Shannon MacKenzie

Dr. Shannon MacKenzie is a planetary scientist interested in the creation and redistribution of sediments. Her current research focuses on identifying and classifying sediments on the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, using data from three Cassini instruments: RADAR, ISS, and VIMS. She is also interested in scattering processes at work in Titan's atmosphere and the use of radiative transfer modeling to understand how they interfere with remote sensing data. The potentially habitable and inhabited environments of the icy satellites, particularly Titan and Enceladus, drive Dr. MacKenzie’s interest in astrobiology, specifically how material availabilities affect what chemistries—be they abiotic, prebiotic, or biotic—are possible. Also, using data from the Earth satellite SMAP, she is investigating the feasibility of using microwave radiometers as volcanic event detectors at other bodies in the solar system (e.g., Venus, Titan, and Pluto).