EPEC Profiles – Rutu Parekh

In this series from the EPEC Communication Working Group, we meet members of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) community and find out more about their experiences and aspirations.

Rutu Parekh is pursuing a PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin and German Space Center on understanding ‘The influence of volatiles on the asteroid surface: Vesta and Ceres’.

My journey as a planetary researcher has been quite a roller coaster ride so far. However, each stepping stone has helped me to grow in my professional career. Currently, I am pursuing my phd at Freie Universität Berlin and German Space Center (DLR) on understanding ‘ The influence of volatile on the asteroid surface: Vesta and Ceres’.

My study region is focused on to analyse the icy planetary bodies. Various morphological features are associated with volatile outgassing, which has shaped the surface of asteroids. These features help us to understand the evolution of Vesta and Ceres. For this study I use data from the Dawn mission. Further, I also worked on the fractal analysis of boulders identified on the rubble-pile Ryugu asteroid. For this, I used the data from the Hayabusa2 mission which was a collaboration between JAXA and DLR.

Other than being full time researcher, I am also volunteering as tbe Secretary of the Europlanet Diversity Committee and Chair of the EPEC Diversity Working Group. Last, year we launched a series entitled ‘Motivational Journeys‘ under the EPEC Diversity Working Group. This series is a collection of interviews where we discuss the professional journey of experienced scientists in the field of planetary science and provide motivation to early career researchers from diverse environments and cultures.

Additionally, due to my passion towards art and science, I also sketch science in my free time. Being a full time researcher and a constant supporter of creativity, I strongly believe that communicating science is equally important as research and when done in an effective way, it could inspire next generation to take STEM as full time career.

Signing off from Ryugu. #sketchingscinence #artandscience @haya2e_jaxa @DLR_en @DLR_de @MASCOT2018 pic.twitter.com/GVLIjRVcPf

— Rutu (@icy_planetnerd) November 24, 2019

“EPEC has provided me with a supportive platform to network and communicate with fellow early careers. It has also served as tremendous source of support and motivation at various stages of my career so far.”

Rutu Parekh

If you are an Early Career member of the Europlanet Society and would like to be featured in an EPEC Profile, find out more about how to submit your profile.

See all the EPEC Profiles.