Brown University Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences

09/04/2026

Registration for the Fall 2026 semester reopens today! What courses will you be taking?

Whether you want to explore distant planets, delve into our oceans, tackle climate change, or discover the forces behind earthquakes, volcanoes, and other natural hazards, we invite you to explore the universe with us this semester! Learn more about our upcoming courses on our website (or search for "EEPS" through the Courses@Brown website).

https://deeps.brown.edu/news/2026-04-07/courses-fall-2026

08/31/2026

Follow Postdoc Shailja Gangrade and her team of five Brown University undergraduate students as they test the water quality along the public shoreline of Narragansett Bay and support environmental research right here in Providence, RI!

Learn more about this project and our other Summer Undergraduate Research Highlights on the DEEPS website: https://deeps.brown.edu/news/2026-08-18/2026-undergrad-research

08/27/2026

From local water quality of Narragansett Bay to river-dune interactions on Titan, DEEPS undergraduate students participated in a variety of cutting edge research projects during their 2026 summer break. We're proud to showcase their research and experiences!

View more: https://deeps.brown.edu/news/2026-08-18/2026-undergrad-research

07/20/2026

Today is the 57th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing!

DEEPS Professor Jim Head has had a unique relationship with the NASA lunar exploration programs, from Apollo to Artemis and beyond, and his experiences and insights continue to be impactful for Brown's planetary students, who are preparing to go further in space exploration. This Fall, our Communications Assistant Hania sat down with Jim to discuss the past, present, and future of the NASA lunar exploration programs, emphasizing that planetary science encourages humanity to think about a larger purpose. “It makes us look up.”

📰 Read Hania's full story on our website: https://deeps.brown.edu/news/2026-07-20/jim-head-student-interview

🎥 Video by Gracie Vicente, Media Producer and Coordinator
Office of Information Technology / Dean of the Faculty

07/15/2026

“Understanding the Moon’s surface is important because we’re landing there, we’re going to be walking and driving there, and we’re going to be mining there,” said Andrea Rajšić, the DEEPS research scientist who led the study. “We think this map is a good starting point that we can add to as we collect more data.”

Researchers from LunaSCOPE, Brown University’s NASA-funded lunar science collaboration, have mapped the thickness of the loose dirt and rock layer that could help or hinder lunar explorers, depending on the task at hand.

07/02/2026

During this week's intense heatwave, we're keeping it cool with some photos of the record-breaking Blizzard of '26. ❄ Just this February, Providence was buried under unprecedented snows, reaching up to 37.9 inches!

"A historic blizzard and an intense heatwave might seem like opposites, but they can both occur in a warming climate," explained Maria Luisa Rocha Santos da Silva, one of the DEEPS graduate students researching atmospheric science. "Climate change doesn't cause every individual weather event, but it changes the conditions that can make some extremes (like heavy snowfall and extreme heat) more likely or more intense."

During this extreme heat, we hope you all stay safe, stay hydrated, check in with your neighbors who may need support, and try to stay cool! (But maybe not buried-in-snow cool ⛄)

Find information about RI Cooling Centers here: https://riema.ri.gov/resources/cooling-centers

📷 Photos were shared by DEEPS community members:
Simmons Quad submitted by Ella Creane
Thayer Street submitted by Carol Hundal
Icy GeoChem submitted by Eleanor Barth Wu
Front Path to GeoChem submitted by Michelle Feng
9ft Snow Pile and Cyanotype Negative by Jamie Pahigian

07/02/2026

🎆Our very own Professor Meredith Hastings –DEEPS Chair, DEEPS & Institute at Brown for Environment and Society Professor, and leader of Breathe Providence– joined the Possibly podcast this week to talk about fireworks and our environment!

With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this year, fireworks will soon light up American skies. Do these tiny explosions have an impact on our environment or our health?

06/29/2026

“Our study presents the first evidence that the Aleutian Islands experienced this dramatic, chain-wide episode of uplift and erosion around 5 to 7 million years ago,” said Anahi Carrera, the study’s lead author who worked on the project as a Brown DEEPS doctoral student.

Researchers at Brown have shown the first direct evidence for a massive geologic uplift of the entire Aleutian Island archipelago driven by a rotation of the Pacific tectonic plate.

06/11/2026

When water erupts on the ocean moons of Jupiter and Saturn, it could freeze into fluffy ice with the texture of a croissant, presenting a hazard for future lander missions.

“If the surface is really covered with this type of highly porous, fragile water ice, that would definitely pose some serious engineering issues,” says Ingrid Daubar, a DEEPS Associate Professor of Research and a scientist on NASA’s Europa Clipper orbiter mission. “We’d have to re-envision the types of landing mechanisms we thought might work on Europa.”

Water erupted from cryovolcanoes may freeze into thick but fragile layers on Europa and Enceladus

06/04/2026

Congrats again to all our recent graduates! Please enjoy these photos from the DEEPS Commencement Ceremony!