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Jose Hurtado was born February 22, 1974 in Springfield, MA. His father was in the United States Air Force, so the family had the opportunity to see a lot of the world, having lived in Massachusetts, California, Florida, England, Delaware, and Turkey and having visited numerous places in Europe and the Middle East. Jose graduated as valedictorian from Vanden High School, Fairfield, CA in 1992. He earned a B.S. with honor and an M.S. in geology from Caltech in 1996. His undergraduate research involved the use of paleomagnetics to investigate the Cretaceous paleolatitude of southern British Columbia. He went on to MIT for graduate school, earning a Ph.D. in 2002. At MIT, Jose worked on the tectonic evolution of the central Nepal Himalaya and led four expeditions to the Upper Mustang region. In addition, he spent a summer doing geologic research in East Greenland. After MIT, Dr. Hurtado spent time at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as a postdoctoral research fellow and worked on various Earth and Mars remote sensing projects. He joined the faculty at UTEP in the fall of 2002 as an assistant professor in geology, and has returned to JPL since for summer faculty fellowships (2003) and collaborations. Dr. Hurtado was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in 2008. His current research interests include: remote sensing; visualization and field computing technologies for geologic field work; geomorphology; tectonics; and planetary science. He teaches courses in: physical geology; physical geography; field methods; geologic mapping; remote sensing; digital image processing; isotope geology; tectonic geomorphology; and planetary geology.
Dr. Hurtado has expertise in planetary and terrestrial geology, specializing in structural and geomorphologic mapping, geochronology, and remote sensing. His geologic work includes investigation of the tectonic evolution of the Himalaya and Tibet; neotectonics of the central Nepal Himalaya; and seismic hazards and paleoseismology in Bhutan and the El Paso region. His remote sensing work includes geodetic/geophysical monitoring of volcanoes in El Salvador; environmental monitoring in Egypt and the El Paso area; multispectral mapping of Earth, the Moon, and Mars; and the geomorphology of cratered planetary surfaces. Along with several of his students, Dr. Hurtado has collaborated over the past two years with the NASA Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science group at NASA/Johnson Space Center to review and catalog the geologic activities conducted on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts. An interviewee for the 2009 astronaut candidate program, Dr. Hurtado is involved in various lunar field geologic activities through FEAT (Field Exploration and Analysis Team), the Lunar and Planetary Institute, the NASA Lunar Science Institute, the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and the newly-created NASA/UTEP Center for Space Exploration Technology Research. Dr. Hurtado has served as a member the NASA Kż10 lunar robotic reconnaissance science team (June 2009), a member of the NASA Desert RATS science team (Aug.-Sept. 2009), and an instructor for NASA field geologic training courses (Feb. 2008; June 2009; Jan. 2010; June 2010; Aug. 2010). Dr. Hurtado is currently funded by various NASA grants to characterize the tectonics of the Bhutan Himalayas, the El Paso area, and El Salvador using integrated remote sensing, terrain analysis, and field surveys/geologic mapping. He is also engaged in NASA-funded work on in-situ resource utilization for planetary exploration in collaboration with engineering colleagues.
Dr. Hurtado is a member of the Himalayan Explorers Club, the Harvard Travellers Club, the Planetary Society, the Mars Society, and is a licensed private pilot. He has a long-standing interest in aviation, space exploration, and human spaceflight.
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