Portal:Volcanoes/Selected biography/5

Dr. Rosaly M. C. Lopes is a prominent planetary geologist, volcanologist, the author of numerous scientific papers and several books, as well as a great proponent of education. Her major research interests are in planetary and terrestrial surface processes with an emphasis on volcanology.

Lopes was (born January 1957 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), where she lived near the famous Ipanema beach. She moved to London, England, in 1975 to study astronomy at the University of London, from where she graduated with honors in astronomy in 1978. For her doctoral studies, she specialized in planetary geology and volcanology and completed her Ph.D. in Planetary Science in 1986 with a thesis on comparing volcanic processes on Earth and Mars. During her Ph.D. she traveled extensively to active volcanoes, particularly Mount Etna in Sicily, and became a member of the UK's Volcanic Eruption Surveillance Team.

She joined JPL as National Research Council Resident Research Associate in 1989 and, after 2 years, became a member of the Galileo Flight project. Lopes worked on the Near Infra-red Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) team planning and analyzing of observations of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io from 1996 to 2001, during which time she discovered 71 volcanoes on Io that had never before been detected as active. In 2002, Lopes became Investigation Scientist on the Cassini RADAR Team. She has participated on several studies of future NASA and ESA missions as a member of the science definition team, including missions to Saturn and Titan.