Robin M. Canup is vice president of the Solar System Science and Exploration Division and has led the Boulder office of SwRI since 2006. Canup is a theoretician, using numerical simulations and analytical methods to study the formation and early evolution of planets and their moons. She has modeled many aspects of the formation of the Moon, including hydrodynamical simulations of lunar-forming giant impacts, the accumulation of the Moon, and its initial composition and orbital evolution. Canup has developed models for an impact origin of the satellites of Pluto and Mars; the origin and early evolution of the systems of rings and satellites around the outer giant planets; and the origin of compact exoplanetary systems. Canup is a recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s Harold C. Urey Prize in Planetary Science (2003), the James B. Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union (2004), and the Dirk Brouwer Career Award of the Division of Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society (2025). She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (elected 2012) and the American Academy of Arts of Sciences (elected 2017).  Canup recently co-chaired the National Academies’ 2023-2032 Decadal Survey in Planetary Science and Astrobiology, “Origins, Worlds, and Life”. She received a BS in physics from Duke University and a Ph.D. in astrophysics and planetary sciences from the University of Colorado, Boulder.