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Renu Malhotra is Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professor and Regents' Professor of Planetary Sciences at The University of Arizona in Tucson, where she is also serving as Chair of the Theoretical Astrophysics Program. She was born in New Delhi and grew up in Hyderabad, India. She earned her M.S. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in 1983, and her Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University in 1988. She did post-doctoral research at Cornell and at Caltech, and worked as a staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. Her work in planetary dynamics has spanned a wide variety of topics, including extra-solar planets and debris disks around nearby stars, the formation and evolution of the Kuiper belt and the asteroid belt, the orbital resonances amongst the moons of the giant planets, and the meteoritic bombardment history of the planets. She has revolutionized our understanding of the history of the solar system by using the orbital resonance between Pluto and Neptune to infer large-scale orbital migration of the giant planets and to predict the existence of the "Plutinos" and other small planets in resonance with Neptune. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been the recipient of honors and awards from the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, The University of Arizona, and the IIT-Delhi.  

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Courses
  • TUHOD
    The Universe and Humanity: Origin and Destiny

  • ACKBO
    Asteroids, Comets and Kuiper Belt Objects

  • SSD
    Solar System Dynamics

Grants
  • Funding agency logo
    Tools for Advanced Dynamical Characterization of Solar System Small Bodies

    Co-Investigator (COI)

    2022

    $153.4K
    Active
  • Funding agency logo
    Provenance of Plutinos

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2022

    $40.9K
    Active
  • Funding agency logo
    Alien Earths: Which Nearby Planetary Systems Are Likely to Host Habitable Planets and Life?

    Co-Investigator (COI)

    2021

    $2.8M
    Active
  • Funding agency logo
    Dynamics of Sticky Resonances and Detached Kuiper Belt Objects

    Co-Investigator (COI)

    2019

    $248.3K
    Active
  • Funding agency logo
    Kuiper Belt Dynamics with a Distant Unseen Planet

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2018

    $339.6K
    Active
  • Funding agency logo
    Distribution of Planet Masses, Planet-Planet Separations and Dynamical Lifetimes of Planetary Systems

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2018

    $320.9K
    Active
  • Funding agency logo
    Provenance of the Plutinos

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2021

    $39.4K
  • Funding agency logo
    Provenance of the Plutinos

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2020

    $38.7K
  • Funding agency logo
    Earths in Other Solar Systems: Toward Forming and Discovering Planets with Biocritical Ingredients

    Co-Investigator (COI)

    2015

    $5.7M
  • Funding agency logo
    Planetary Migration and Kuiper Belt Dynamics

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2014

    $409.8K
News
  • Near-Earth Asteroid Might be a Lost Fragment of the Moon

    2021

  • Diana Liverman Elected to National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences

    2020

  • UA Scientists and the Curious Case of the Warped Kuiper Belt

    2017

  • Earth's New Buddy Is Asteroid, Not Space Junk

    2017

  • Surveying the Scenery 90 Million Miles From Earth

    2017

  • 7 UA Faculty Members Honored in Campus Ceremony

    2017

  • 3 UA Faculty Members Named Regents' Professors

    2016

  • More Evidence for Ninth Planet on Solar System's Fringes

    2016

  • Academy Elects UA Planetary Sciences Professor

    2015

  • UA Professor Elected to National Academy of Sciences

    2015

  • Baby Photos of a Scaled-Up Solar System

    2014

  • Study: Better Odds That Life Crashed to Earth From Space

    2012

  • Biosphere 2 Dedicates Lectures to Memory of Michael J. Drake

    2011

  • College of Science Announces 2010 Galileo Circle Fellows

    2010

  • UA Scientists Find Asteroids Are Missing, and Possibly Why

    2009

  • Minton Wins 2008 Kuiper Award

    2008

  • Asteroids Caused the Early Inner Solar System Cataclysm

    2005

  • Faculty Win Grant for 'Astrobiology and the Sacred' Project

    2004

  • Legacy Team Will Use SIRTF to Trace Evolution of Planetary Systems

    2003

  • Astronomers Discover Apparent Outer 'Edge' to the Solar System

    2000

  • Steward Observatory Astronomers Head Two SIRTF Science Teams

    2000

Publications (177)
Recent
  • A Measurement of the Kuiper Belt’s Mean Plane From Objects Classified By Machine Learning

    2023

  • Orbital pathways for a Lunar-Ejecta Origin of the Near-Earth Asteroid Kamo`oalewa

    2023

  • A von Mises–Fisher distribution for the orbital poles of the plutinos

    2023

  • Pluto orbits in elegant arrangement with the giant planets

    2023

  • Non-perturbative investigation of low-eccentricity exterior mean motion resonances

    2023

  • Assessing the Origins of Earth Quasi-Satellite (469219) Kamo`oalewa

    2022

  • Pluto near the edge of chaos

    2022

  • Conditions for the long term stability of Pluto's azimuthal and latitudinal perihelion librations

    2022

  • Earth's quasi-satellite Kamo'oalewa's possible origin as lunar ejecta

    2022

  • Orbital Dynamics Landscape near the Most Distant Known Trans-Neptunian Objects

    2022

  • An Integrated Analysis of Multi-planet Systems and Predicting Hidden Planets

    2022

  • Predicting defects in object-oriented software using cost-sensitive classification

    2021

  • Refining the Transit-timing and Photometric Analysis of TRAPPIST-1: Masses, Radii, Densities, Dynamics, and Ephemerides

    2021

  • What really goes on in the chaotic zones of the planets, from Earth to Neptune

    2021

  • Software defect prediction using Binary Particle Swarm Optimization with Binary Cross Entropy as the fitness function

    2021

  • Lunar-like silicate material forms the Earth quasi-satellite (469219) 2016 HO$_3$ Kamoʻoalewa

    2021

  • An investigation of chaotic planetary dynamics induced by the wide stellar binary companion to Boyajian's Star

    2021

  • Mapping Neptune's resonances into the distant solar system

    2021

  • Pluto’s Resonant Orbit Visualized in 4D

    2021

  • An Integrative Analysis of the HD 219134 Planetary System and the Inner Solar System: Extending DYNAMITE with Enhanced Orbital Dynamical Stability Criteria

    2021

  • VizieR Online Data Catalog: ALMA observation of 152 1-11Myr aged stars (Hendler+, 2020)

    2021

  • Near-Earth Asteroid Kamo`oalewa as Lunar Ejecta

    2021

  • A measurement of the Kuiper Belt midplane from AI-classified objects

    2021

  • Characterizing and predicting dynamical instabilities in multiplanet systems

    2020

  • Corralling a distant unseen planet with orbital resonances \textemdash an update

    2020

  • Adam P. Showman (1968-2020)

    2020

  • Observational Completion Limit of Minor Planets from the Asteroid Belt to Jupiter Trojans

    2020

  • Searching for L5 Earth Trojans with DECam

    2020

  • Dynamical instabilities in systems of multiple short-period planets are likely driven by secular chaos: a case study of Kepler-102

    2020

  • Kepler-102: a case study for using dynamical constraints to characterize exoplanet systems

    2020

  • On the divergence of first-order resonance widths at low eccentricities

    2020

  • Lunar close encounters compete with the circumterrestrial Lidov-Kozai effect

    2020

  • A Disk-driven Resonance as the Origin of High Inclinations of Close-in Planets

    2020

  • The Scientific Impact of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) for Solar System Science

    2020

  • Asteroid belt dynamics and statistics

    2020

  • The Evolution of Dust Disk Sizes from a Homogeneous Analysis of 1–10 Myr old Stars

    2020

  • Not a Simple Relationship between Neptune’s Migration Speed and Kuiper Belt Inclination Excitation

    2019

  • Resonant Kuiper belt objects: a review

    2019

  • Assessing and Minimizing Collisions in Satellite Mega-Constellations

    2019

  • Planetary Habitability Informed by Planet Formation and Exoplanet Demographics

    2019

  • Mean motion resonance widths at low and high eccentricity

    2019

  • Not a Simple Relationship between Neptune\textquoterights Migration Speed and Kuiper Belt Inclination Excitation

    2019

  • Not a simple relationship between Neptune's migration speed and Kuiper belt inclination excitation

    2019

  • Publisher Correction: Craters, boulders and regolith of (101955) Bennu indicative of an old and dynamic surface

    2019

  • The dynamical demise of Luna-3

    2019

  • Impact fluxes on 2014 MU69 and Pluto and their variations over secular timescales

    2019

  • OSIRIS-REx low-velocity particles during outbound cruise

    2019

  • New results on orbital resonances

    2019

  • VizieR Online Data Catalog: IRAC fluxes of the ID8 and P1121 systems (Su+, 2019)

    2019

  • Extreme Debris Disk Variability: Exploring the Diverse Outcomes of Large Asteroid Impacts During the Era of Terrestrial Planet Formation

    2019

  • Craters, boulders and regolith of (101955) Bennu indicative of an old and dynamic surface

    2019

  • Neptune's resonances in the scattered disk

    2019

  • Neptune's 5:2 mean motion resonance in the Kuiper Belt

    2018

  • ALMA 1.3 Millimeter Map of the HD 95086 System -- A Young Analog of the HR 8799 System

    2018

  • Dust and Gas in the HD 95086 Planetary System

    2018

  • Ceres and the terrestrial planets impact cratering record

    2018

  • An Upper Limit on Earth's Trojan Asteroid Population from OSIRIS-REx

    2018

  • The Mid-plane of the Main Asteroid Belt

    2018

  • Neptune's 5:2 Resonance in the Kuiper Belt

    2018

  • On the Detectability of Planet X with LSST

    2018

  • A statistical exploration of the dynamical stability of Kepler and K2 multi-planet systems

    2018

  • Mean Motion Resonances at High Eccentricities: The 2:1 and the 3:2 Interior Resonances

    2017

  • The Midplane of the Main Asteroid Belt and Its Warps

    2017

  • Simplified Derivation of the Collision Probability of Two Objects in Independent Keplerian Orbits

    2017

  • Prospects for unseen planets beyond Neptune

    2017

  • Eccentricity distribution in the main asteroid belt

    2017

  • The Curiously Warped Mean Plane of the Kuiper Belt

    2017

  • Ground-based Characterization of Earth Quasi Satellite (469219) 2016 HO3

    2017

  • The Mass Function of Planets

    2017

  • Erratum: “The Curiously Warped Mean Plane of the Kuiper Belt” (2017, AJ, 154, 62)

    2017

  • ALMA 1.3 mm Map of the HD 95086 System

    2017

  • The Midplane of the Kuiper Belt and Its Unexpected Warps

    2017

  • Mars/Moon Impact Rate Ratio of Kilometer-Size Impactors

    2016

  • Corralling a distant unseen planet with extreme resonant Kuiper belt objects

    2016

  • Dynamics of the Most Distant Kuiper Belt Objects

    2016

  • High eccentricity MMRs in the circular planar restricted three-body problem

    2016

  • The mass distribution function of planets in the Galaxy

    2016

  • Lightcurves of the Karin family asteroids

    2016

  • CORRALLING A DISTANT PLANET WITH EXTREME RESONANT KUIPER BELT OBJECTS

    2016

  • Spatial distribution of steep lunar craters may be linked to size-dependent orbital distribution of impactors

    2016

  • Evidence for a distant unseen solar system planet: Assessing the observational biases in the extreme Kuiper belt population

    2016

  • {Current Impact Rate on Earth, Moon, and Mars}

    2015

  • Planetary Chaotic Zone Clearing: Destinations and Timescales

    2015

  • Debris Distribution in HD 95086 - A Young Analog of HR 8799

    2015

  • {Solar System science with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope}

    2015

  • Oort Cloud Comet Encounters with Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury

    2015

  • The inner solar system cratering record and the evolution of impactor populations

    2015

  • {Division I: Commission 7: Celestial Mechanics {amp} Dynamical Astronomy}

    2015

  • {The current impact flux on Mars and its seasonal variation}

    2015

  • THE MASS DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION OF PLANETS

    2015

  • Orbital resonances in planetary systems

    2014

  • On the non-uniform distribution of the angular elements of near-Earth objects

    2014

  • Predictions for Shepherding Planets in Scattered Light Images of Debris Disks

    2014

  • Planets near mean-motion resonances

    2013

  • Our wild wild solar system

    2013

  • Asteroid belts in debris disk twins: Vega and fomalhaut

    2013

  • Do Centaurs preserve their source inclinations?

    2013

  • NASA Solar System Exploration portal profile

    2013

  • The effect of orbital evolution on the Haumea (2003 EL sub 61 /sub ) collisional family

    2012

  • Commission 7: Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy

    2012

  • Chaotic exchange of solid material between planetary systems: implications for lithopanspermia.

    2012

  • Chaotic Exchange of Solid Material Between Planetary Systems: Implications for Lithopanspermia

    2012

  • The effect of orbital evolution on the Haumea (2003 EL 61) collisional family

    2012

  • Long-term cycling of Kozai-Lidov Cycles: Extreme eccentricities and inclinations excited by a distant eccentric perturber

    2011

  • Inclination mixing in the classical Kuiper Belt

    2011

  • Comment on Constraints on the source of lunar cataclysm impactors (Cuk et al., 2010, Icarus 207, 590-594)

    2011

  • Secular resonance sweeping of the main asteroid belt during planet migration

    2011

  • Dynamical erosion of the asteroid belt and implications for large impacts in the inner Solar System

    2010

  • Locating planetesimal belts in the multiple-planet systems HD 128311, HD 202206, HD 82943, and HR 8799

    2010

  • Asymmetric impacts of near-Earth asteroids on the Moon

    2010

  • CHAOTIC DIFFUSION OF RESONANT KUIPER BELT OBJECTS

    2009

  • Two dynamical classes of Centaurs

    2009

  • A record of planet migration in the main asteroid belt

    2009

  • THE DEBRIS DISK AROUND HR 8799

    2009

  • Extrasolar Kuiper Belt Dust Disks

    2008

  • Prospects for the habitability of OGLE-2006-BLG-109L

    2008

  • The scattered disk as the source of the jupiter family comets

    2008

  • Assessing the massive young SUN hypothesis to solve the warm young earth puzzle

    2007

  • The dust, planetesimals, and planets of HD 38529

    2007

  • Are debris disks and massive planets correlated?

    2007

  • Formation and evolution of planetary systems: Upper limits to the gas mass in disks around sun-like stars

    2006

  • The formation and evolution of planetary systems: Placing our solar system in context with Spitzer

    2006

  • Dynamical transport of asteroid fragments from the ν sub 6 /sub resonance

    2006

  • Erratum: The size distribution of trans-Neptunian bodies (The Astronomical Journal (2004) 128 (1364))

    2006

  • SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF ASTEROIDS AND OLD TERRESTRIAL CRATERS: IMPLICATIONS FOR ASTEROIDAL DYNAMICS DURING LHB

    2006

  • Dynamical transport of asteroid fragments from the ν6 resonance

    2006

  • Planetary science: The origin of planetary impactors in the inner solar system

    2005

  • Signatures of planets in spatially unresolved debris disks

    2005

  • Neptune's migration into a stirred-up kuiper belt: A detailed comparison of simulations to observations

    2005

  • Dust outflows and inner gaps generated by massive planets in debris disks

    2005

  • Formation and evolution of planetary systems: Cold outer disks associated with sun-like stars

    2005

  • Signatures of planets in debris disks

    2005

  • Interstellar probe: Breakthrough science enabled by nuclear propulsion

    2004

  • Survival of Trojan-type companions of Neptune during primordial planet migration

    2004

  • Photometric observations of a very young family-member asteroid (832) Karin

    2004

  • The size distribution of trans-Neptunian bodies

    2004

  • The formation and evolution of planetary systems: First results from a Spitzer legacy science program

    2004

  • Secular dynamics of the three-body problem: Application to the υ Andromedae planetary system

    2004

  • Dynamical models of Kuiper belt dust in the inner and outer solar system

    2003

  • The dynamics of known centaurs

    2003

  • The formation and evolution of planetary systems: Placing our solar system in context

    2003

  • A dynamical mechanism for establishing apsidal resonance

    2002

  • Observational limits on a distant cold Kuiper belt

    2002

  • A study of the dynamics of dust from the Kuiper belt: Spatial distribution and spectral energy distribution

    2002

  • The edge of the solar system

    2001

  • Chaos and stability of the solar system

    2001

  • The υ Andromedae system: Models and stability

    2000

  • Dynamics of the Kuiper Belt

    2000

  • Migrating Planets

    1999

  • The Galilean satellites.

    1999

  • Orbital Evolution of Planets Embedded in a Planetesimal Disk

    1999

  • Chaotic planet formation

    1999

  • Pluto's Heliocentric Orbit

    1997

  • Galileo results raise new questions about Ganymede

    1997

  • Coupled orbital and thermal evolution of Ganymede

    1997

  • Depletion of the outer asteroid belt

    1997

  • Tidal evolution into the Laplace resonance and the resurfacing of Ganymede

    1997

  • The phase space structure near Neptune resonances in the Kuiper Belt

    1996

  • The Origin of Pluto's Orbit: Implications for the Solar System Beyond Neptune

    1995

  • Nonlinear resonances in the solar system

    1994

  • A mapping method for the gravitational few-body problem with dissipation

    1994

  • Orbital Resonances in the Solar Nebula: Strengths and Weaknesses

    1993

  • Three-Body Effects in the PSR 1257+12 Planetary System

    1993

  • The origin of Pluto's peculiar orbit

    1993

  • Resonant orbital evolution in the putative planetary system of PSR1257 + 12

    1992

  • Erratum: "Capture probabilities for secondary resonances" [Icarus, Vol. 87, No. 2, p. 249 - 264 (Oct 1990)].

    1991

  • Tidal origin of the Laplace resonance and the resurfacing of Ganymede

    1991

  • Capture probabilities for secondary resonances

    1990

  • Modelling the IRAS solar system dust bands

    1990

  • The role of secondary resonances in the orbital history of Miranda

    1990

  • Secular perturbations of the Uranian satellites: theory and practice.

    1989

  • Dynamics of the Uranian and Saturnian satelite systems: A chaotic route to melting Miranda?

    1988

  • Some Aspects of the Dynamics of Orbit Orbit Resonances in the Uranian Satellite System.

    1988

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