Marina Gemma

Dr. Marina E. Gemma is a planetary scientist who investigates pieces of other planetary bodies – meteorites. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Stony Brook University and a research associate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the American Museum of Natural History. She received her PhD in 2022 from Columbia University, after completing her doctoral research as a joint AMNH-RGGS and Columbia student. She received her BA in Astrophysics in 2015 from Columbia University.

What Marina finds most exciting about working with meteorites is that she gets to hold these extraterrestrial samples in her hands. Her research focuses on using numerous laboratory techniques to characterize the chemical composition of primitive chondritic meteorites, in an effort to decipher the chemical and physical processes that shaped the early solar system environment, leading to the formation and evolution of the planets we know today.

Marina is passionate about sharing the excitement of scientific research through teaching and public outreach. She has taught earth and planetary science courses at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels, and has been deeply involved in the AMNH’s public outreach efforts as a PhD student and now research associate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.