New Mexico State University (NMSU) has announced that the NASA Emerging Worlds program has awarded Debanjan Sengupta, a postdoctoral researcher, a significant $750,000 grant for a three-year project. The project is aimed at exploring the formation and early evolution of the solar system.
The multi-year grant will provide financial support for both Sengupta and a senior researcher at NASA Ames Research Center. Additionally, it includes a one-month summer salary for Wladimir Lyra, an astronomy associate professor at NMSU who is supervising Sengupta's research. According to an NMSU press release, Sengupta's research aligns with NASA's Emerging Worlds program's objective to understand the formation and evolution of the Sun's planetary and minor body system.
Sengupta said in an NMSU press release, "What was the solar system like? What were the physical conditions? How did the planets come to be? To figure that out, I take a computational approach. I solve equations to figure out the processes that initially formed the solar system. I can also get information from meteorites that have fallen on the surface of the earth, which act as fossils of the Solar System formation."
Lyra further emphasized on the importance of graduate assistants and postdocs in their work in another NMSU press release. He said, "There’s always more to work on than there are hours in the day, and I only have two hands; we professors need that help. Here at NMSU, we have a nationally and internationally competitive graduate program in astronomy. Mentoring students and postdocs is not only an enriching experience but also a necessity for the research we do."
NMSU is known as a research-focused land-grant university with strong emphasis on teaching, research, and public service. It has been recognized as a NASA Space-Grant College and is home to New Mexico's first Honors College, as per the About webpage provided by NMSU.
