Stephen Lowry

Dr. Lowry is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent's Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science. He specializes in optical and infrared observations and modeling of Solar System Small Bodies, making use of both space-based and large ground-based telescope facilities.

He completed his PhD in 2001 at Queen's University Belfast in the area of cometary science, and from there he was a research fellow for several years in the UK and US. Before moving to his current position at the University of Kent, he was a Research Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on physical and compositional characterizations of cometary and asteroidal bodies, and supported numerous spacecraft missions to these bodies and the development of a new comet surface sample return mission. His publications include four research papers in Science and one in the Nature, and was lead author in a chapter in the recent 'The Solar System Beyond Neptune' book.

Dr. Lowry is a member of the science team for the OSIRIS optical camera instrument on board ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, en route to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and is Principal Investigator on a new Large Programme at the European Southern Observatory to study near-Earth asteroids.