Lauren Mc Keown
Assistant Professor
Department of Physics
PSB
Lauren.Mc.Keown@ucf.edu
Research Groups
Dr. Lauren Mc Keown is a planetary geomorphologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida. She received her BSc in Physics with Astronomy and Space Science from University College Dublin in 2013 and her PhD in Planetary Science from Trinity College Dublin in 2019. She completed her postdoc at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where she still maintains collaborations as a Research Affiliate. She has research experience at the Natural History Museum in London, the University of Cambridge, and the Open University and has taught as a lecturer in Planetary Science previously at Birkbeck, University of London. She is also an affiliate on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) team and was previously a Europa Clipper affiliate.
Dr. Mc Keown leads the Facility for Research On Simulated Topography of Icy Environments (FROSTIE), dedicated to understanding icy planetary surface processes. Her research focuses on how planetary surfaces – particularly on Mars, Europa and small bodies – evolve through physical processes like sublimation, transient liquid brine activity, impacts and atmosphere-surface interactions and what surface geomorphology can tell us about environmental change, habitability, and geological history.
Her work combines laboratory experiments in thermal-vacuum chambers, planetary simulant development and analysis, remote sensing image analysis, and terrestrial field analog research to investigate how ice interacts with regolith and other surface materials under extraterrestrial conditions.
| Authors | Title | Published Date | Journal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scully, Jennifer E. C.; Malaska, Michael J.; Leonard, Erin J.; and 7 coauthors | Small in Number but Mighty in Significance: Impact Craters as Windows Into Europa’s Subsurface | Jul 2025 | Journal of Geophysical Research (Planets) 130, e2024JE008670 |
| Poston, Michael J.; Baker, Samantha R.; Scully, Jennifer E. C.; and 4 coauthors | Experimental Examination of Brine and Water Lifetimes after Impact on Airless Worlds | Oct 2024 | The Planetary Science Journal 5, 233 |
| Mc Keown, Lauren E.; Poston, Michael J.; Diniega, Serina; and 8 coauthors | A Lab-scale Investigation of the Mars Kieffer Model | Sep 2024 | The Planetary Science Journal 5, 195 |
| Mc Keown, L. E.; Diniega, S.; Portyankina, G.; and 4 coauthors | Martian Araneiforms: A Review | Apr 2023 | Journal of Geophysical Research (Planets) 128, e2022JE007684 |
| Mc Keown, L. E.; Diniega, S.; Bourke, M. C.; and 1 coauthor | Morphometric trends and implications for the formation of araneiform clusters | Apr 2023 | Earth and Planetary Science Letters 607, 118049 |
| Mc Keown, Lauren; McElwaine, J. N.; Bourke, M. C.; and 2 coauthors | The formation of araneiforms by carbon dioxide venting and vigorous sublimation dynamics under martian atmospheric pressure | Jan 2021 | Scientific Reports 11, 6445 |
| Mc Keown, Lauren; Bourke, Mary; McElwaine, Jim; and 2 coauthors | The Formation of Araneiforms by Carbon Dioxide Venting and Vigorous Sublimation Dynamics Under Martian Conditions | Sep 2019 | ESS Open Archive eprints 105, essoar.10501015 |
| Mc Keown, L. E.; Bourke, M. C.; McElwaine, J. N. | Experiments On Sublimating Carbon Dioxide Ice And Implications For Contemporary Surface Processes On Mars | Oct 2017 | Scientific Reports 7, 14181 |