Please welcome back to campus Lavontria Miché Aaron. Aaron will be a Visiting Investigator from Johns Hopkins University working with Steelie for the next year, researching spectroscopic remote sensing of calcium oxalates on Mars. Her research interests include: Spectroscopy, Mineralogy, Remote Sensing, and GIS.
Dr. Catharine "Cassie" Conley, Visiting Investigator working with Dr. Andrew Steele, presented a seminar on "Assessing Confidence in Detections of Extraterrestrial Life."
Dr. Vincent S. Riggi joins EPL as a Postdoctoral Fellow working with Andrew Steele. Riggi received his Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He will be working on abiotic carbon dioxide reduction in the context of prebiotic chemistry and astrobiology. Experiments will test novel CO2 reduction mechanisms and their feasibility in natural systems. His research interests include astrobiology, prebiotic chemistry, organic synthesis, and high pressure/high temperature geochemistry.
Dr. Mojhgan A. Haghnegahdar of Department of Geology at the University of Maryland presented a seminar titled, "Can Measurements of 13CH3D & 12CH2D2 Help Us Understand the Atmospheric Methane Budget?"
Dr. Luke McKay of Montana State University presented on "Early evolved microbial metabolisms and virus-host dynamics mediate sulfur and methane cycling in diverse geothermal environments."
Dr. Sara Walker of ASU is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life and how to find life on other worlds. She presented on "Planetary systems biochemistry - inferring the laws of life at a global scale."
Dr. Carol Cleland of the University of Colorado Boulder presented on "Searching for unfamiliar forms of life without a definition of life."
Catharine “Cassie” Conley joins us from NASA as a visiting scientist working with Andrew Steele.
Washington, DC—Carnegie’s Andrew Steele is a member of the Earth First Origins project, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Karyn Rogers, which has been awarded a $9 million grant by NASA’s Astrobiology Program.
The Geophysical Laboratory's weekly seminar series continues with Inge Loes ten Kate of the Utrecht University, in the Netherlands. She will present: "On the role of extraterrestrial organics in the origin of life.
