2012 Shirley D. Curson Education Plus Fund in Planetary Sciences and LPL

Summer Travel for Shandel Award Recipients

The Shirley D. Curson Education Plus Fund in Planetary Sciences and LPL (formerly the Shandel Education Plus Fund) was established by Shirley Curson, a generous donor and friend of LPL, for the purpose of supporting travel expenses outside the state of Arizona during summer break. The award is open to students in the Department of Planetary Sciences and Lunar and Planetary Laboratory who propose to fund study, museum visits, special exhibits, seminars, instruction, competitions, research and other endeavors that are beyond those provided by the normal campus environment and are not part of the student’s regular curriculum during the recipient’s school year.


For 2012, LPL was fortunate to be able to fund summer research travel for three graduate students thanks to support from the Shandel Fund.

Ingrid Daubar (top, left) traveled to Moscow to attend the 7th European Strategic Meteor Workshop: The Meteoroid Flux in the Martian Satellite System–Models, Predictions, Observational Data, and Implications. 

Cecilia Leung (top, center) spent much of Summer 2012 at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, where she became proficient in the use of the mesoscale numerical model MRAMS (Mars Regional Atmospheric Modeling System). 

Juan Lora attended the Summer School on Atmospheric Modeling hosted by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton. The purpose of this summer school was to introduce students to the "art" of climate modeling (aspects of modeling that are typically neither taught nor formally presented), using the latest Earth model, Atmospheric Model 3, developed at the lab.