Faculty Directory

Professor Jessica Sunshine's research focuses on using spectroscopy to determine the composition and origin of various Solar System objects. Her work has emphasized the mineralogy and surface features of comets, asteroids, meteorites, and the Moon, with occasional studies on Mars and environmental monitoring of Earth. She serves as the director of UMD's Small Bodies Group (SBG), a collaborative team of researchers and computer scientists dedicated to understanding the origins and evolution of comets and asteroids through telescopic and spacecraft data, while also archiving this data for future research.

Professor Sunshine has contributed to numerous planetary missions, including the Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids and the planetary defense experiment DART. She has held leadership roles such as Deputy Principal Investigator for the Deep Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI) and Participating Scientist for the Dawn Mission at Vesta. She has also been a Co-Investigator for the Deep Impact, Stardust NExT, and Moon Mineralogy Mapper missions, and was the Principal Investigator for the Comet Hopper (CHopper) mission concept, a finalist for the 2012 Discovery mission selection. Before joining UMD, she spent a decade at SAIC's Advanced Technology Applications Division, where she served as Chief Scientist, contributed to Earth and planetary remote sensing projects, and was a member of SAIC's Corporate Science and Technology Council.