EPEC Profiles – Solmaz Adeli

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.

Solmaz Adeli is a planetary geologist, working as a Postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Planetary Research of the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Studying the planets has always been a dream to me, since I was little, and I couldn’t be happier for being in this research topic in this particular period of time, where there are missions to various planets, asteroids, icy moons, even far Kuiper belt objects!

Researching the past climate and surface conditions of the Red Planet is my expertise. I am actively involved in the HRSC camera science team on board ESA’s Mars Express mission, and the PanCam camera on board the future ESA and Roscosmos rover, Rosalind Franklin, which is a part of the ExoMars mission.

I obtained my doctoral degree in 2016 from the Freie Universität Berlin and German Space Center (DLR) on the topic of ‘History of liquid water on Mars’. My thesis was about reconstructing the geological history of a region on the southern hemisphere of Mars, where the presence of one of the largest paleolakes on Mars has been hypothesized (Eridania lake). During my first postdoc, I studied the recent glaciation phases in the midlatitude regions of Mars.

Currently I am supporting the Rosalind Franklin rover science team in their landing site high resolution mapping effort, by leading a part of the mapping exercise. In addition, I am also involved in preparing samples to be analyzed by the rover’s scientific payload. This allowed me to visit the exobiology research team at CBM/CNRS laboratories in Orleans, France last year, for a couple of months. For this visit, I won a travel grant from the Geo.X network in Berlin and Brandenburg.

In addition to the research activities, I also teach planetary science-related topics at the Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Potsdam, and occasionally supervise bachelor and master thesis, as well as co-supervising doctoral studies. Interacting with interested and motivated students is one of the most rewarding parts of my job.

“Since 2019, I am chairing the EPEC EPSC working group, along with Maike Neuland. This has been an amazing experience of creativity, networking, organizing, planning, interacting with other working groups and conference organizers, and working with great members of the this working group. I have learnt so much about how an event such as EPSC is being managed and how early careers can influence the larger community.”

Solmaz Adeli

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.