
