IBM Endowed Lecture in the Sciences
Speaker: Renu Malhotra, Planetary Scientist
Title: "Prospects For Unseen Planets Beyond Neptune"
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Event Times:
- 4:30 p.m., Colloquium, Bayley Auditorium
- 7:30 p.m., Lecture, Bayley Auditorium
An award-winning scientist and national speaker, Renu Malhotra is the Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professor and Regents鈥� Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona. She has gained national attention for her research on the outer edges of the solar system, particularly her work that suggests the existence of a new planet.
In a 2017 research study published in the Astronomical Journal, Malhotra and Kathryn Volk, Wittenberg class of 2006 and a post-doctoral student of Malhotra鈥檚 at the time, presented evidence for a mysterious mass that appears to be controlling the orbital planes of objects in the Kuiper Belt. The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and New Scientist magazine were among the national news publications that covered their research.
Malhotra has earned numerous honors for her work, which includes more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and more than 120 invited professional presentations. She was a 2009 nominee for the Kavli Prize, is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been recognized as a Distinguished Alumna of the Indian Institute of Technology. In 1997, the International Astronomical Union named an asteroid after her.
She has presented around the country, including the Lecar Prize Lecture at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Thomas Gold Lecture at Cornell University. Her 2017 TEDxPortland Talk has been viewed nearly 740,000 times.
Malhotra is vice chair and a member of the board of trustees of the Universities Space Research Association Council of Institutions and has served on various committees of the American Astronomical Society 鈥� Division for Planetary Sciences.
Prior to teaching at the University of Arizona, she was a staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, and she conducted post-doctoral research at Cornell University and Caltech.
Malhotra, who was born in New Delhi and grew up in Hyderabad, India, earned an M.S. in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, India, and a doctorate in physics from Cornell University. She resides in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband, David Frenkel, and two daughters.