Christopher Hamilton, 39
Planetary science
University of Arizona
Christopher Hamilton wanted to be an architect.
Yet the planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson is exploring a very different kind of built environment: the strange structures created by volcanoes on worlds across the solar system, from Earth to Mars to the moon.
And he’s using an unusually diverse toolbox of techniques, including neural networks used in artificial intelligence and good old-fashioned geologic field mapping.
“He is constantly moving between worlds,” says Laura Kerber, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s one of the extraordinary things about him.”