Adrian E Southard

Adrian Southard is currently working as an aerospace engineer/planetary scientist for Universities Space Research Association. Since earning his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2009, he has been developing instrumentation for mass spectrometers at NASA GSFC including sources, e.g. a field emission electron gun and electrospray ionization, liquid separations, e.g. lab-on-a-chip liquid chromatography, calibration of a critical pressure sensor for MOMA and detectors, e.g. time-of-flight and orbitrap mass analyzers. His focus has been on instrumentation that can perform compositional analysis of targets to inform understanding of biotic vs. abiotic origin and molecular complexity. He enjoys using finite difference and finite element simulations to aid in the design of ion optics.