Fall 2012

UWAB Alumni: Where Are They Now?

This year, we tracked down several of our alumni to catch up on what had happened to them since graduation, and to ask them to reminisce about their experiences with the UW Astrobiology Program. We are delighted to present these interviews with Prof. John Armstrong (UWAB '03 - Astronomy), Dr. Darci Snowden (UWAB '10 - ESS), Dr. Sanjoy Som (UWAB '10 - ESS), and Prof. Matt Schrenk (UWAB '05 - Oceanography)

Associate Professor (Physics), Weber State University

1) Briefly describe your current area of research.

I am currently working with the Virtual Planetary Laboratory on characterizing Earth-like planets around other stars. I am working with a team that is unifying orbit and energy balance models to see how structural changes in the planetary system can impact climate (by altering the tilt and precession of the Earth-like planet). I am also interested in the stability of planetary systems and attempting to identify systems that are the best candidates for habitable worlds.

One of the best aspects of the UW AB program, for me, was the focus on teaching. I had numerous opportunities to teach courses, develop curricula, work on proposals, etc. I don't know of many programs that partner so well with the graduate students. Because of this, I was ideally suited to work at a university that is teaching focused and promotes interdisciplinary work. Because of my experience at UW, I've had the ability to partner with microbiologists and geologists here to do some very interesting work involving students in research. I've worked with geology students and GIS specialists on mapping Martian craters and worked with computer science students to develop software applications for spectral analysis. Last year I was awarded the Nye-Cortez Honors Professor of the Year for a new honors astrobiology course, and had the opportunity to fly Jim Kasting out to meet my students. A great experience for everyone!

In all honestly, the Friday Harbor events were the highlights, especially the field trip where we "did" the Cambrian explosion through analysis of the fossil record and dissection of modern organisms. But really the events are too many to count. I participated in an oceanography cruise, visited some of the worlds premier telescopes, experienced field trips in geology (one with Harrison Schmidt during a lunar conference), the list goes on and on. The support I had for travel and extracurricular experiences was amazing.

In 2010, I was invited to give a talk to the Royal Astronomical Society in London based on research I did as a graduate student at UW. The support from the program allowed me to work on an interdisciplinary project that received a lot of interest and resulted in some fun experiences. But speaking to the RAS, and dining at the Athenaeum with Society members, was a real treat.

Elsewhere in my career, the interdisciplinary training has been instrumental, especially given that I teach at a comprehensive university with a relatively small college of science. We all must work together, and having experience in multiple fields helps me understand the needs of my colleagues. I recall an NSF site reviewer of the AB program suggesting that the interdisciplinary nature of the program would not be a huge help to me in my future career. "Honestly," he said, "how often to you walk up to a geologist's office and knock on the door in a given day". For me, every day I am working with a geologist, a chemist, or a microbiologist.

I suggest to my students that they get a strong foundation in the field they love, but keep their eye out for opportunities to cross over. If you are a physics major, take a geology field course. If you are a microbiologist, take an astronomy class. The key is to have strong credentials but evidence that you have an open, inquisitive mind. The rest will take care of itself.

Postdoctoral Program Fellow, Ames Research Center - NASA

1) Briefly describe your current area of research.

In short, my research bridges the gap between "geology" and "biology" using an energetic frame of reference. Products of geochemical reactions, such as hydrogen, are an energy source for microbes. Specifically I am investigating the connection between geology, geochemistry and microbiology in particular marine conditions that lead to the formation of the mineral serpentine. Indeed, the production of serpentine releases hydrogen, and the microbial metabolism 'methanogenesis', which produces methane, requires hydrogen. I investigate this coupling from both a theoretical standpoint and field investigations.

2) Describe your career path since completing your PhD. Any accomplishments or awards we should know about?

Following my PhD in the ESS department, I was selected into the NASA Postdoctoral Program and joined Dr. Tori Hoehler's group at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA. With early-career astrobiology colleagues from the UW and elsewhere, we launched our own 501(c)3 non-profit, The Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, as an Earth System Science research institute with science communication a core component of the institute's philosophy. Part of this effort has led to the launch of S.A.G.A.N. (Social Action for a Grassroots Astrobiology Network), the first astrobiology focused social and collaborative web platform.

That's a hard one, as it wasn't one event that shaped my experience in the UW astrobiology program. But having wanted to be an astronaut since I'm a kid, perhaps the closest experience I will ever get occurred during my Astrobiology rotation with Dr. John Baross in oceanography, when I spent 8 hours inside the crater of a sea-floor volcano exploring hydrothermal vents in the Alvin submersible. It really feels like you are in a spaceship exploring another planet. However, what I enjoyed the most was the camaraderie between the students, many of which I consider among my best friends, the challenges of the profs to think outside the box, particularly from my Dissertation committee, and the numerous field trips that were invaluable in helping polish my intuition on how the Earth system operates.

The ability to be conversant about multiple disciplines has definitely been a plus in my career. At NASA I interact mostly with chemical oceanographers and microbiologists, and my UW PhD was in Geology (with a master's in engineering). The Astrobiology program gave me the confidence and intellectual flexibility to explore and contribute to topics of research outside my own specialty. Because the nature of the astrobiologist is to communicate his or her own expertise and significance of results to scientists in other disciplines, my experience has been that they are particularly good at communicating science with the public. Public science communication is something I value immensely in my career.

A natural curiosity about how the world operates, how it shapes and is shaped by life, all the while keeping eyes glued to the cosmos, is perhaps the only pre-requisite. Other than that, it's the willingness to take many classes spanning many departments, not being afraid to ask questions, and keep an as open mind as possible. Of course, joining saganet.org to keep track of the latest astrobiology news and connect with like-minded people from across the globe doesn't hurt either :)

Postdoctoral Program Fellow, Lunar & Planetary Laboratory - University of Arizona

I study Titan's upper atmosphere using numerical models and data from the Cassini spacecraft. Specifically, I use in-situ density measurements to determine the temperature of Titan's thermosphere. Then I try to explain the temperature observations with energy sources like solar radiation, energetic particles from Saturn's magnetosphere, and waves. We need to understand the structure and dynamics of this region to understand how organic material is produced in Titan's atmosphere, because in this region the dissociation and ionization of molecular nitrogen and methane initiates chemistry that produces very massive molecules that eventually combine to make Titan's hazes.

2) Describe your career path since completing your PhD. Any accomplishments or awards we should know about?

Since I completed my PhD a little more than 2 years ago I have been a postdoc at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.

3) What was most memorable to you about your time in the UW Astrobiology program? What did you enjoy the most?

I think the most memorable experience was the field trip/workshop we had in Yellowstone National Park. I had been there a number of times before as a tourist, but it was fascinating learning about how scientist use the thermal vents to do astrobiology. I work on a computer all day trying to understand far away objects, so I love learning about research projects in the field and now I see the park in a whole new way.

4) What do you think were the greatest benefits of the UWAB program, in terms of preparing you for your career?

The seminar courses were useful. We all got extra practice giving presentations and, in particular, talking to people who were scientists but out of our field. I think that helps us prepare to give seminars and write proposals that everyone can understand.

I also really loved the opportunity to work closely with graduate students from other departments and learning about research projects that were very different than mine. Like most scientists I feel like I know a lot about a really narrow topic, but thanks to the astrobiology program, I also feel like know a little about a lot of other fields of research. Having that breadth of knowledge is incredible useful in planetary science.

5) What advice would you give to someone wishing to pursue a career in astrobiology?

I would advise them not to worry too much about whether the project they are working on is considered astrobiology. Some people will be doing research that is clearly related to finding bugs somewhere. However, there are lots of basics things that we don't understand about the early Earth, other planets, and stars that will help us search for life in the future or understand the origin of life on our own planet. I think there is a sense that astrobiology research as to be groundbreaking or out there, but there are a lot of great research projects that are related to astrobiology (but maybe not considered to be astrobiology) that are equally important contributions to the field.

Assistant Professor (Biology, Geology), East Carolina University

1) Briefly describe your current area of research.

My lab studies microorganisms living in the deep subsurface biosphere. Specifically, we study microbial communities associated with serpentinization- a process that occurs when rocks from the deep Earth (mantle) are brought to the near surface where they are hydrated through fracturing and fluid circulation, generating high pH (>10), hydrogen and methane-rich, highly reducing conditions. The hallmark example of such systems is the Lost City hydrothermal field, near the Mid Atlantic Ridge, where I did research as a graduate student at UW, and continue to study to this day. However, we also study microbial communities in serpentinizing ophiolites, places where old ocean rocks have been emplaced on the continents. Currently we have field programs in actively serpentinizing environments in the US, Canada, and Italy. We rely primarily upon genomics-based approaches to study these ecosystems, but complement that with cultivation- and geochemistry-based approaches. We are interested in the evolution and adaptation of microorganisms to these extreme environments and how they impact biogeochemical cycles. In astrobiological terms, serpentinization is a critical component of many current theories on the origins-of-life, and has the potential to sustain life on Mars and Europa.

2) Describe your career path since completing your PhD. Any accomplishments or awards we should know about?

After graduating, I went to the Carnegie Geophysical Lab as a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) post-doc associated with their NAI node, where I worked with George Cody to conduct organic geochemical analyses of extremophile biofilms, growing near the upper temperature limits to life. More recently, I was one of 8 people named an inaugural Aflred P. Sloan Foundation Ocean Sciences Fellow in 2012. I am also the PI of a large grant through the Deep Carbon Observatory to study the microbial activities in rock-hosted subsurface ecosystems, linking researchers from Finland to South Africa to California (and in between)... For the past few years I have been an Assistant Professor at East Carolina University where I have developed my own research program on deep biosphere studies and teach both Microbiology and Astrobiology.

3) What was most memorable to you about your time in the UW Astrobiology program? What did you enjoy the most?

I enjoyed the camaraderie amongst the young scientists in the UW program. Even though many of us were coming from completely different fields (e.g. astronomy, microbiology, chemistry, etc), the UW program, and NASA in general, really supported our integration and development in so many ways, whether through meetings, field trips, or social gatherings. In some ways, these informal discussions stimulated more new directions and innovation than the coursework itself. Since that time, we have had a strong network of UWAB alumni that continues to see one another (and plan interdisciplinary science) at AbSciCon and other meetings.

4) What do you think were the greatest benefits of the UWAB program, in terms of preparing you for your career?

Exposure to diverse perspectives in science, but in a variety of different formats (talks, primary literature, active learning, round table discussions). In many ways, I feel that these things allowed us to assimilate other disciplines organically. i.e. this approach didn't force the marriage of disciplines, but rather allowed us to better understand where our own discipline fit within the broader spectrum of science. I think this resulted in a generation of scientists from the UWAB and other astrobiology programs that are really "fluent" in cross-disiplinary science. I try to use these approaches when I teach Astrobiology.

5) What advice would you give to someone wishing to pursue a career in astrobiology?

I guess that I would suggest two main things. 1) Take advantage of as many of the opportunities as you can! NASA and associated organizations do a tremendous job of providing opportunities for students to participate in science, even at very young ages. By being involved and active in these opportunities, students will learn STEM skills and gain an appreciation that space science is more that just flying a rocket ship. Pursuing these opportunities, at any level, will also open new doors, make contacts, and provide additional opportunities.

2) From a practical standpoint- While it is important to have an appreciation of other disciplines, it is also *really* important to have strength and depth in a more traditional field. This helps from the standpoint of employability, but also from the standpoint of doing good science. You can't be an expert in everything, and it is critical to have the capability to pursue scientific problems in your field with sufficient depth, which can then be expanded with cross-disciplinary perspectives like Astrobiology. Otherwise, you end being very scientifically "dilute".

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Photos: (From top to bottom) John Armstrong, Sanjoy Som, Darci Snowden, Matt Schrenk.

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