Professor Steve Desch

Dr Steve Desch is a Professor of Astrophysics in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. His research interests include the modelling of star and planet formation, exoplanets, meteoritics and planetary science, especially Kuiper Belt Objects, and arctic ice. He was the 2003 Recipient of the Alfred O.C. Nier Prize of the Meteoritical Society for his work on chondrule formation, and asteroid 9926 Desch is named after him. He is the Principal Investigator of a five-year project funded by NASA's Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, with the goal of predicting the range of chemical composition of rocky Earth-like exoplanets. In 2013 he led a student project to investigate the feasibility of artificially thickening arctic sea ice, with the goals of helping it survive the now-warmer summers and restoring ice coverage to 1980's levels. Their findings were published in 2017 in the journal Earth's Future. He is now a consultant with RealIce, working to further assess arctic ice refreezing through field work and modeling.