Dr. Durda was employed as a research assistant in the Chemistry Department at The University of Michigan from 1983 to 1985 preparing reagents for use in educational and research laboratories. From 1985 to 1987 he served as a research assistant in the Department of Astronomy doing data entry and research for the Michigan Spectral Catalogue.
He served as Director of the Student Teaching Observatory at The University of Florida and Director of Public Relations for the Department of Astronomy from 1988 to 1990, conducting public openhouses at the observatory, informing the public of interesting space and astronomy news and events through newspapers, radio, and television, and giving dozens of talks at schools, community groups, and museums throughout the Southeast.
Dr. Durda was an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Natural Sciences at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida from 1991 to 1993, teaching lecture courses in physics and chemistry, astronomy, and geology.
He is a private pilot with over 125 hours logged in the following aircraft: Cessna 150, Cessna 172, Katana DA20-A1. Durda holds multiple certifications in scuba and cave diving from various certifying agencies, including NAUI, PADI, NACD, and NSSCDS. He has completed over 80 cave dives in northern Florida and spent more than 105 hours in underwater exploration in over 168 dives. He is also a trained cave recovery specialist and is a member of the local county search and recovery divers team as well as the Arizona Area Coordinator for the National Cave Diving Recovery Team.
As a member of the National Speleological Society he has participated as a team member in surveying new cave passages in dry caves in southeastern Arizona.
He has authored 34 scientific publications and given 11 presentations at professional conferences and meetings on the subject of collisional and dynamical evolution of the asteroids. He has served as a manuscript referee for several papers published in the journals Icarus, Science, and Planetary and Space Science. He has also published 3 articles in popular astronomy magazines. His space art has been displayed in several galleries and exhibitions and has appeared in Sky & Telescope, The Planetary Report, Final Frontier, and Alan Hale's book Everybody's Comet.
Since 1993 he has been a technical consultant for the Sci-Med Consulting Group in Encino, California.
Dr. Durda is currently a research associate at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, working with a member of the Galileo SSI Imaging Team. His research interests include the formation and observational detection of asteroidal satellites, the collisional and dynamical evolution of mainbelt and near-Earth asteroids and interplanetary dust, the global distribution of ejecta from the Chicxulub impact crater, and the size distribution of dust from the catastrophic disruption of meteoritic samples.
