Rate My Professor Ellie Sansom

Sansom earned her PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Curtin University in 2017, with the thesis "Tracking Meteorites in the Atmosphere: Fireball and Trajectory Analysis," funded by an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship. She holds an MSci in Geophysics from Imperial College London (2012), including a year at UCLA, supported by the four-year Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger Scholarship. Her Curtin career began in 2012 as a teaching assistant and casual lecturer in geology, geochemistry, and structural geology. Key publications include "Observation of metre-scale impactors by the Desert Fireball Network" (Devillepoix et al., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2019), "A global fireball observatory" (Devillepoix et al., Planetary and Space Science, 2020), "Determining Fireball Fates Using the α–β Criterion" (Sansom et al., The Astrophysical Journal, 2019), "The Winchcombe meteorite, a unique and pristine witness from the outer solar system" (King et al., Science Advances, 2022), "3D meteoroid trajectories" (Sansom et al., Icarus, 2019), and "Trajectory, recovery, and orbital history of the Madura Cave meteorite" (Devillepoix et al., Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 2022). Her team's innovations have led to successful meteorite recoveries and expanded global networks. Awards encompass the 2025 Curtin Media Team Award, Athena Swan STEMM Star, 2021 AIPS Tall Poppy, and finalist for Woodside Early Career Scientist of the Year.