Dr. Mehdi Benna
Atmospheric Experiment Laboratory, Code 699 Telephone: (301) 614-6392
Solar System Exploration Division Fax: (301) 614-6406
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Email: mehdi.benna@nasa.gov
Greenbelt, MD 20771
Biography:
Dr. Benna is a planetary scientist with a research emphasis in plasma physics and planetary magnetospheres dynamics. Dr. Benna received a degree in Electrical Engineering and a M.Sc. in Radio-wave Telecommunication from the Engineering School of Tunis. His Ph.D. thesis was carried out within the Laboratory of Planetary and Terrestrial Dynamics (LDTP) in France and focused on the study of a new comet nucleus sounding technique using radiowave transmissions. This technique was applied to the experiment CONSERT of the Rosetta space mission. After obtaining his Ph.D. degree in 2002, Dr. Benna was involved in studying the gravity field of the asteroid 433-Eros using the radioscience data obtained during the NEAR space mission. In 2003, he was awarded an NRC postdoctoral fellowship to study the interaction between the solar wind and cometary atmosphere at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2006, Dr. Benna joined the Goddard Earth Science and Technology Center (GEST) at GSFC.
Dr. Benna is currently participating in several planetary projects and studies. He is a participating scientist in the MESSENGER mission to Mercury and he is also supporting the SAM experiment selected for NASA's Mars Surface Laboratory (MSL) mission. In addiction, Dr. Benna is the principal investigator of a CASSINI Data Analysis investigation to study the space environment of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Education:
Electrical Engineer (1999), University of Tunis, Tunisia.
M.S. of Radio-wave telecommunication (2000), University of Tunis, Tunisia.
Ph.D. in Planetary Science (2002), University of Toulouse, France.
Professional Experience:
Research Scientist, GEST/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (2006-Present).
NRC Post-doctoral Fellow, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (2003-2006).
Associate Scientist, Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (CNRS) – France (2002-2003).
Graduate Student, Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (CNRS) – France (1999-2002).
Honors and Awards:
A full Ph.D. Scholarship Award from the Government of Tunisia (1999-2002).
An NRC Research Fellowship Award (2003-2006).
Selected Peer-Reviewed Publications:
Benna, M., and Mahaffy, P. (2007) Multi-fluid model of comet 1P/Halley, Planet. Space Sci., 55(9), 1031-1043.
Benna, M., Mahaffy, P. (2006) New Multi-Fluid MHD model of Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup: Extrapolation to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L10103.
Benna, M., and Mahaffy, P. (2005) Three-dimensional MHD simulation of the solar wind interaction with comets, in Advances in Geosciences, Vol3, 191-202.
Benna, M., Mahaffy, P., MacNeice, P., and Olsen, K. (2004) A Multi-scale central difference scheme applied to MHD simulations of cometary atmospheres. Astrophys. J., 617, 656-666.
Benna, M., Barriot, J.-P., and Kofman, W. (2003) Generation of 3-D synthetic data for the modeling of the CONSERT experiment (the radiotomography of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, IEEE Trans. Ant. Prop., 52, 709-716.
Benna, M., (2003) Comets. African skies 9, 1-7.
Barriot, J.-P, and Benna, M. (2003) Radiotomography with additional functional assumption: the CONSERT case, Proc. App. Math. Mech., 2, 507-508.
Benna, M., Piot, A., Barriot, J.-P., and Kofman, W. (2002) 2-D Data Set Generation and Inversion Simulation of Radio-waves Propagating Through a Comet Nucleus (CONSERT Experiment), Radio Science 37, 1092-1107.
Benna, M., Barriot, J.-P., and Kofman, W. (2001) A Priori Information for a Two Dimensional Imaging of the Internal Structure of a Comet Nucleus (CONSERT Experiment), Adv.Space Res., 29, 715-724.
