Sarah T. Stewart-Mukhopadhyay

Dr. Sarah T. Stewart-Mukhopadhyay is an American planetary scientist known for studying planet formation, planetary geology, and materials science. She is a professor at the University of California, Davis in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department. She has been a visiting professor at Harvard University Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences since 2003.
Dr. Stewart-Mukhopadhyay was named as one of the "Brilliant 10" by Popular Science in 2010, one of "Astronomy's Rising Stars" by Astronomy in 2013, and one of the "Top 100 Science Stories of 2015" in Discover. She received an award from the American Astronomical Society for outstanding achievements by a young scientist.

Stewart-Mukhopadhyay received her undergraduate degree in astrophysics and physics from Harvard in 1995. She completed her PhD at the California Institute of Technology in 2002.

Stewart-Mukhopadhyay is director of the Shock Compression Laboratory at Harvard. At Caltech, she was the first to study shock propagation in ice under similar conditions found in our solar system. Her research group is interested in planetary formation, particularly with giant impacts and impact cratering.

In 2009, she received the American Astronomical Society's Harold C. Urey Prize from the Division for Planetary Sciences. In 2001, she received the Stephen E. Dwornik Planetary Geoscience Student Paper Award, Geological Society of America. In 2002, she began the Grove Karl Gilbert Postdoctoral Fellowship at Carnegie Institution of Washington. In 2003, she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.