Tom Zega

Dr. Thomas Zega serves as the Interim Dean for Research in the College of Science. He earned his B.A. in Geological Sciences from Rutgers University in 1996. He completed his Ph.D. in Geological Sciences at Arizona State University in 2003. He joined the University of Arizona faculty in 2011. He is professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Zega is a geochemist/cosmochemist by training. He applies a microscopy- and microanalysis-based approach to study the chemical and physical evolution of the early solar system. He uses ultrahigh-resolution ion- and electron-microscopy, including focused-ion-beam scanning-electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, to determine the composition and structure of planetary materials at scales ranging from millimeters down to the atomic. Such information is supported by computational thermodynamics to gain novel insights into material origins. His current research is focused on origin of refractory inclusions that formed the first solar-system solids and sulfides that formed in the early solar nebula. He is also involved in the analysis of samples returned by the JAXA Hayabusa missions to asteroid Itokawa and Ryugu, and those returned from asteroid Bennu by the UA-led NASA OSIRIS-REx mission. He has authored over 100 publications on a broad range of materials and techniques used to characterize them.

Zega serves as the Director of the Kuiper-Arizona Laboratory for Astromaterials Analysis (K-ALFAA). K-ALFAA houses electron- and ion-beam microscopes capable of analyzing heterogeneous materials from the cm to atomic length scale and serves researchers across UA as well as local and regional public- and private-sector users.

Prior to joining the University of Arizona, Zega was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow and later staff scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, where his work focused on using electron microscopy to investigate spintronic materials, catalysts, photovoltaic materials, and the origins of planetary materials. He also spent time in the private sector working in the development zeolites and spin-cast metals for, respectively, the petroleum and power industries.