Associate Professor of Geology Selby Cull-Hearth, who served on the science teams for the Mars Phoenix lander and the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer, was among the experts quoted in a Christian Science Monitor article about "How NASA's latest mission to Mars might dig up truths about Earth."
From the article:
“There are some deep existential questions that looking at the comparative histories of the planets can help answer,” says Selby Cull-Hearth, a planetary scientist at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. For example, she says, “One of the great driving questions of our existence is, why are we here? How did this happen?”
Cull-Hearth studies the mineralogy and geochemistry of the Martian surface, using data from satellites in orbit around Mars and robots landed on the surface. Her specialty is visible- to near-infrared spectroscopy, and she's particularly interested in the role of salts and liquid water on modern Mars.