President Obama Honors Outstanding Early-Career Scientists including UNM Researcher

Pres­i­dent Obama today named 96 researchers, includ­ing Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Insti­tute of Mete­orit­ics Sr. Research Sci­en­tist Fran­cis McCub­bin, as recip­i­ents of the 2011 Pres­i­den­tial Early Career Awards for Sci­en­tists and Engi­neers (PECASE), the high­est honor bestowed by the United States Gov­ern­ment on sci­ence and engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sion­als in the early stages of their inde­pen­dent research careers. The fed­eral researchers will receive their awards in a cer­e­mony later this month in Washington.

“Dis­cov­er­ies in sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy not only strengthen our econ­omy, they inspire us as a peo­ple.” Pres­i­dent Obama said. “The impres­sive accom­plish­ments of today’s awardees so early in their careers promise even greater advances in the years ahead.”

“I am extremely hon­ored to be among the early career sci­en­tists selected to receive the PECASE award this year, and I am very thank­ful for the con­tin­ued sup­port of NASA,” said McCub­bin. “This award sym­bol­izes both an acknowl­edge­ment and val­i­da­tion of my research to this point, but being an early career award, it also sym­bol­izes a cer­tain moti­va­tion to con­tinue mov­ing for­ward with new discoveries.”

McCub­bin was one of six National Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA) recip­i­ents who were nom­i­nated by the agency’s Sci­ence Mis­sion Direc­torate, Office of the Chief Engi­neer and Office of the Chief Tech­nol­o­gist. “These tal­ented indi­vid­u­als have already made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the agency’s mis­sion at this early stage in their careers,” said NASA Chief Sci­en­tist Waleed Abdalati. “We look for­ward to cel­e­brat­ing their con­tin­ued suc­cess for many years to come.”

He was also one of two researchers with con­nec­tions at UNM, includ­ing Justin Hagerty, a research geol­o­gist with the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, named as a recip­i­ent of the PECASE.

McCub­bin was cited for stud­ies of the geo­chem­i­cal role of water and other volatiles in extrater­res­trial mate­ri­als from the inner solar sys­tem. His research is focused on deter­min­ing the abun­dances and roles of volatiles includ­ing water, flu­o­rine, chlo­rine, sul­fur and car­bon in mag­matic sys­tems within ter­res­trial plan­e­tary bod­ies, includ­ing Earth, Moon, Mars, and aster­oids.
“For years, NASA has had a “fol­low the water” strat­egy for plan­e­tary sci­ence and explo­ration because water is a key ingre­di­ent for life as we cur­rently know it,” explained McCub­bin. “In order to fol­low the water, we first must fig­ure out how to find it, and that is the pri­mary under­ly­ing basis for the research I have con­ducted thus far in my career.”

McCub­bin started his inde­pen­dent research career as a post­doc­toral fel­low at the Carnegie Insti­tu­tion of Wash­ing­ton where all the avail­able lit­er­a­ture indi­cated that the inte­ri­ors of the ter­res­trial plan­ets, with the excep­tion of Earth, are extremely dry places. The dri­est of these bod­ies was believed to be the Moon, and it became the focal point of his first investigation.

“Many of the pre­vi­ous stud­ies looked at bulk sam­ples, but we took a more focused approach, look­ing at tiny min­eral grains that host hydroxyl in their crys­talline struc­ture,” said McCub­bin. “Through this approach, we have shown that the Moon hosts a vol­ume of water within its crys­talline inte­rior that is equal in vol­ume to the Great Lakes of North Amer­ica. This vol­ume of water is five orders of mag­ni­tude greater than pre­vi­ous esti­mates of the bulk water con­tent of the Moon, and sev­eral sub­se­quent stud­ies by other lab­o­ra­to­ries have con­firmed our findings.”

The study sparked a com­plete reassess­ment of the water con­tents of ter­res­trial bod­ies in our solar sys­tem, and since McCub­bin and his research group have shown that Mars has at least as much water within its inte­rior as the Earth, and even large aster­oids have water stored within their interior.

“If we try and “fol­low the water”, we now find that it is nearly every place we look,” said McCub­bin, who earned his Ph.D. in Geo­sciences from Stony Brook Uni­ver­sity (2009) and a B.S. in Geol­ogy from Tow­son Uni­ver­sity (2004). “Con­se­quently, the Solar Sys­tem has become a much more excit­ing tar­get for astro­bi­ol­ogy than it was only five years ago, and NASA’s con­tin­ued sup­port for plan­e­tary sci­ence and explo­ration will undoubt­edly lead to some very impor­tant dis­cov­er­ies over the com­ing decades.”

The Pres­i­den­tial early career awards embody the high pri­or­ity the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion places on pro­duc­ing out­stand­ing sci­en­tists and engi­neers to advance the Nation’s goals, tackle grand chal­lenges, and con­tribute to the Amer­i­can economy.

The awards, estab­lished by Pres­i­dent Clin­ton in 1996, are coor­di­nated by the Office of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy Pol­icy within the Exec­u­tive Office of the Pres­i­dent. Awardees are selected for their pur­suit of inno­v­a­tive research at the fron­tiers of sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy and their com­mit­ment to com­mu­nity ser­vice as demon­strated through sci­en­tific lead­er­ship, pub­lic edu­ca­tion, or com­mu­nity outreach.

The recip­i­ents are employed or funded by the fol­low­ing depart­ments and agen­cies: Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, Depart­ment of Com­merce, Depart­ment of Defense, Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, Depart­ment of Energy, Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, Depart­ment of the Inte­rior, Depart­ment of Vet­eran Affairs, Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, National Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion, and the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, which join together annu­ally to nom­i­nate the most mer­i­to­ri­ous sci­en­tists and engi­neers whose early accom­plish­ments show the great­est promise for assur­ing America’s pre­em­i­nence in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing and con­tribut­ing to the award­ing agen­cies’ missions.

For a related story on McCubbin’s research, visit: Researchers Find Mar­t­ian Car­bon Not Bio­log­i­cal in Ori­gin.

Media Con­tact: Steve Carr, (505) 277‑1821; email: scarr@unm.edu