On February 21, 2023, 82 individuals gathered to hear Dr. Edwin Kite, who studies the evolution of rocky planets, present CIERA’s Interdisciplinary Colloquium. His talk, “Climate of Mars, past and future” explored Kite’s group’s work, using models and geologic data analysis, to address questions including: “How does early Mars geology record past climate and how can we read that record?”, “What are the controls on planetary atmosphere-interior exchange?”, and “How do planets stay habitable?”
Introduced by assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Sciences & Applied Mathematics (McCormick School of Engineering) and CIERA member Daniel Lecoanet, Edwin Kite is an Associate Professor at University of Chicago and a Participating Scientist in the Mars Rover Curiosity project. Prof. Kite has led papers published in Nature Geoscience, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science Advances, Geophysical Research Letters, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, and Astrophysical Journal Letters. In 2009, he shared the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Newcomb Cleveland Prize for the most outstanding paper published that year in Science. In 2016, Kite was the recipient of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Greeley Early Career Award in Planetary Science. In 2022, Kite was selected as a Participating Scientist on the Mars Curiosity rover. Kite is currently a member of the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS), and a Scialog Fellow.