Dr. Gordon “Oz” Osinski is a Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Western Ontario (Western), Canada. He is also the Director of the Canadian Lunar Research Network and the founder and Chair of the Planetary Sciences Division of the Geological Association of Canada. At Western, he served as Associate Director and then Director of the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration for over a decade and was the Founding Director of its successor, the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration. He was also recently appointed the Canadian Ambassador for the MILO Institute.

Dr. Osinski’s research interests are diverse and interdisciplinary in nature, motivated by understanding the evolution of the surface of the Earth and other planetary bodies as well as the origin and evolution of life. His main focus is on understanding impact cratering as a planetary geological process, on the Earth, Moon and Mars. He has conducted fieldwork on 6 continents, from Antarctica to Africa, but the Canadian Arctic is where much of his work takes place. Dr. Osinski has received numerous awards for this research, including the Barringer Medal of the Meteoritical Society (2021).

Dr. Osinski is also involved in several past and ongoing planetary exploration-related activities. From 2020 to 2022 he was the Principal Investigator (PI) for a Canadian Space Agency Concept Study to develop an Integrated Vision System. He is also a Co-I on the PanCam instrument on the European ExoMars mission to Mars and in November 2022 was named as PI of the Canadian Lunar Rover Mission – Canada’s first ever rover mission to the Moon. Dr. Osinski is involved in providing geology training to Canadian and US astronauts. He is also passionate about outreach and science communication.