Don BlankenshipDonald Blankenship is a Visiting Research Professor at Montana State University and a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). He is an experienced researcher interested in the dynamic processes below, within and surrounding terrestrial ice sheets that control rapid changes in global sea level as well as sub-ice habitability across the solar system, particularly at Europa. Don has been PI and director for many multi-year Antarctic exploration programs incorporating aerogeophysical platforms. He has extensive experience with instrumentation, including multi-frequency radar, laser altimeters, magnetometers, gravity and GPS. His specialty is integrating these tools to produce the rich data sets required to address carefully posed hypotheses for the evolution of Earth’s ice sheets and ice shelves as well as understanding the formation of Europa’s dynamic surface geology using terrestrial analogs. Additionally, Don has been an active member of NASA-sponsored Science Definition Teams (SDT) investigating missions to Europa since 1998. He was a member of the Europa Orbiter and Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter SDTs and served as the ice shell team lead for the Joint NASA/ESA Europa Jupiter System Mission SDT. In this role, Don has acted as an advisor on the implementation of radar sounders as critical instrumentation for the exploration of Europa and the testing and validation of key hypotheses for processes controlling its habitability. Don is currently Principal Investigator for the Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON), which will be flown on NASA’s Europa Clipper flagship mission. Don is also a member of the Science Team for the Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) to be flown on ESA’s JUICE mission to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Don currently manages a large science group focused on fielding both piloted and autonomous aircraft for internationally collaborative studies of both the Antarctic and Arctic; the team is distributed between MSU and UT and includes four staff scientists, three post-doctoral researchers, four Ph.D. candidates, an engineering staff of four and a host of visiting students and undergraduate researchers.

Education

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison (Geophysics), Seismological Investigations of a West Antarctic Ice Stream. 1989.

M.S., University of Wisconsin-Madison (Geophysics), Compressional Wave Anisotropy in the High Polar Ice of East Antarctica. 1982.

B.S. with High Honors, Eastern Illinois University (Geology). 1978.

Publications

Don’s publications and citations are available on his Google Scholar profile.