Dr. Jonathan Lunine comes to Caltech after serving on the faculties of Cornell University, University of Arizona, and University of Rome in Italy. A Caltech alumnus, his research centers on the formation and evolution of planetary systems, the nature of planetary interiors and atmospheres, and where environments suited for life might exist in the solar system and beyond. He pursues this research through theoretical modeling, participation in spacecraft missions, and analysis of data from space and ground-based telescopes. He was an interdisciplinary scientist on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn and on the James Webb Space Telescope. He is co-investigator on the Juno mission at Jupiter. On the Europa Clipper mission, he is co-investigator for the Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE) and a member of the gravity science team. He is also a member of the science team on the 3GM gravity experiment on ESA's JUICE mission to Ganymede. Lunine has contributed to many concept studies for solar system exploration and exoplanet characterization missions.

Lunine is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has chaired or co-chaired numerous advisory and strategic planning committees for the Academy and for NASA, including the Giant Planet Systems panel for the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023, and "Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration," which he co-chaired in 2014 with Mitch Daniels, then President of Purdue University. Lunine is also an Academician of the International Academy of Astronautics, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union.

Lunine received a B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Rochester and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology."