Dr. Amara Graps

Amara Graps, Ph.D. is an astronomer in Rome. As a long distance associate researcher with the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), and as a researcher at the Institute of Interplanetary Space Physics (IFSI), she examines circum/interplanetary dust charging and dynamics and the origin of water on Earth, while supporting the space missions (Cassini, Rosetta, Dawn) that carry INAF's infrared spectrometers. Sometimes she also writes popular astronomy and scientific computing articles for trade newsletters and magazines.
 
Amara was formerly a computational physicist consultant as well as a Stanford employee, writing image processing and helioseismic software and WWW solar education materials (Stanford, CA); and writing wavelet software. Her work experience, primarily in astronomy, astrophysics, and planetary science research, was gained from work at IFSI, MPI-K, NASA-Ames, Stanford University, the University of Colorado and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In addition, she consulted for engineering, computer, and medical companies in Heidelberg and the Silicon Valley working on numerical analysis, technical writing, and WWW site projects.
 
In her ESA and NASA projects, she has analyzed data from the Ulysses spacecraft, GORID/Express spacecraft, Cassini spacecraft, Galileo spacecraft, SOHO spacecraft, NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory, NASA's ER-2 aircraft, the Voyager 2 spacecraft, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter spacecraft, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), the Space Shuttle's SpaceLab 2, and ground-based telescopes in Hawaii, California, and Arizona. The data includes dust from Jupiter's magnetosphere and Earth's geostationary orbit, the Sun, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, Comet Halley, Supernova 1987a, Venus, Mars, Io, Mercury, the Moon, Saturn's and Uranus' rings, asteroids, Earth's atmosphere, protostars, molecular clouds, galaxies, novas, main-sequence stars, and the exhaust-cloud around the Space Shuttle.
 
In July 2001, she completed her PhD in Physics from Universitaet Heidelberg (Germany) and the Max Planck Institut fuer Kernphysik, researching the charged dust dynamics of the Jovian dust streams. Her previous formal education occurred in conjunction with her jobs: She earned her B.S. in Physics in 1984 from the University of California, Irvine while she was working at JPL, and her M.S. in Physics (w/Computational Physics option) in 1991 from San Jose State University while she was associated with NASA Ames.
 
Her hobbies include bicycle touring, volcanos, Cremona violins, photography, writing, watercolor painting, studying philosophy, and learning the Italian and Latvian languages. She is very interested in helping people learn about the cultural interdependent nature of people on our planet.
 
Read the full list of her publications!