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Fall 2016 A Word from the Director
Dear Astrobiology Enthusiasts, With the discovery of Proxima Centauri b, a possibly terrestrial planet orbiting in the habitable zone of the nearest star to the Sun, the search for life beyond the Solar System has come even closer to home! The University of Washington’s Astrobiology Program is at the forefront of exciting new efforts to look for life beyond the Earth, and to train the next generation of interdisciplinary explorers. Our community works to push new frontiers of knowledge of our place in the Universe that cannot be fully explored by a single researcher or a single discipline. Our community continues to grow and excel, and happily, I have a lot to report from the past year. This year our PhD graduates included Dr. Giada Arney (Astronomy & Astrobiology), who won a NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Dr. Eddie Schwieterman (Astronomy & Astrobiology) who won a NASA Astrobiology Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC – Riverside, and Dr. Jaci Saunders (Oceanography & Astrobiology) who is now a postdoc at the University of Washington. Coming up, graduate student Elena Amador (Earth and Space Sciences and Astrobiology) will defend her dissertation in February 2017, and then take up a postdoctoral position at Caltech. I also want to highlight and send my congratulations to the Astrobiology class of 2013-2014, four of whom were snapped up for tenure-track faculty positions this year! Dr. Rika Anderson (Oceanography and Astrobiology) is now an Assistant Professor at Carleton College. Dr. Aomawa Shields (Astronomy and Astrobiology) is an Assistant Professor at UC – Irvine (and also won the Origins Lectureship at ASU). Dr. Jeff Bowman (Oceanography and Astrobiology) is an Assistant Professor at Scripps Oceanographic Institute, and Dr. Eva Stüeken is just about to take up a Lectureship at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland. We welcome a large incoming class of 8 new students this year. They are Tyler Gordon and Hayden Smotherman in Astronomy, Erik Goosman, Jana Meixnerova, Lauren O’Neil and Addien Wray in Earth and Space Sciences, and Zac Cooper and Hannah Dawson in Oceanography. We also welcome new Astrobiology Faculty member Prof. Jodi Young who joined the Astrobiology Program after starting as an Assistant Professor in the UW Oceanography Department. Jodi comes to us via Oxford and Princeton, and has research interests that include the evolution of photosynthesis in phytoplankton, and polar marine research. Astrobiology faculty member Prof. Rory Barnes - who works on orbital dynamical and other effects on planetary habitability - was promoted from research professor to tenure-track Assistant Professor in Astronomy. Congratulations to both Jodi and Rory on their new positions! We have several research highlights, awards and significant events to celebrate as our students and faculty contribute to scientific discovery in the US and abroad. See the newsletter sidebar for highlights of our many scientific publications this year. In the area of awards, grad student Eddie Schwieterman won a NASA Astrobiology Institute Director’s Discretionary Fund award for collaborative work on understanding the early Earth as an exoplanet, and the detectability of signs of life throughout the Earth’s history. Osa Igbinosun (Aeronautics and Astronautics) won the 2016 Society of Women Engineers Region J Scholarship. Astrobiology Faculty Member Prof. Eric Agol (Astronomy) received the prestigious Lecar Prize from the Harvard in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the study of exoplanets. Elena Amador won the Johnston Prize for Research Excellence. Alumnus Dr. Aomawa Shields was awarded the Origins Prize Lectureship. This year Astrobiology Director Prof. Victoria Meadows, and former Astrobiology graduate students Dr. Tyler Robinson and Dr. Giada Arney, along with former Astrobiology Program postdoc Dr. Shawn Domagal-Goldman have taken up key positions on NASA community panels (ExoPAG) and science and technology development and project management teams for large space-based telescope concepts (HabEx and LUVOIR) that may ultimately search for life on extrasolar planets. Team members also got out and about across our planet this year. Yours truly gave the keynote address at the Astrophysics of Planetary Habitability in Vienna, and grad students Russell Deitrick, Andrew Lincowski, and Giada Arney (Astronomy) gave talks on their research. Postdoc Eva Stueeken (Earth and Space Sciences) and Michael Kipp (graduate student Earth and Space sciences) gave oral presentations at the geochemical Goldschmidt Conference, in Yokohama, Japan. Victoria Meadows and Giada Arney also presented at the Earth Life Science Institute in Tokyo. Graduate student Elena Amador (Earth and Space Sciences) was a field instructor for NASA/Nordic Astrobiology Summer School in Iceland. And Max Showalter (Oceanography) headed down to Antarctica to attend the NSF course in Antarctic Biology. The UW Astrobiology Community’s breadth of research capability and the research tools that we have built to tackle big picture questions in Astrobiology became extremely useful this summer when Rory Barnes was given advance notice of the discovery of the very nearby, potentially habitable planet Proxima Centauri b (which we promptly codenamed “Pandora”!). A total of three faculty, seven grad students, two undergraduates and two former postdocs from the UWAB community leapt into action to model plausible evolutionary paths, possible current environments, and planetary features to be sought in upcoming observations for this intriguing world. This resulted in two comprehensive papers that were developed and submitted in six weeks. Rory wrote a comprehensive blog on the habitability of this target and I gave a UWAB colloquium on our Proxima Centauri b research, which can be found here. This May, we are also delighted to host Guillem Anglada-Escudé, whose team discovered Proxima Centauri b. Guillem will give a public talk on his discovery on May 3rd, 2017, and all are welcome! We will continue to offer our Astrobiology Colloquium Series in Spring and Fall of 2017, with cutting edge astrobiology research presented by visiting and local experts. These presentations are pitched to be accessible to an interdisciplinary audience. Select talks in this series are webcast and recorded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute and can be viewed live on your web-browser. The recordings can also be accessed at any time (instructions on how to join in are provided in the Newsletter sidebar). Click here for recordings of the Fall 2016 colloquia, as well as recorded colloquia from previous years. Although our faculty and researchers are world class, and have been very successful in securing research funding for our program this year, we still face considerable challenges in obtaining funding for program needs that cannot be covered by federal research grants or State education funding. These include funds and scholarships for student recruitment, as we often compete for our students with wealthier institutions such as Harvard and Caltech. We also need graduate scholarships to support interdisciplinary exploration by our students, additional support for student participation in our highly-acclaimed astrobiology workshops, and funds to bring speakers to the UW for our colloquia and public events. Please consider making a donation to support the Program. Any contribution will be extremely welcome, and will help us to maintain our vigorous and excellent program as we search for life beyond our Earth and work to better understand humanity’s place in the cosmos! Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season!
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