Melissa Trainer

Melissa G. Trainer (born April 22, 1978) from which she graduated as Valedictorian in 1996.

She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 2000, graduating Magna Cum Laude with a major in Chemistry and a minor in Abstract Mathematics. Project investigator Owen Toon reported, "As had been predicted in some theoretical studies we found that the production rate of aerosols declines as the abundance of CO2 relative to methane increases in simulated terrestrial atmospheres."

Trainer and her coexperimenters reported on their findings in Astrobiology in a 2004 paper called "Haze Aerosols in the Atmosphere of Early Earth: Manna from Heaven". She later presented the findings at the 2006 NASA Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) in March 2006 where she was recognized for her work.

Trainer was a graduate research assistant at the University of Colorado, Boulder from 2000 to 2006, and a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Astrobiology Institute from 2006 to 2009. As of 2015, she became Assistant Chief for Science, Operations, and Strategic Planning in the Planetary Environments Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Trainer continues to study the properties of Titan and early Earth aerosol analogs, using a wide variety of techniques including chemical, optical, and isotopic characterizations of analogs. She is active in astrobiology projects examining Mars, Titan, Venus. Trainer is the co-Deputy Principal Investigator.