Benjamin P. Weiss

Biosketch

Benjamin Weiss is the Robert R. Shrock Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and is the Chair of the Program in Planetary Science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He joined the MIT faculty in 2004 after completing his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He directs the MIT Planetary Magnetism Laboratory, which studies the paleomagnetism of samples from Earth, Moon, Mars and asteroids. Weiss is the Deputy Principal Investigator and Magnetometry Investigation Lead on the Psyche mission and Co-investigator on the Mars 2020 rover and the Europa Clipper missions. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and received the American Geophysical Union’s James B. Macelwane Medal and Caltech’s Francis and Milton Clauser Doctoral Prize.

Research Interests

Benjamin Weiss studies the formation, history and structures of planetary bodies. He conducts geophysical measurements of samples in the laboratory and in situ spacecraft observations to understand how solar systems form, the processes by which planets and asteroids differentiate and generate magnetic fields, the evolution of planetary climate and habitability, and the possibility and nature of subsurface oceans on icy moons. He has developed and applied high sensitivity and high spatial resolution magnetometry techniques to analyze planetary samples at the microscale, enabling measurements of individual grains and crystals in meteorites and planetary rocks.