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| Bishop |
Janice Bishop has been watching the night sky ever since high school,
when she first discovered her fascination with the stars and planets.
While working on her master’s degree at Stanford, she was a lab
assistant at the NASA Ames Research Center. It was there that she
began to focus her energies on Mars…and she’s been seeing red ever
since.
Bishop, a principal research investigator at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute’s Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, will discuss "The Surface of Mars: What We Know and How We’re Learning More" on Tuesday, Oct. 26, at 8 p.m. at the Indiana Memorial Union’s Whittenberger Auditorium on the IU Bloomington campus. A reception will follow the lecture.
Bishop’s work--a combination of planetary sciences, chemistry and geology--focuses on the minerals on the surface of the Red Planet. As one might imagine, it is difficult for scientists like Bishop to conduct work "in the field."
She tackles the challenge by traveling to locations as diverse as the Hawaiian mountains, where it is very dry, to Iceland, where it is very cold, to locate field samples to compare to Martian rock.
Next year, Bishop will be getting a very close look at the surface of Mars. She is a co-investigator on the CRISM (Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars), which is making a trip to Mars in 2005 aboard a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. CRISM, a sort of high-tech detective, will be seeking clues that water once flowed on Mars by giving researchers a look at the mineral fingerprints that water may have left behind. Bishop will discuss the project and other developments in the study of this enigmatic planet during her lecture.
She is the first speaker in the Outstanding Women Scientists lecture series, sponsored by the Office for Women’s Affairs at IU Bloomington and the Women in Science Program (WISP). WISP seeks to develop and implement programs that promote the participation of women in science, mathematics and technology at IU.
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