Research Interests

I am a planetary scientist with a strong interest in understanding the evolution of planetary bodies, with an emphasis on the Earth and Mars. My work crosses several disciplines including igneous petrology, geochemistry, mineralogy, and sedimentology to assess the surface and interior evolution of Mars and Earth. I use various methods including observational rover and orbital data, modeling, and experimental petrology. 

Bio

Hi there,

​I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science at Northern Arizona University, working with Dr. Mark Salvatore and Dr. Christopher Edwards. I combine sedimentology and igneous petrology to understand and constrain magmatic processes on Mars. I work on the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity team, and was previously a ChemCam team member.

I completed my undergraduate and master's studies at Ecole Normale Supérieure Ulm (ENS, Paris, France) and Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP, France). I obtained my Ph.D at Université de Lorraine (Nancy, France) with Dr. Cécile Fabre and Dr. Violaine Sautter with a dissertation entitled "Contribution of the ChemCam instrument to the understanding of the martian primitive crust and the weathering processes at the surface of Mars – Alkaline and metal trace element quantifications using LIBS (Li, Sr, Rb, Ba and Cu)". During my master's studies, I did a 6-months internship at Caltech with Dr. Sarah Lambart, Dr. Mike Baker, and Dr. Ed Stolper, working on the heterogeneity of the Hawaiian mantle plume from analyses of volcanic samples from the Hawaii Drilling Project 2 (HSDP2) and thermodynamical modeling. I obtained a master's degree in Geochemistry, and obtained an ENS diploma in Geosciences. 

Contact

valerie.payre @ nau.edu

Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science
527 S Beaver St
NAU Box 6010
Flagstaff, AZ 86011-6010