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I am a research scientist with the Space Science Institute (SSI), but I began my career in astronomy as an undergraduate here at UT, where I studied physics and astronomy. I then received my PhD in physics from the University of Notre Dame, where my interest in the physics of how planets form and evolve all began. After that I was a postdoc at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, where I developed Nbody models to study Neptune's migration through a remnant planetesimal disk, and the gravitational sculpting of the Kuiper Belt that occurred during this epoch of planet migration. I then joined the faculty at Saint Mary's University (Canada) where, as the only planetary scientist in the province of Nova Scotia, I had the pleasure of introducing the topic to many students there. Although Nova Scotia is wonderfully beautiful and remote, my family is all Texan, and so we returned to Austin three years ago. At this symposium I will briefly describe my current research interests: Cassini observations of Saturn's rings, and Hubble observations of circumstellar debris disk, and what they reveal of the dynamics of ring-satellite and disk-planet interactions. | ||
