manar al asad

i'm interested in most aspects of planetary evolution. mostly i focus on mantle convection and tectonics, with special interest in the archean earth (4-2.5 billion years ago). did we always have plate tectonics? if not, what preceded it? when did we transition into it? and, perhaps most importantly, how does that affect other systems, like the core and its magnetic field. my advisor on this project is professor harriet lau.

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before i started my phd, i worked as a researcher at the university of british columbia in vancouver, canada, studying asteroids through involvement with osiris-rex misssion, where i was in the altimetry group and mostly developed and validated high resolution shape models to aid in spacecraft navigation and sample collection.

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i also studied how mercury's magnetic field interacts with the solar wind. specifically mercury's tail region, which is on the nightside of the planet opposite to the sun, where the magnetic field is stretched. this project and the previous were supervised by professor catherine johnson.