CCLDAS: Students

The Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies is committed to educating and training the next generation of lunar scientists and engineers. In pursuit of this goal, CCLDAS employs students in all aspects of our research, from computer modeling to hands-on experiments in the lab. Students even have opportunities to participate in professional-level NASA missions, including the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). If you are a student and are interested in working with CCLDAS, please contact us.

Chris Anaya
Spenser Burrows
Shannon Dickson
Adrienne Dove
Huy Le
Spencer LeBlanc
Paige Northway
Marcus Piquette
Anthony Shu
Jamey Szalay
Evan Thomas
Jianfeng Xie

CCLDAS: Former Students

Nicole Duncan
AJ Gemer
Andrew Poppe
Michael Wagner
Tyler Wingfield

Chris Anaya

Chris Anaya is a junior physics major at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A native of Houston, Chris is currently working for Tobin Munsat and Andrew Collette on the dust accelerator. In his spare time Chris enjoys the Colorado outdoors.

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Spenser Burrows

Spenser Burrows is a fifth-year undergraduate at the University of Colorado majoring in Engineering Physics and minoring in chemistry. He is currently working on the dust accelerator project and has contributed to several interlock and control systems on the beamline. Spenser also enjoys flying and has a private pilot's license.

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Shannon Dickson

Shannon is a fifth-year undergraduate pursuing a major in engineering physics and a minor in astronomy. She is studying the properties of the photoelectron sheath created by photoemission from the lunar surface in areas where it is uniformly exposed to ultra-violet radiation from the sun. In the lab these conditions are simulated by a lunar dust simulant exposed to a high power UV light source with a peak emitted wavelength of 172nm.

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Adrienne Dove

Adrienne Dove is a fifth-year graduate student in Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado. Her current research involves collaboration with Ball Aerospace to evaluate the effects of surface treatments on dust adhesion by using a centrifuge technique to measure adhesion forces in vacuum. She is also studying the impact of UV illumination of the motion of dust.

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Huy Le

Huy Le is an undergraduate in the Aerospace Engineering and Electrical Engineering departments. He is working with Zoltan Sternovsky on a number of projects in the CCLDAS DDPL lab.

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Spencer LeBlanc

Spencer LeBlanc is a senior physics major at CU-Boulder. He is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, where he lived his whole life before attending CU. Spencer is designing and building both small and large accelerators in Dr. Munsat's lab. In his spare time, he enjoys fishing, reading, and plasma physics.

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Paige Northway

Paige Northway is in her senior year at the University of Colorado working on an Engineering Physics degree and German minor. She is currently developing a storage and transportation system for dust samples to be used with the LEIL Dust Particle Accelerator and will continue to be further involved with the dust injection system.

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Marcus Piquette

Marcus Piquette is a third-year undergraduate in Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado. He currently works with Andrew Poppe on simulations of the photoelectron sheath and dust dynamics on the lunar surface.

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Anthony Shu

Anthony Shu is a third year graduate student in the physics department at the University of Colorado, with an emphasis on studying experimental plasma physics. He works with Tobin Munsat on the LEIL dust accelerator project. Currently he is designing the particle selection circuitry and the vacuum interlock circuitry, and he is building the high voltage controller for the small accelerator. He did his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley (2009), researching Laser Plasma Accelerators under Wim Leemans.

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Jamey Szalay

Jamey is a second year grad student in the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado. He works with Mihaly Horanyi on the Lunar Dust EXplorer which will be on board NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer when it launches in early 2013. Jamey also works on the Student Dust Counter on the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

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Evan Thomas

Evan is an graduate student in the Department of Physics. He is currently working on the electronics and field programmable gate array (FPGA) code for the dust detectors in the beamline of the dust accelerator.

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Jianfeng Xie

Jianfeng Xie is a fourth-year graduate student in the physics department at the University of Colorado. He currently uses the Zemax to analyze the effect of ultraviolet light from the sun on detectors.

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CCLDAS: Former Students

Nicole Duncan

Nicole Duncan received her B.A. in Engineering Physics from the University of Colorado and worked on the Dust Trajectory Sensor (DTS) project. She worked in the Dusty Plasma Group from January 2007 to June 2010. Nicole is now a graduate student in physics at the University of California at Berkeley.

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AJ Gemer

AJ Gemer worked with CCLDAS as an undergraduate student in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Colorado. He worked with Zoltan Sternovsky, Keith Drake, Nicole Duncan, and Jeremy Salter on the design of the next-generation Dust Trajectory Sensor (DTS). He has previous experience working with the same team on the Large Area Mass Analyzer (LAMA), and performed mechanical engineering design and fabrication on instrument projects for the CCLDAS.

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Andrew Poppe

Andrew Poppe received his PhD in physics from the University of Colorado. His research included simulations of the lunar photoelectron sheath with a particle-in-cell code in order to understand observed lunar dusty plasma phenomena. In addition to his lunar simulations, he also worked on the Student Dust Counter on the New Horizons mission, NASA's first satellite to the Pluto-Charon system. He currently has a post-doc position at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Michael Wagner

Michael was an undergraduate student in Engineering Physics and worked on the Dust Particle Accelerator. He also helped to build and design pulsing electronic circuits to control high voltage, as well as fiber optic control systems and voltage read-outs to be used with the high voltage.

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Tyler Wingfield

Tyler worked with CCLDAS as a Junior pursuing a degree in Engineering Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He helped to design and build the Particle Selection Unit for the LEIL Dust Accelerator. This unit will allow scientists at CCLDAS to select the mass and charge of the micrometeorites they accelerate. In his free time he likes to hike, climb, ski, backpack and everything else outdoors.

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