Raquel Nuno is a Ph.D. candidate and science educator at UCLA. She studies impact craters on the Moon and Mars with the goal of understanding the impact history of the Solar System. Raquel does this work using spacecraft data, astronomical observations with ground-based telescopes, and fieldwork at impact crater sites here on Earth. She is also a science team member of the Diviner instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is currently orbiting the Moon. 

As a passionate science communicator, Raquel has written dozens of blog posts for NASA's LRO Camera blog, was featured on popular science podcasts StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ologies, and assists with production on the award-winning science YouTube channel Veritasium, which has over 7.7 million subscribers worldwide. Raquel's own personal flagship science communication platform is the Instagram account @TheSpaceGeologist where she hopes to demystify what a scientist is and does.  

Originally from Portugal, Raquel attended community college before becoming the first in her family to obtain a college degree and beyond, completing a bachelor’s degree in Geophysics and Space Physics and a master’s degree in Planetary Geology, both at UCLA. She previously interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and served in the US Air Force.  

You can usually find her looking for cool rocks or stargazing with her husband and 3 children.