Dr. Isaac Smith

Biography

Isaac B. Smith joined the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University in August 2018 as an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Space Science, where he holds a Canada Research Chair in Planetary Science. Prior to joining York University, he was a Research Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Lakewood, Colorado. He completed his Ph.D. in Geosciences in 2013 at the University of Texas at Austin and received a Fulbright Fellowship to work at Sorbonne University in Paris, France for a year. In his post-doctoral studies at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, he focused his research interests on ice on Mars, particularly related to understanding its current and recent climate. Dr. Smith intends to continue his ongoing research while adding laboratory and field components to the study of ice processes and behavior. His fieldwork involves developing a program to study permafrost features and their morphology in the Canadian Arctic, which relate to analogous landforms found on Mars. In the lab, he aims to study the rheological properties of CO2 ice and its behavior under different solar radiation conditions, along with exploring the ices of N2 and CH4 found on Pluto, as part of longer-term research goals. His research lab, the Ice Lab, located in Petrie, PSE 403, specializes in simulating conditions at Mars’ poles to understand processes acting there and to measure the dielectric properties of Martian analogue materials.

Research Interests