Dr. Kim Tait received the prestigious Dorothy Killam Fellowship. Formerly the Killam Research Fellowships, this fellowship provide support to researchers with projects of broad significance and widespread interest across disciplines of the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences, engineering or studies linking any of these disciplines. Kim's research focuses on "Describing planetary processes from Mars atom by atom".
Martian meteorites obtained from an ancient lakebed may have preserved biosignatures and could answer an outstanding question: did life ever exist on Mars? Kim will use novel techniques to investigate Martian meteorites at the atomic level, the basic building blocks of matter. Understanding Martian rocks on the atomic scale may lead to improving our understanding of large-scale planetary processes that have occurred on Mars throughout geologic time.