Planetary Sciences Graduate Student Earns Prestigious NASA Fellowship

A U of A student, Troy Williams, won a prestigious Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science Technology, or FINESST, fellowship. The two-year award from NASA is for $100,000 and provides research grants for graduate students with a faculty mentor serving as principal investigator. These research projects are designed and led by the graduate students.

Williams is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate with the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences. His research focuses on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which is the only other place in our solar system that has stable liquids on its surface. These liquids form lakes and seas, which are made of methane and ethane rather than water. Williams will study the surface chemistry of Titan, specifically, how two or more compounds can form new crystal structures together as co-crystals. Williams' research is conducted experimentally using the Titan simulation chamber and computationally using molecular dynamics software.

"This project will open the door to a new type of cryogenic chemistry and help us understand better the environment and habitability of the surface of Titan," said Vincent Chevrier, Williams' faculty adviser and an associate professor at the Center for Space and Planetary Sciences.

Williams added: "I'm really interested in the prebiotic chemistry that can occur on Titan and other outer solar system worlds, as well as the prebiotic chemistry that might have been occurring before life arose on Earth, because the way Titan is right now might have been similar to how Earth was at one point, with a very high nitrogen content in the atmosphere, with a little bit of methane and some other hydrocarbons. So, it's almost like looking back to what our own planet might have looked like at some point, too, which is really interesting."

The grant will take him through the end of his Ph.D. and will allow him to concentrate solely on research. "I enjoy teaching," Williams said, "but it takes up a lot of time."

The grant will also enable Williams to attend national and international conferences and provide for the purchase of lab supplies. He expects to produce papers resulting from the grant that will be chapters in his dissertation. His ultimate goal is to join a NASA institution or national lab like the Goddard Space Flight Center or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute for Technology.

"They do a lot of experimental research that I'm interested in continuing," Williams said. "I think Titan is a really interesting place to explore, and I want to keep doing that, especially with the Dragonfly mission that's going to Titan - it's a little rotorcraft that's going to hop around different sites on Titan and investigate that moon. With that launch approaching, it's a good time to really get involved in this sort of work."