Sofia Merchant-Dest
Sofia Graduated with high honors with a Bachelor of Astronomy in Spring 2026. She worked on data processing methods to understand the influence of metal plate properties on organic detectability with LDMS.
Grace Whitken
Grace graduated with a Bachelor's degree in astrobiology. Her undergraduate thesis was titled ""
Katie Hickey
Katie graduated with a Bachelor's in Geology in Spring 2025. She completed a senior thesis titled "Characterizing Organic Matter from Biotic and Abiotic Sources via Laser Desorption Mass Spectrometry"
Roshini Saravanan
Roshini graduated in Spring 2025 with a Bachelor's in Information Sciences. She worked with Maddy on developing machine learning models to characterizing mineralogy from LDMS spectra.
Meridian McCall
Meridian graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Geology in Fall 2025. She completed an undergraduate senior thesis titled "Influence of Enceladus Salts on Organic Detection via Laser Desorption Mass Spectrometry"
Soumya Ray
Dr. Soumya Ray was a post-doc with MCLASS lab from 2022 to 2024 working on the CORALS and CRATER instrument.
Placement: Researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Grace Ni
Grace graduated in 2023 with a Ph D in geology. Her thesis was titled "Characterizing chemical signatures of life via Mass Spectrometry."
Placement: Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech
Anais Bardyn
Anais Bardyn was a post-doc with MCLASS lab from 2019 to 2022 working on the CORALS instrument.
Placement: Coordinator in the Department of Mathematics at UMD
Ben Farcy
Ben graduated in Fall 2021 with a Ph.D. in geology. His thesis was titled: "A Prototype Miniature Mass Spectrometer For In Situ Analysis Of Trace Elements On Planetary Surfaces."
Placement: CRESST Postdoctoral Research Associate at NASA GSFC
Kiran Almas
Kiran Almas graduated in 2021 with a Master of Science in Geology. Her thesis is titled "Radiometric Dating of Rocky Planetary Bodies with Rb-Sr and LA-ICPMS".
Placement: Ph.D. student at UMD in Dr. Rich Walker's Lab