Rate My Professor Jeff Andrews-Hanna

Jeff Andrews-Hanna is a Professor in the Department of Planetary Sciences and the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, where he was promoted to full professor in 2025. He earned his Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006, with his dissertation focusing on the hydrology of Mars. Following his doctorate, he held a postdoctoral position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researching Martian geophysics. He subsequently served as a staff scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. In January 2017, Andrews-Hanna joined the University of Arizona as an Associate Professor.

Andrews-Hanna's research examines geodynamic, tectonic, magmatic, hydrologic, and climatic processes acting on the surfaces and interiors of solid-surface planets and moons in the Solar System, from local to global scales. He combines analysis of gravity, topography, and other remote sensing datasets—such as those from NASA's GRAIL mission—with numerical modeling. Current projects investigate terrestrial planet tectonics, volcanism, impact basins, and hydrology on the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Pluto. His work has illuminated lunar subsurface structures using GRAIL gravity data, a giant mantle plume beneath Mars' Tharsis suggesting ongoing activity, and the Moon's early evolution, including evidence that it turned itself inside out through overturn of its mantle. Andrews-Hanna delivers public lectures, including the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory Evening Lecture Series on the Moon's earliest days, and teaches courses such as Planetary Global Tectonics and Exploring Our Solar System.