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Lindy Elkins-Tanton investigates how rocky planets form and evolve, from their earliest magma oceans to the emergence of crusts, cores, and volcanic provinces. Her research synthesizes geochemical measurements, petrology, and planetary dynamics to reconstruct the conditions that shaped Earth and other terrestrial bodies, and to test hypotheses about catastrophic events such as the Siberian Traps and their links to mass extinctions. She is also the principal investigator of NASA’s Psyche mission, the first exploration of a metal-rich asteroid, designed to reveal how protoplanetary cores form and what they can teach us about planetary differentiation. By combining laboratory experiments, field geology, remote sensing, and mission leadership, Elkins-Tanton advances a system-level picture of planetary interiors and surface histories.
Elkins-Tanton is Director of UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory and a Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Science. Previously at Arizona State University, Carnegie Institution for Science, and MIT, she has led large scientific teams, authored books on science and exploration, and helped build education initiatives that broaden participation in space science.