Following the guidance outlined in the Meteoritical Society Constitution, the Nominating Committee is pleased to present the following slate of candidates, who are nominated to start their terms in January 2025:
Vice-President
Maria Schönbächler
My very first presentation at a scientific meeting was as a graduate student at the Meteoritical Society meeting in Rome (2001). Many more MetSoc meeting attendances followed. Since this first contact, I feel strongly connected to the Meteoritical Society, its members and its goals. I truly appreciate the services it provides to the community and I am deeply honored by the nomination to serve as the next Vice-President of the Meteoritical Society.
Maria Schönbächler is at ETH Zurich, and please read the full biography and statement of priorities for the Meteoritical Society here.
Treasurer:
Cari Corrigan (1st term)
Cari Corrigan is a Research Geologist and Curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, USA. She curates the U.S. Antarctic Meteorite Collection at the Smithsonian. Her scientific interest is in the petrology and geochemistry of chondrites, differentiated materials (including iron meteorites), and impact melted materials from a variety of meteorite types. She served on council from 2016 to 2020. She is currently the Meteoritical Society Editor for, and Chair of the Executive Committee of Elements Magazine (since 2011). In addition, she has been a member of various other committees and became a fellow of the Meteoritical Society in 2022.
Secretary:
Jutta Zipfel (2nd term)
Jutta Zipfel is section leader at the Senckenberg Naturmuseum and Forschungsinstitut in Frankfurt, Germany. She curates the Max-Planck-Institut meteorite collection which is on permanent loan to Senckenberg. She has a teaching assignment for cosmochemistry at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Her scientific interest is directed towards chemical and mineralogical composition of the most primitive meteorites in the solar system, the carbonaceous chondrites. A major focus of her research is the checmical and isotopic composition of metal phases in CB chondrites. She is also interested in primitive achondrites and differentiation processes of asteroids. She served on council from 2005 to 2008. She was member and later chair of the Nomenclature Committee between 2000 and 2008. In addition, she was a member of various other committees and became a fellow of the Meteoritical Society in 2012.
Councilors:
Byeon-Gak Choi (2nd term)
Byeon-Gak Choi is a Professor at the Department of Earth Science Education, Seoul National University, in South Korea, since September 1999. His research focuses on the petrologic characteristics and oxygen (and a few other) isotopic compositions of mineral phases mostly in chondritic meteorites. Over the past years he has developed or improved several analytical methods using secondary ion mass spectrometers in South Korea, including CAMECA 6-f, NanoSIMS 50, SHRIMP-IIe, and CAMECA 1300 for oxygen isotopes, Al-Mg isotopes, and trace element composition. Recently he - with a few Korean geologists/geochemists – organized Planetary Science Division in the Geological Society of Korea. He is serving as a chair of the division and working to promote researches in meteoritics and planetary geology.
Alvaro P. Crósta (2nd term)
Alvaro P. Crosta is a retired professor at the Geosciences Institute, State University of Campinas, Brazil. His research interests are geological remote sensing and impact cratering, being involved in the confirmation and geological characterization of impact structures in South America and in the geochemical analysis and characterization of Brazilian iron meteorites. He is a Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of São Paulo state.
Elena Dobrică (2nd term)
Elena Dobrică is an Assistant Researcher at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) and the Director of the Advanced Electron Microscopy Center (AEMC) at the University of Hawai'i. Her research focuses on the formation of the Solar System and the evolution of primitive materials, such as the fine-grained materials in chondrites and dust particles. She is particularly interested in understanding the physico-chemical conditions that led to the formation of fine-grained materials in the solar nebula. Additionally, she studies how nanometer-sized materials were affected by processes on the parent body, such as thermal metamorphism, aqueous alteration, or shock. Her research involves analyzing the textures, mineralogy, and chemical and isotopic compositions of these materials at micro- and nanoscales to reconstruct their formation and evolution environments.
Juliane Gross (1st term)
Juliane Gross is an associate professor for planetary sciences at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Her research focuses on investigating the formation and evolution of differentiated planetary bodies, specifically the Moon and Mars, as well as understanding early solar system processes. She studies in detail the mineralogy, petrology, and geochemistry of planetary samples using electron beam instruments, to place small scale sample observations into planetary scale processes. Juliane is also actively involved in many public engagement and outreach activities, has served as the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analyses (ANGSA) Preliminary Examination (PE) Lead for the past 3 years, and is currently serving as a member of MetSoc’s Nomenclature Committee.
Marina Ivanova (2nd term)
Marina Ivanova is a senior scientist in the Laboratory of Meteoritics at Moscow's Vernadsky Institute, Russia. Her research focuses on investigation of metal-rich carbonaceous chondrites, CH- and CB-like, refractory inclusions, and chondrules; metamorphosed CM-like carbonaceous chondrites; ordinary chondrites, ungrouped chondrites, achondrites, Martian and lunar meteorites. A part of her work has focused on laboratory experiments on investigation of oxygen isotopic compositions to understand exchange and fractionation during hydration-dehydration processes of carbonaceous chondrites and on theoretical modelling and experiment of evaporation process of CAIs-like melts to understand genetic relations between refractory material in the early Solar System. In 2018, she was one of the organizers of the 81st Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society held in Moscow.
Yangting Lin (1st term)
Yangting Lin is a professor of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) since 2004. He graduated from Zhejiang University in 1982 with a Bachelor degree in Geochemistry. He did his PhD research in Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, from 1988 to 1990 via a CAS-MPI joint collaboration, and received his PhD degree in cosmochemistry from the Institute of Geochemistry, CAS in 1991. He studied meteorites in the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, CAS, from 1991 to 2003. He also did his research as a JSPS fellow in Ibaraki University (1995-1997) and as a visiting scholar in WU and ASU. Yangting Lin served on the Nomenclature Committee (2005-2010) and the Nominating Committee（2005-2006, 2015-2016), and became a fellow of the Meteoritical Society in 2012. His research interests include enstatite chondrites, and CAIs, presolar grains and short-lived nuclides in primitive chondrites. Since 2004, he has participated in China's lunar and deep space exploration program.
Yves Marrocchi (1st term)
Yves Marrocchi is a senior researcher at the Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques (CRPG-CNRS, Nancy France). His research focuses on understanding the origin of chondritic organic matter and their associated volatile elements including noble gases, the conditions and chronology of chondrule formation and fluid circulations in chondritic parent bodies as well as the distribution of volatile elements in the disk and their origin on Earth. To do so, he is using different isotopic systems (hydrogen, oxygen, Al-Mg) at both the bulk and in-situ scales. Yves is also involved in the NASA space missions (Genesis, OSIRIS-REx) which explore various bodies of our solar system. Yves is also strongly involved in teaching and mentoring students and early career researchers. He is the deputy director of the CRPG Nancy, an historical laboratory which plays a key role in the evolution of cosmochemistry. He is also associate editor for MAPS and GCA, the two leading journals of cosmochemistry.
Gordon Osinski (1st term)
Gordon “Oz” Osinski is a Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD from the University of New Brunswick (2004) and a BSc (Hons) from the University of St. Andrews (1999), Scotland, both in Geology. His main research focus is on understanding impact cratering as a planetary geological process. Oz has published over 230 papers and has received numerous awards, including The 2021 Barringer Medal of the Meteoritical Society. Oz is also involved in several planetary exploration-related activities. He is a Co-I on the PanCam instrument on the European ExoMars mission to Mars and he is the PI of the Canadian Lunar Rover Mission – Canada’s first ever rover mission. He is involved in providing geology training to Canadian and US astronauts and was recently selected as part of the Artemis III Geology Team. Oz is also passionate about outreach and science communication.
In addition to the slate of candidates nominated here, a nomination for any specific position may subsequently be made that has the demonstrated support of at least 3% of the Society’s members in good standing and with verification that the nominated candidate is qualified and willing to serve in that office. Any such additional nominations by members must be received by the Secretary no later than February 15, 2024. If no candidates are nominated other than those nominated by the Nominating Committee as listed here, the Secretary shall be empowered to declare these candidates elected by affirmation. The Meteoritical Society Constitution and Bylaws provide additional details.
For the 2025–2026 term, current Vice President Guy Consolmagno will serve as President and current President Nancy Chabot will serve as Past President.
From the report of the Nominating Committee: Tim Swindle (chair), Tim Fagan, Kuljeet Kaar Marhas, Caroline Smith, Myriam Telus, Kai Wünnemann