Michael T Thorpe is an Assistant Research Scientist with the University of Maryland, CRESST, and within the Planetary Environments Laboratory Division at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He was previously the Mars Sample Return Scientist at Jacobs and NASA JSC. Before that, he was a NASA Postdoc (NPP) and also a NASA JSC. He received his B.S. in Geology from Towson University in 2012 and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Geosciences from Stony Brook University in 2014 and 2018, respectively. His main research interests focus on sedimentary geology and planetary exploration. He explores basaltic terrains around the globe and investigates how sediments are first generated and then altered along the transportation pathway from source to sink. He unravels sedimentary processes (e.g., weathering, mixing, sorting, diagenesis) and focuses on clay size sediments and mineralogy. He is currently on the Mars Science Laboratory team, working with the Curiosity rover, specifically looking at the mineralogy returned from the CheMin instrument on board the rover.