Alice Baldridge

Biography

Dr. Baldridge got her B.S. in Earth Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz where she studied the high pressure freezing of salty solutions as applied to the icy moons of Jupiter, She received an M.S. with Dr. Jack Farmer at Arizona State University using Death Valley, CA as an remote sensing analog site for ancient aqueous environments on Mars and her PhD with Dr. Phil Christiansen studying the thermal emission spectra of sulfates and chlorides and the ability to detect these minerals in the martian datasets. Dr. Baldridge is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow and studies acidic dry lakes in Western Australia as analogs for contemporaneous deposition of phyllosilicates and sulfates on Mars. She has done field work in Death Valley, CA, Acidic Lakes and Banded Iron Formations of Western Australia, Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park, Sand Dunes of the Western United States and Hot Springs and Glacial environments of Iceland. Alice has participated in several Mars missions including with the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey Spacecraft and as a Science Team Member and Primary Uplink and Downlink Lead on the Mars Exploration Rovers. Dr. Baldridge believes in finding balance in her life especially between gaining and sharing her knowledge of Earth and Planetary science and as such continues to teach and be involved in education and outreach projects. Towards this end, she is also an Assistant Professor of Environmental and Earth Sciences at St Mary’s College of California, where she is training a new generation of naturalists to appreciate the world around them Dr. Baldridge got her B.S. in Earth Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz where she studied the high pressure freezing of salty solutions as applied to the icy moons of Jupiter, She received an M.S. with Dr. Jack Farmer at Arizona State University using Death Valley, CA as an remote sensing analog site for ancient aqueous environments on Mars and her PhD with Dr. Phil Christiansen studying the thermal emission spectra of sulfates and chlorides and the ability to detect these minerals in the martian datasets. Dr. Baldridge is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow and studies acidic dry lakes in Western Australia as analogs for contemporaneous deposition of phyllosilicates and sulfates on Mars. She has done field work in Death Valley, CA, Acidic Lakes and Banded Iron Formations of Western Australia, Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park, Sand Dunes of the Western United States and Hot Springs and Glacial environments of Iceland. Alice has participated in several Mars missions including with the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey Spacecraft and as a Science Team Member and Primary Uplink and Downlink Lead on the Mars Exploration Rovers. Dr. Baldridge believes in finding balance in her life especially between gaining and sharing her knowledge of Earth and Planetary science and as such continues to teach and be involved in education and outreach projects. Towards this end, she is also an Assistant Professor of Environmental and Earth Sciences at St Mary’s College of California, where she is training a new generation of naturalists to appreciate the world around them

Research Interest

Dr. Alice Baldridge's research interests are currently focused on two broad subjects: 1) understanding the past and current processes that have shaped planetary surfaces and 2) comparing laboratory, field and remote spectroscopic data to solve various problems in Earth and planetary science. More specifically, the primary goals of her past and current research activities are to understand the role of water in shaping the surface of Mars especially in terms of mineralogy and geomorphology in analog evaporitic environments.