“Unlocking the Chemistry of the Heavens”
In memoriam Prof. Harold Linnartz
By: Danna Qasim
Senior Research Scientist, Planetary Science Research Staff at Southwest
In this talk, Dr. Qasim will discuss her career path, starting at age 16 when she decided to become an astrochemist, and the research projects she engaged in that lead me to her passion for bridging interstellar chemistry to the chemistry in our Solar System. These included experimentally testing the role of the mineral schreibersite on meteorites in biochemical reactions which may have been critical to life, the challenges of forming interstellar methane ice analogs in the laboratory and experimental investigations on the role of interstellar inheritance in the detection of amines and amino acids in meteorites. Dr. Qasim will also give brief overview of her current research in the Nebular Origins of the Universe Research Laboratory (NOUR Laboratory), and reflect on the current funding climate for (space) science. Dr. Qasims talk will be dedicated her late PhD supervisor, Prof. Harold Linnartz, whose belief in her scientific potential often exceeded her own.
Speaker: Dr. Danna Qasim is a laboratory astrophysicist and astronomer. Her long-term goal is bridging interstellar/protoplanetary disk chemistry to the chemistry in our Solar System. She received her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and minor in astronomy at Northern Arizona University (2012), and her Master of Science in Chemical Sciences at Kennesaw State University under the supervision of Prof. Heather Abbott-Lyon, where she experimentally investigated early Earth phosphorylation reactions by meteoritic minerals (2016). She received her PhD in Astronomy at Leiden University under the supervision of Profs. Harold Linnartz and Ewine van Dishoeck (2020). Notably, she developed a method to experimentally investigate carbon atom chemistry occurring in dark interstellar clouds, which resulted in two international dissertation awards.
After her PhD, she did her postdoctoral at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she worked in the Cosmic Ice and Astrobiology Analytical Laboratories to bridge interstellar chemistry to the chemistry found in meteorites. In 2022, she joined SwRI’s Planetary Science Research Staff, where she is currently leading a JWST Cycle 3 Program on interstellar sulfur chemistry, a NASA New Frontiers Data Analysis Program on analyzing Juno data of Ganymede and is head of the newly formed Nebular Origins of the Universe Research Laboratory (NOUR Laboratory; NOUR =نور = light). ___________________________________________________________________________________
To see the video, click Unlocking the Chemistry of the Heavens.
