Dr. Bethany Ehlmann

Biography

Bethany L. Ehlmann is a Professor of Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology, holding the Allen V. C. Davis Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair at the Keck Institute for Space Studies. She obtained her A.B. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2004, followed by multiple M.Sc. degrees from the University of Oxford (2005) and Brown University (2008), culminating in a Ph.D. in 2010. Ehlmann has served as an Assistant Professor at Caltech from 2011 to 2017 and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2017. She previously worked as a Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2011-2020) and held various leadership roles including Associate Director and Director of the Keck Institute for Space Studies. Her research focuses on remote compositional analysis of planetary surfaces, with interests in environmental change, Mars history, chemical weathering processes of terrestrial planets, and the habitability of early Earth environments. Ehlmann is also involved in analyzing the physical and chemical characteristics of surface materials through infrared spectroscopy and remote sensing techniques.

Research Interests

Experience