Lindy Elkins-Tanton

Lindy Elkins-Tanton is a planetary scientist with expertise in planet formation and evolution. She is the Director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona.

Career

Lindy Elkins-Tanton earned her B.S. in geology, M.S. in geochemistry, and Ph.D. in geology, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was a professor at MIT, a research scientist at Brown University, and a lecturer at St. Mary's College of Maryland, and worked in the business world for a number of years. Within 10 years of completing her Ph.D. and serving as an associate professor in geology at MIT, she was recruited to the directorship position at Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Her appointment as Director of ASU’s School of Earth and Space Science took effect on July 1, 2014.

Awards and honors

Among her many awards, Elkins-Tanton was twice named a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow. She was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2008 and was named Outstanding MIT Faculty Undergraduate Research Mentor in 2009. In 2013, she was named the Astor Fellow at the University of Oxford in 2013. In addition to these prestigious honors, Asteroid 8252 Elkins-Tanton was named after her.

External links

• Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton: Let go of the myth that a successful scientist follows a certain path