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Fall 2015 Our last year was a productive and exciting one! We graduated five students: Regina Carns (Earth & Space Sciences and Astrobiology), Wolf Clifton (Museology and Astrobiology Certificate), Kelly Hillbun (Earth & Space Sciences and Astrobiology), Amit Misra (Astronomy and Astrobi Exciting Upcoming Local Events Mark your calendars! Two noteworthy astrobiology-related events are happening within the next month! The NASA Astrobiology Debates Western Championship is coming to our backyard on October 17 and 18. The event will be hosted at the University of Washington thanks to the organization of UWAB Professor John Baross. The topic of the debate is "Resolved: An overriding ethical obligation to protect and preserve extraterrestrial microbial life and ecosystems should be incorporated into international law." Click here for more information about this fun event! UWAB Emeritus Professor Woody Sullivan has been instrumental in organizing "Origins: Life and the Universe", an audiovisual concert about space and life in the universe being held at Benaroya Hall on Saturday November 7 2015at 2pm. Click "Read More" below for more information and a ticket discount code for readers of this newsletter.
The 2015 Annual Astrobiology Workshop A
significant focus of the UW Astrobiology’s graduate program is to
provide our We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our students and alumni about this component of our curriculum, and many of you have told us that these experiences have been some of the most memorable and valuable aspects of your time in the UWAB program. However, our limited State funding for these workshops means that not all students who are interested in participating in a given field trip are able to do so. This year, we used donations to our Friends of Astrobiology Fund to help support attendance at the workshop. Even a small donation can make a big difference to an individual student, and we are very thankful for your support! Alumni Spotlight: Dr. Aomawa Shields
Alumni Spotlight: Dr. David Smith
Where in the World Are Our Astrobiologists? Besides our Annual Astrobiology Workshop, the UWAB Program 2.5 Months in the Life of a Future Large Space Telescope – A Research Rotation Report
The Gaseous Signatures of Unusual Life – A Research Rotation Report UWAB graduate Megan Smith went to NASA Ames Research Center to work with VPL researcher Dr. Niki Parenteau. She A Report from the FameLab Competition
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UWAB @ A Glance
Science Highlights
Congratulations!
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ology), and Meg Smith (Earth and Space Sciences and Astrobiology Certificate). Several of our recent former graduates have received prestigious appointments in the last year: Aomawa Shields (Astronomy & Astrobiology) won dual postdoc appointments at Harvard and UCLA, and was named a 2015 TED Fellow. Mark Claire, former UWAB graduate student in astronomy and VPL postdoc, received a multi-million dollar European Research Council grant to study the evolution of Earth’s atmosphere. Mark thanks the UW Astrobiology Program for giving him “field cred” and his start on isotope geochemistry during his UWAB research rotation! Tyler Robinson (Astronomy & Astrobiology) was awarded a NASA Sagan Fellowship and will work at the University of California at Santa Cruz developing state-of-the-art cloud models for exoplanets. David Smith (Earth and Space Sciences), now at NASA Ames, led the E-MIST balloon mission studying the survival of microbes in the stratosphere. 
2015 marked the 25th anniversary of the Voyager "
students with opportunities for hands-on interdisciplinary
research experiences, and in-the-field learning. Our annual workshops
are multi-day educational field trips, and are a centerpiece of the
interdisciplinary training in our Program.
UWAB former grad student Dr. Aomawa Shields (Astronomy & Astrobiology, 2014) is now splitting her time at UCLA and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Aomawa’s research involves the habitability of icy worlds. This year, she was named a TED fellow, and as a classically trained actor, she users her communication skills to teach science to diverse audiences in fun and innovative ways. 
UWAB former grad student Dr. David Smith (Biology & Astrobiology, 2012) studied microbes floating in Earth’s stratosphere as a graduate student at UW. Today, he is a Project Scientist at the Space Biosciences Research Division at NASA Ames Research Center. His current research involves sending weather balloons aloft to study how microbial payloads survive near the edge of space. 
UWAB graduate student Giada Arney visited NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to work with VPL researcher and former UWAB postdoc Dr. Shawn Domagal-Goldman in April-June 2015 to work on simulators for a future large space telescope concept that would be able to directly detect and spectrally characterize exoplanets. She reports here on her experience working on ATLAST, the Advanced Technology Large Aperture Space Telescope concept that would be 8-16 meters in diameter!
performed fieldwork analyzing anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria (e.g. purple sulfur bacteria) to understand what gases these organisms produce. Perhaps, in the future, such gases could be detected in the spectra of exoplanets, so it is important to understand and measure what gases are produced and in what quantities. 
UWAB graduate students Giada Arney and Eddie Schwieterman competed in the NASA-sponsored Famelab science communication contest during the Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) in Chicago this June. Famelab is an international science communication competition designed to “engage and entertain” by explaining complex scientific concepts in relatable three-minute presentations. The theme of the competition was “Exploring the Earth and Beyond”. Both students advanced to the final round after getting high marks from judges in the preliminary round. 
Use this link to view our Fall 2015 Newsletter:
https://depts.washington.edu/astrobio/drupal/sites/default/files/newsletters/UWAB_Newsletter_F2015.html