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To showcase the
career opportunities for UWAB graduates, UWAB grad student Stephen Sholes sat
down with UWAB Alumna Dr. Elena Amador to ask her some questions. Elena is now a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech
working on research relevant to NASA’s upcoming Mars 2020 mission. Who are you and
when did you graduate from UW? I am
Elena Amador and graduated from UW with a dual-title PhD in Earth and Space
Sciences and Astrobiology in Winter 2017. Where are you and what are you working on now? I'm
currently working as a post-doctoral scholar in Caltech's Division of
Geological and Planetary Sciences. My time is spent investigating three main
projects. The first is studying the abundance, diversity, and distribution of
carbonate minerals on Mars. Currently, surface exposures of carbonates
account for only a small percentage of secondary phases detected on the
surface of Mars, this lack of carbonate exposures may have implications for
the evolution of the Martian climate, as carbonate should form
readily under a thick CO2 rich atmosphere and surface water. I am
also formally involved with the Mars 2020 science team to characterize the
remaining potential landing sites for the future rover
(NE Syrtis, JezeroCrater, and the Columbia Hills). This mission has
hefty objectives- land in a once habitable environment, look for
biosignatures, and cache samples for a future Mars sample return mission - so
it's important that wherever we land, we are confident we can achieve these
objectives. Additionally, I am a Co-I on a PSTAR grant working with
colleagues at Georgia Tech and JPL studying how biodiversity varies over
basaltic plains in Iceland and which field and lab instruments are most
useful in understanding this biological variability with implications for
future rover sampling on a planet like Mars. How is your current research related to astrobiology? All my
science is directly related to astrobiology. I consistently tap into all the
UW Astrobiology classes that I took when thinking about how to assess past
habitability of potential Mars 2020 landing sites, for example. How
does the habitat or life change the environment during deposition? What kind
of biosignatures would be preserved that we can remotely detect with the
mission? These are the big astrobiology questions we are trying to prepare to
answer. Astrobiology
is a large motivator for my other research projects as well. For example, the
implications of my carbonate project might allude to subsurface environments
having been more stable for life during early Mars history rather than
surface environments. As Mars researchers, we are pretty sure there were some
habitable environments on Mars in the past, but we don't know if they were
inhabited. What signs would we look for in the remote sensing data, and with
the surface measurements made by rovers and landers? What is a normal day like in your line of work? When
I'm at Caltech, a typical day involves starting at my computer, writing code
to process spacecraft imagery. Most of it is remote sensing, so I am thinking
of new ways to look at the data, compare thousands of images to best
interpret the compositional signatures in the data. I also spend a lot of
time on telecons, collaborating and discussing results with colleagues
at different institutions. We each have a piece of the puzzle and are trying
to figure out how to put everyone's pieces together to tackle these overarching
interdisciplinary problems. A
particularly fun part of my job is when I get to go out into the field to
collect sample and analog measurements. When my team is in Iceland, we get to
explore unusual landscapes and test instruments that may one day fly on future
missions to other planetary bodies. What did you research in grad school as a UWAB student? I did
much of the same type of research that I'm doing now. At UW, I was just
starting to learn how to use planetary data sets; how to combine
complementary but different spectral sets to identify new information. I
spent a long time thinking about specific mineral markers that imply
habitability, like serpentine, and how we can use that to back out specific
geochemical environments. In your opinion, what’s one of the most amazing things about
astrobiology? Oh
that's easy - just how interdisciplinary it is! It's amazing how I can sit in
on a lecture about biochemistry, microbiology, geology, oceanography, etc.,
and be able to follow along and put it into the context of my own research. I
can also talk with these other researchers whose expertise are in very
different fields than mine and we can collaborate on these big picture
questions. I don't feel intimidated about asking questions outside my field,
since my astrobiology training has given me enough context to feel confident
working with all these great people. This also opens up opportunities to go
to lots of cool places around the world. How has your experience at UWAB prepared you for what you are
doing today? The
UWAB experience was critical to what I'm doing today which is planetary science
through the lens of astrobiology. I had to have that basis of chemistry,
biology, geochemistry, and astronomy that I got through the program to get to
where I am now. It also allowed me to learn to be a better speaker and
present interdisciplinary work to me peers and non-experts. The available
networking through the colloquia and graduate student peers also opened up
lots of room for current and future collaborations. -Interview
conducted by Steven Sholes (ESS) |
THIS E-NEWSLETTER WAS SENT BY: UW Astrobiology Program, Box 351580, Seattle, WA 98195 |