Although many people can name the planets in our solar system, few spend time thinking about their composition. Scientist Dave Blair ’99 does.

In May, Dave received his PhD in planetary science from Purdue University, where he studied the make up of rocky planets in the inner solar system. For his doctorate he used computer modeling to examine the floors of craters on Mercury and the Moon. The modeling allowed him to do things like see how rock responds when an asteroid hits a planet, giving clues about the elements from which the rock is formed.

Dave’s graduate studies connected him with the team from NASA’s MESSENGER mission, and it was very exciting to hear the latest news as it unfolded. “Mercury is really different than we thought it was going to be,” Dave explains. “It is a lot less like the moon than you might think. There are boatloads of volcanoes, some which might still be active. And there are huge plumes of cooled lava that are the size of a continent.”

Starting June 1, Dave will be a researcher at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, which houses a powerful radio telescope. In his new position, Dave will be able to continue to study rocky planets. He will be finding patterns and come up with questions based on the plethora of data that the telescope produces. His field is called geoinformatics. Dave notes that there is “more data than we know what to do with” because one radio telescope can produce a terabyte of data a day. “The fun part is figuring out what problems to solve,” he says. “It is a big part of why you need so much school to do science well. You have to know which questions exist and which questions need answering.”

Asking questions and finding answers was something that Dave was encouraged to do from his earliest days at Greene Street Friends as a kindergarten student in Lois Force’s class. “There were so many fantastic teachers and so much love and support,” he recalls of his nine years at GSFS.

“I remember when I was at Greene Street there was a guest visit from two people who worked at NASA. They showed us models of the space shuttle or the pathfinder Mars mission.” Clearly, that visit made its mark, although science wasn’t the only subject that interested Dave.

Andy Jickling was a huge influence and Dave still has the seed collection he made in Middle School. “Andy’s class was the first chance I had to really explore science and to get a broad taste of the things that happen in science and I really liked that,” Dave says. “Andy was always really engaging and funny,” he adds. “It made it obvious to me that science didn’t have to be dull, it could be exciting.”

After graduating from Greene Street Friends, Dave went on to Germantown Friends. “Coming out of high school I wanted to go into engineering, and I rediscovered science in college.” At Case Western Reserve, Dave chose to major in geology.  Studying earth science is one path toward planetary science along with physics, computer science and astronomy.

David’s enthusiasm for new discoveries remains strong. “This is a really exciting time for exploring the solar system,” he observes. “NASA and other groups like NASA from other parts of the world have dozens of spaceships exploring the solar system.” As Dave, his wife Cassie Grillot and their dog Digby begin their new life in Massachusetts, it is an exciting time for them as well!