Nordic-NASA Summer School
Water, Ice and the Origin of Life
in the Universe
Iceland, 29 June-13 July 2009

           
           
Home

 

Nils-Kåre Birkeland is working at the Norwegian Centre of Excellence for Geobiology located at the University of Bergen. He has a broad interest in molecular microbiology and microbial physiology/biotechnology. His main research area are thermophiles growing at temperatures up to 100oC. To learn more abouthis research, view his homepage

Programme
Teachers
Venue/Access
Application
Contacts


Cecilia Ceccarelli

Cecilia Ceccarrelli is astronomer at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique at the Observatoire de Grenoble.She is mainly working in the field of star formation, formation of protoplanetary disks and molecular deuteration in the Universe.In 2006 she was awarded the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize as Woman in Science of the Year in France. To find out more about Cecilia Cecarelli’s research click here.

Practical infos
Links
 
 

David Fisher
David Fisher is Researcher and head of the glaciology department at Natural Resources Canada at Natural Resources, Canada. His work focuses on determining the history of the climate using Ice drill cores. He is also involved in the Phoenix mission. Herein he applies his glaciation and chemical fingerprinting expertise to determining the history of water on Mars. With years of experience in Canada's Arctic, Fisher hopes to compare his field results them with the Martian climate history models that will be developed from the Phoenix mission.

 
 
 
 
 
Einar  H. Guðmundsson
Einar Guðmundsson’s research at the University of Iceland concentrates on neutron stars and their envelopes, gravitational collapse and, more generally, the evolution of theUniverse. He is also working on the history of science in
Iceland. You can access his personal homepage here.
 

Paul Helfenstein
Paul Helfenstein is Senior Researcher at Cornell University, USA. He is involved in the Cassini-Huygens mission. His work also incliudes studies of the effects of photo-metric geometry on spectral reflectance measurements, optical properties and mechanical structure of geological materials on asteroids. His homepage can be found here.

 
 
 

 

Guðmundur O. Hreggviðsson
Guðmundur Hreggviðsson is leading the Prokaria biotechnology company operated by the Matis IcelandicFood Research Company. Prokaria has the sole right to perform research into hot spring extremophiles in Iceland.   

 

 

 


Karen J. Meech

Karen Meech is  astronomer at the University of Hawai’i and is specialized in planetary astronomy, in particular the study of distant comets and their relation to the early solar system. She was also co-investigator on the 8th NASA Discovery mission, Deep Impact which will launch in 2004 and arrive at comet P/Tempel 1 in 2005. She is one of the co-organisers of this summer school,For more information check her homepage.

 

 

Laila J. Reigstad
"Laila J. Reigstad is a postdoctoral scientist at the Centre of Excellence for Geobiology based at the University of Bergen. Her work is focussing on what Archaea are capable of doing under the harsh conditions of terrestrial hot springs. With the use of molecular methods (metagenomics) large parts of the archaeal genomes present in the hot springs are recovered and through bioinformatics approaches the gene content of these genomes pieces is analysed, thereby revealing what functions the organism can carry out. In-field experiments and sampling of hot spring material have been carried out for 3 years at the Hveragerdi region of Iceland. Comparative studies are carried out on terrestrial hot springs of Kamchatka, Far East Russia." .

 

 

Ida Helene Steen
Ida Helene Steen is working at the new Norwegian Centre of Excellence for Geobiology based at the University of Bergen. Her research interests include biochemical characterisation and investigations into thermal stability of enzymes. You can find out more about her research interests here.

 

 

Þorsteinn Þorsteinsson
Þorsteinn Þorsteinsson is a glacioliogist working at the Icalandic Energy Authority. He is also teaching part-time at the University of Iceland. In 2004  he organised the Bioastronomy  Conference in Iceland in 2004. One of his interests are investigations into subglacial lakes in Iceland.

 

 
 

Wolf D. Geppert
Wolf D. Geppert is Senior Researcher at the Physics Department at Stockholm University. His main research efforts focus on experimental investigations of formation processes of biomolecule precursors in interstellar clouds and planetary ionospheres. He is also Director of Studies of the Graduate School of Astrobiology at Stockholm University, coordinator of the Nordic Network of Astrobiology Graduate
Schools and one of the co-organisers of this summer school.

 

Sponsors