The Team

Frank Seelos | CRISM Science Operations Uplink Lead / Science Team Collaborator

Where did you grow up?
Livonia - a small town in upstate New York.

How did you get interested in space exploration?
In 1997 I had a summer undergraduate fellowship at JPL - this just happed to be the summer when Mars Pathfinder landed. It was an incredibly exciting time to be at the lab and it sparked my interest in planetary exploration. I interned at JPL the following summer as well - more than any other experience it was those summer internships that pointed me toward a career in planetary science.

What's your educational background?
I majored in Physics and Mathematics as an undergraduate at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and earned my Masters and Doctorate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

What are your hobbies?
My wife and I have a fairly large planted freshwater aquarium. I have a well-worn set of rollerblades, and I lose quite a few golf balls each year.

What's your job on CRISM?
I wear two hats. On the operations side I'm the science planning and uplink lead - part of the operations team that is responsible for commanding the instrument. On the science analysis side I'm interested in spectroscopic and photometric analysis of the Martian surface - inferring properties of the surface by studying the reflected sunlight.

What excites you about exploring Mars?
One of the most exciting aspects of planetary exploration is that there's always the potential for something totally unexpected to pop up.