People: Astrobiology Graduate Students

Eric Collins
Oceanography

I came to the University of Washington in 2002 after receiving a BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Washington State University. I chose UW in large part as a result of meeting students and faculty from the UW Astrobiology program at scientific conferences and meetings. They were excited and passionate about their work and the Astrobiology program, and the same is true of those in the program today.

I am in the School of Oceanography and my research revolves around microbial communities in sea ice, the relation to astrobiology being life in the cold (which I've experienced, traveling north of the Arctic circle four times since I started, and twice during the winter!) Since much of the water in our solar system is present as a solid at very low temperatures (on Mars, Europa and Titan, for example), learning how terrestrial life deals with these kind of environmental extremes will help us narrow our search for life elsewhere in the universe. The recent discoveries of methane and remnant sea-ice-like formations on Mars are both intriguing in the context of my research, and it is precisely this kind of scientific recombination of ideas from (seemingly) widely disparate areas of study that are not only reshaping the ways in which I think about the world, but every facet of science today.

http://www.cases.quebec-ocean.ulaval.ca/trip/accueil.asp

Publications

Ehlmann BL, Chowdhury J, Marzullo TC, Collins RE, Litzenberger J, Ibsen S, Krauser WR, DeKock B, Hannon M, Kinnevan J, Shepard R, Grant FD (2005) Humans to Mars: a feasibility and cost-benefit analysis. Acta Astronaut. 56(9-12):851-8.

Collins RE, Carpenter SD, Deming JW (2005) Abstract # 1058-Microbial Communities at Very Low Temperatures in Natural Saline Ice Formations. Astrobiology 5(2):241.