J. L. Piatek
Papers
3
Total Citations
55
H-Index
3
About
J. L. Piatek is a geoscientist whose research bridges planetary analog environments, astrobiology, and innovative geoscience education. Her key contributions center on robotic exploration for life detection and the development of tools to assess habitability in extreme environments. As part of the three-year "Life in the Atacama" (LITA) project, she co-authored the highly cited 2007 paper "Robotic ecological mapping: Habitats and the search for life in the Atacama Desert" (31 citations), which demonstrated autonomous rover-based mapping of microbial and plant abundance using on-board fluorescence imaging of biological signatures. Her companion paper, "Life in the Atacama: A scoring system for habitability and the robotic exploration for life" (17 citations), introduced the LITA Data Scoring System (DSS), a novel analytical framework for integrating multi-sensor data to evaluate habitability—a tool directly relevant to future Mars missions. Beyond astrobiology, Piatek has advanced geoscience pedagogy through her work on "Developing virtual field experiences for undergraduates with high-resolution panoramas (GigaPans) at multiple scales" (7 citations), making field-based learning accessible to students who cannot travel. Her work uniquely combines field robotics, habitability assessment, and educational technology, demonstrating how planetary analog research can inform both space exploration and undergraduate STEM education.
Research Focus
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