W. Bruce Banerdt

W. Bruce Banerdt is a planetary geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He holds a B.S. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Southern California and has worked in the Earth and Space Sciences Division of JPL since 1977. Dr. Banerdt has served on numerous NASA, National Academy of Sciences and DLR, advisory panels on planetary and space science and has published over 140 journal articles, reports and book chapters. His research focuses on the geological history of the planet Mars and geophysical investigations of the interiors of terrestrial planets using analyses of gravity, magnetic, topographic and seismic data. In addition to a staggering number of unselected planetary instrument and mission proposals, he has participated in several planetary flight instrument teams, including the MOLA altimeter on Mars Global Surveyor and the Imaging Radar on Magellan. He served as Project Scientist for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers for six years before heading up the successful NASA Discovery Program Proposal for the InSight Mission. He has been Principal Investigator for InSight since 2011.