4800 Oak Grove Drive
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Dr. Christopher R. Webster is a JPL Fellow and Senior Research Scientist who has formerly served as the Director of JPL's Microdevices Lab (MDL), and as the Program Manager of the Planetary Science Instruments Office (4X). From research at leading institutions in England (Bristol University), France (Paris Observatory), and the USA (Stanford University, JPL) he has pioneered the application of tunable laser spectroscopy to a wide variety of research in molecular structure, photochemistry, electrical discharge physics, and especially Earth atmospheric science emphasizing polar ozone, cloud physics and tropical transport. He is an expert in numerous laser techniques from UV to IR and has built several state-of-the-art instruments for gas and isotope ratio measurements on Earth aircraft (400 flights) and high-altitude balloons (22 flights). He has developed and built innovative miniature instruments for planetary missions to Mars, Venus, Ceres, Saturn and Titan, and is the Institutional PI on the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) instrument in the SAM analytical suite on the Curiosity Rover now in operation on the Martian surface, measuring atmospheric methane and H, C and O isotope ratios in the atmosphere and evolved from pyrolyzed rocks.
Dr. Webster has published over 170 papers in refereed scientific journals.