About
Vlada Stamenkovic is a physicist and planetary scientist who studies how planets evolve as a function of time.
He is particularly interested in how water and gases flow within planets to enable the emergence and evolution of life.
On the theoretical side, Stamenkovic models how planetary interiors heat and cool over time, how crusts deform and how the volatiles and nutrients needed for life (such as water, oxygen, methane, and hydrogen amongst others) are being formed, transported and stored inside these crusts.
Stamenkovic is also developing the technologies needed to search for subsurface water—on the Earth as well as on Mars. He believes that understanding the evolution of the subsurface of the Earth is the missing piece needed to understand how life emerged here and that the subsurface of other planetary objects, especially Mars, is key for finding signs of life beyond Earth.