The asteroids provide excellent opportunities to study the formation and early evolution of the Solar System. This is because they are small and can not retain heat efficiently, and thus cooled early in the Solar System and became “frozen” shortly after their formation. They are also widely regarded as the remnants of the planet formation, i. e., the planets were formed through collision between different asteroids, and thus the asteroids also record the early stage of planet formation. By studying the chemical and isotopic composition of different types of asteroids, we can gain important insight into the astrophysical environment of the Solar System formation and the formation process (e.g. the accretion time scale and the material source) of the planets.

BIO
Liping Qin obtained her BS degree at the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China and PhD in cosmochemistry at the University of Chicago. She joined Carnegie Institution for Science as a Carnegie Fellow in 2007, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a geological postdoc fellow in 2010. She became a full professor at the University of Science and Technology of China in 2012. She has received a number of awards such as the Houtermans Awards and the Outstanding Young Scientist of China grant. She serves on the editorial board of Earth and Planetary Science Letters, and is currently an Associate Editor of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.