Hello! My name is Protiti Roy. I am a PhD student in the Planetary Exploration Group led by Dr. Valerie Payré in SEES. I am a planetary geologist studying the mineralogy of Mars from remote sensing data.

My research focuses on Valles Marineris, the largest canyon system in the Solar System, stretching more than 4,000 km across Mars. Despite its size and significance, the origin and evolution of this immense canyon remain debated. One striking feature of Valles Marineris is the presence of randomly distributed regions of unusually high thermal inertia on its floor—areas that resist temperature changes more strongly than their surroundings. These terrains may record evidence of past geological processes such as magma emplacement, crustal induration, or alteration by water. Using remote sensing data, my work aims to characterize the petrological, geomorphological, and mineralogical properties of these high thermal inertia regions, with the goal of better constraining how Valles Marineris formed and evolved through time. This research not only advances our understanding of Martian canyon systems but also provides a framework for investigating high thermal inertia terrains elsewhere on Mars.