Melinda Darby Dyar is a planetary geologist, mineralogist, and spectroscopist whose research relates to the evolution of the Solar System.
She studies the redox state of iron and the abundance of hydrogen using Mössbauer, x-ray absorption, and FTIR spectroscopy in the Solar System planets, specifically Earth, Moon, Mars, Mercury, and Venus.
She has written more than 260 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, analyzing geologic materials using Raman, LIBS, XANES, and FTIR, and two textbooks on mineralogy and geo-statistics that have been widely adopted in college classrooms.
[4] Dyar has recently received a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Association (NASA) for Collaborative Research: Redox Ratios in Amphiboles as Proxies for Volatile Budgets in Igneous Systems.
[1] In 2018, she received the Eugene Shoemaker Distinguished Scientist Medal from NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute for her extensive contributions to the field of lunar science.