Quantifying the Martian Geochemical Reservoirs

Dr. Michael Toplis is a senior research scientist at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie in Toulouse, France. He received a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1990 and obtained a PhD from the University of Bristol in 1994, working on iron-rich igneous rocks. From 1994 to 1996 he worked on the structure and properties of silicate melts at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut in Bayreuth, Germany, before working on experimental and geochemical study of terrestrial magmatic rocks at the CRPG in Nancy, France as a junior CNRS research scientist. He has been working in Toulouse at the Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées since 2004, where he is currently head of a vibrant Planetary Science group which brings together specialists from a wide range of backgrounds focussing on the internal structure, surface properties and plasma environments of planets, moons and other rocky/icy bodies of the solar system. His own interests are focussed on planetary magmatism as seen on large objects such as Mars, but also early in the solar system on protoplanets such as Vesta or the parent bodies of achondrite meteorites. Dr. Toplis has acted as associate editor of American Mineralogist and Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta, and he is currently a member of the Solar System working group of the French national space agency.