University of Washington Astrobiology Program

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Spring 2014

Free Astrobiology Public Lecture!

Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
7:00pm - 120 Kane Hall (doors open at 6:30pm)

This event is FREE and open to the public! However, pre-registration is required to guarantee seating. To reserve your spot, click here

Finding Life: On Earth, on Mars, and throughout the Cosmos

with Dr. Steven Benner
Director, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution & The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology — Gainesville, Florida

How do we define “life”? This fundamental question has remained largely philosophical, because it has been asked for so long, by so many, and with so few concrete conclusions. In this talk, Dr. Benner will take a different tack. He will show how laboratory studies to create a second example of life help us develop a firmer scientific understanding of what life is. The challenge of “synthetic biology” is on! Dr. Benner will discuss how we are hitchhiking on rockets, rovers, and telescopes to find life elsewhere in the Solar System, and will describe how his research team is working to develop that second example of life in laboratories here on Earth, one step at a time.

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Can Non-photosynthetic Life Be Seen From Space? — A Research Rotation Report

Because astrobiology requires expertise from many different fields, one of the aims of the UWAB curriculum is to train students how to collaborate with researchers in disciplines other than their own. In our Dual Title PhD program, students complete a research project outside their home discipline that allows them to learn new skills and techniques, as well as gain a broader understanding of their primary research area. In this retrospective, graduate student Eddie Schwieterman (Astronomy) describes the work on spectroscopic “biosignatures”—or signs of life—that he completed during his rotation last year at the UK Centre for Astrobiology in Scotland.

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From Life in Ice to Finding Earth‘s Cousin — Our Research Highlights

How does life survive in some of the coldest and saltiest places on Earth? How close are we to finding another planet like Earth? Our astrobiologists have been hard at work trying to answer these and other questions! Here are a handful of recent research highlights from the UWAB community.

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UWAB @ A Glance

  • We are pleased to welcome new postdoctoral research associate, Dr. Benjamin Charnay. Benjamin has joined the Virtual Planetary Laboratory team, and is working alongside Prof. Victoria Meadows (Astronomy) and Prof. David Catling (ESS) on 3-D climate modeling of planetary atmospheres. Benjamin comes from the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique in Paris, France.

  • The Spring Astrobiology Colloquium is underway! The colloquium takes place Tuesdays @ 3pm in PAA A114, and features speakers from both UW and other institutions presenting on a wide range of astrobiology-related topics. See our website for the current schedule.

  • After forty years at UW, Prof. Woody Sullivan (Astronomy) has retired. Woody has been with UWAB since its inception in 1998, and led the program until 2012. We look forward to his continued support and interaction with the program as an Emeritus Professor. Congratulations, Woody!

  • The 2014 International Summer School in Astrobiology will be held June 23rd-27th in Santander, Spain. This year’s theme is “Habitable Environments in the Universe”. Prof. Victoria Meadows (Astronomy) will be co-directing the school, Prof. Rory Barnes (Astronomy) will be participating as a lecturer, and graduate student Matt Tilley (ESS) has been awarded a scholarship to attend.

  • To help support our upcoming student workshop this Fall, Spring is a great time to give a gift in support of UW Astrobiology! Use the secure, online portal to support UWAB today.

 

Congratulations!

  • Congratulations to Prof. Rory Barnes (Astronomy) for his promotion to Research Assistant Professor in the Astronomy department!

  • Congratulations to graduate student Aomawa Shields (Astronomy) for winning an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCLA. She has accepted both fellowships, and will be splitting her time between Harvard and UCLA when she starts her postdoc this autumn.

  • UWAB had a big presence at the Extrasolar Planets, Biosignatures, and Instrumentation (EBI) meeting in Tucson, AZ (March 16-21). Prof. Victoria Meadows (Astronomy) gave an invited talk on exoplanet habitability, and Prof. Rory Barnes (Astronomy) discussed a method to discriminate between rocky and gaseous exoplanets using tidal theory. Postdoc Peter Driscoll and Students Meg Smith (ESS), Giada Arney (Astronomy), Russell Deitrick (Astronomy), Rodrigo Luger (Astronomy), Eddie Schwieterman (Astronomy), Joshua Krissansen-Totton (ESS) also attended and shared their research, alongside other UWAB collaborators.

  • Several in the UWAB community participated in the Space Telescope Science Institute's Habitable Worlds Across Time and Space Symposium in Baltimore, Maryland (April 28th - May 1st), with Professors Rory Barnes (Astronomy), Eric Agol (Astronomy), and David Catling (ESS) attending as invited speakers.

  • Earlier this year, Prof. David Catling (ESS) published Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction, a book that explains astrobiology for a general audience. An interview with Prof. Catling about the book was subsequently featured in UW Today.

  • Prof. Rory Barnes (Astronomy) and collaborator Rene Heller (McMaster)’s research on exomoon habitability was one of the top 10 most-viewed stories on UW Today in 2013.

 

Newsletter Editor-In-Chief:

Nicole Evans
Program Assistant, UWAB
evansn@astro.washington.edu


THIS E-NEWSLETTER WAS SENT BY:

UW Astrobiology, Box 351580, Seattle, WA 98195
Phone: 206.685.9237
Email: astrobio@uw.edu

(c) 2014 University of Washington 

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