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Water, Ice and the Origin of Life in the Universe |
| General | Programme | Venue | Access | Application | Lecturers | Practical infos | Contact |
| Course organisers |
| Prof. David Cullen, Cranfield University,UK In recent years, the main focus of Professor Cullen's research has been the design and application of biosensors, bio-diagnostics and related bioanalytical technologies in the field of astrobiology and life in extreme environments - especially for in-situ life detec-tion and characterisation associated with planetary exploration (e.g. Mars), subglacial environments on Earth and more recently the Earth?s stratosphere. Examples of recent and current activities in this area are:
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| Dr. David Des Marais, NASA Ames Research Centre,USA Dr. David Des Marais is a senior space scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. He has investigated the geochemistry of lunar samples, meteorites and both volcanic and ancient sedimentary rocks from Earth. He coordinated a long-term study of benthic cyanobacterial microbial ecosystems. David is Principal Investigator of the Ames Research Center Team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. He is currently a member of the science teams of NASA's 2003 Mars Exploration Rover mission, the 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory mission and the 2016 ExoMars/Trace Gas Orbiter mission. He has published more than 160 technical articles and chapters on these topics. David is Chair of NASA's Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group. |
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| Prof. Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson, University of Iceland Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson is a geophysicist and professor at the University of Iceland. His research interests include:
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Dr. Ernst Hauber, German Aerospace Centre, Berlin Ernst Hauber is a planetary geologist studying the solid surfaces of terrestrial planets. His research is focused on endogenic processes (volcanism, tectonism) and on sedimentary, glacial and periglacial landforms, including field work on terrestrial analogues. He is Co-Investigator of the HRSC (High Resolution Stereo Camera) camera experiment on Mars Express, leads the HRSC Geoscientific Working Group, and participates in HRSC operations planning since 2004. Ernst Hauber is a member of the ExoMars Landing Site Selection Working Group, the iMARS Team (International Mars Architecture for the Return of Samples), and served as a member of the ESA/NASA Joint Science Working Group (JSWG) on the 2018 Joint Rover Mission. He is also a member of ESA's Planetary Protection Working Group, and of a joint ESF-NRC Study Group "Mars Special Regions". He has published more than 90 peer-reviewed papers and has received an ESA award for his involvement in the Mars Express mission. |
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| Prof. James W. Head III., Brown University, Rhode Island, USA Professor Head studies themes of planetary evolution and the role of volcanism and tectonism in the formation and evolution of planetary crusts. Several research projects are underway in the field in Antarctica, on the Earth's seafloor, and in assessing data from planetary surfaces to study climate change on Mars, volcanism on the Moon, Mars and Venus, the geology of the surface of Mercury and the tectonic and volcanic evolution of icy satellites. Prof. Head earned a B.S. from Washington and Lee University in 1964 and his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1969. During 4 years with Bellcomm, Inc. in Washington, DC in the NASA Systems Analysis Branch, his research focus shifted to planetary geology studies relating to the Apollo Lunar Exploration Program including training of Apollo astronauts. Following a position as Interim Director of the Houston Lunar Science Institute, he joined the Brown Department of Geological Sciences as assistant professor (research) in 1973, then was promoted to full professor in 1980, named to the James Manning Chair in 1990, and in 1995 was named to the Louis and Elizabeth Scherck Professorship in Geological Sciences. More information about Prof. Head's research can be found here. |
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| Dr. Akos Kereszturi, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary Akos Kereszturi is a planetary geologist, also working on astrobiology in Hungary. His main fields are the fluvial erosion/deposition on Mars, possiblity of liquid water there, habitability, and also the ice crust of the satellite Europa, processes inside meteorites. His activity also includes laboratory related works and anlaog research. |
 | Prof. Karen J. Meech, University of Hawai'i, USA Karen Meech is an astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. Her scientific interests include several areas of cometary science: evolution and aging processes in comets, observations of distant comets, Kuiper belt comets and astrobiology. Other scientific interests include planetary formation and the search for extra-solar planetary systems, archaeoastronomy and variable stars. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Physics at Rice University in 1981, and her PhD in planetary astronomy at the MIT in 1987. Karen has been a Co-Investigator on the NASA Deep Impact mission, in charge of coordinating the world?s observing. She is playing a similar role for NASA?s EPOXI and StardustNExT Missions. She has been an active member in the international astronomy community and is currently the president of Division III Planetary Systems Sciences of the International Astronomic Union. Karen is keenly interested in issues related to the origin of water on Earth and habitable planets. She's also very active in teaching and outreach. Karen apparently does not know what free time is, but if she had any she very much enjoys camping, hiking, swimming, scuba diving, piano playing and reading (in the hadean epoch of her career she actually practiced some of these things). She is one of the co-organisers of this summer school. For more information check her homepage. |
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Prof. Hans Olofsson, Onsala Space Observatory, Sweden Hans Olofsson is professor of radio astronomy and director of the Onsala Space Observatory, the Swedish National Facility for Radio Astronomy, at Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg. His main fields of research are the distribution, kinematics, and physical/chemical structure of the star-forming gas on galactic scales, and the final evolution of solar-type stars. Both these aspects of the life cycle of stars have an astrobiological bearing. The former establishes the large-scale boundary conditions for the origin of life. The latter has a direct bearing on any existing life through the evolution of the central star, and, as the star approaches its death, an indirect effect through the production of heavier elements and complex (in an astronomical sense) molecules. |
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| Prof. Prof. Haraldur Sigurðsson, University of Rhode Island, USA Haraldur Sigurdsson is emeritusprofessor of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. He has worked on research in the field of volcanology for over forty years, with studies on volcanoes in his native Iceland, North and South America, Caribbean, Indonesia, Italy and Africa, as well as on submarine volcanoes. He first visited Santorini (Thera) in 1975 as a member of the oceanographic expedition that studied the fallout from the Minoan eruption in the Bronze Age. His studies on the violent explosive eruptions of Krakatau in 1883 and Tambora in 1815 have strong parallels to the Thera eruption in the Bronze Age. During the 1975 Thera expedition the URI research vessel R/V Trident carried out sediment sampling of the sea floor east of Thera in order to determine the fallout pattern of air-borne volcanic ash from the great Minoan eruption. He was also editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Volcanoes, also published in 1999. He was awarded the Coke Medal of the Geological Society of London in 2004. |
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| Dr. James Stephenson, NASA, USA |
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| Prof. Nils-Kåre Birkeland, University of Bergen, Norway 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 100 degrees centigrade. To learn more abouthis research, view his homepage. |
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| Dr. Þorsteinn Þorsteinsson, Icelandic Meteorological Office, Iceland Þorsteinn Þorsteinsson is a glaciologist working at the Icelandic Meteorological Office. He also teaches part-time at the University of Iceland. Þorsteinn did his PhD-work on ice textures and fabrics at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, and he has participated in several deep ice coring projects in Greenland and Antarctica. Since 2000 he has mainly focused on various glaciological research and monitoring programs in Iceland, including studies of subglacial lakes beneath the Vatnajökull ice cap. He has lead the local organizing of several astrobiology-related events in Iceland, including the 2nd Mars Polar Conference in Iceland in 2000, the Bioastronomy 2004: Habitable Worlds conference and the NASA-Nordic Summer School in 2009. . |
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| Prof. Jack Hunter Waite, South West Research Institute, USA Dr. Waite is a planetary scientist specializing in the application of mass spectrometry to the study of solar system biogeochemistry and aeronomy. He is involved in research projects in ion/neutral mass spectrometry, gas chromatography, biogeochemistry, thermospheric modeling, and planetary astronomy. Following completion of his undergraduate studies in physics at the University of Alabama in 1976, he began graduate work in atmospheric science at the University of Michigan. He received a M.S. in atmospheric science in 1978 and, in 1981, was awarded a Ph.D. for his development of a model of Saturn's ionosphere. From 1981 to 1988, Dr. Waite was a Research Scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, where he was heavily involved in the analysis of Dynamics Explorer data on ion outflow from the Earth's ionosphere. From 1988 to 2000, Dr. Waite was at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), where he was Director of the Space Science Department of the Instrumentation and Space Research Division. Although still involved in studies of the Earth's coupled ionosphere-magnetosphere system, Professor Waite's work at SwRI was strongly focused on planetary research. In January of 2001, Dr. Waite became a full professor in the University of Michigan, Department of Engineering, Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences department. Dr. Waite returned to SwRI as an Institute Scientist in May of 2006. His primary responsibilities include Director of the Center for Excellence in Analytical Mass Spectrometry, where he is involved in the definition and development of ion and neutral mass spectrometers and gas chromatographic techniques. He is the Team Leader for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer investigation, co-investigator and lead SwRI hardware manager for the Rosetta/Rosina Reflectron Time-of-Flight, and principal investigator for the development of a Jupiter Thermosphere-Ionosphere General Circulation Model. Dr. Waite is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the American Astronomical Society, and Sigma Xi and a former editor of the AGU letters journal, Geophysical Research Letters.In 1996, he was named Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Michigan's College of Engineering. Mre information about him can be found here. |
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| Dr. Wolf Geppert, Stockholm University, Sweden Wolf D. Geppert received his Ph. D. in Physical Chemistry at the University of York in 2000. Since then he has been working in the field of astrochemistry - mostly with experiments to investigate barrier-less reactions of importance for the synthesis of molecules in the interstellar medium and planetary ionospheres. After post-doctoral positions in Bordeaux, Helsinki and Stockholm he was promoted to Full Professor at Stockholm University in 2014. His work mainly concerns studying the formation of complex molecules in space through ion induced processes using experimental, observational and computational methods. Wolf Geppert is Coordinator of the Nordic Astrobiology Network of and Director of the Stockholm University Astrobiology Centre. He is also Vice Chair of the European Union COST Action "Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth and in the Universe" and the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership "European Astrobiology Campus". He also functions as also Handling Editor of the new journal "Molecular Astropysics". |
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The following young reasearches wil act as student tutors: | |
| Elena Amador, University of Washington, USA Elena Amador is a PhD Candidate in Earth and Space Science and Astrobiology at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research focuses on using different remote sensing techniques to understand the surface composition of Mars, primarily near- and thermal-infrared spectroscopy. She studies rocks and landscapes from Earth to better understand what past environments may have been like on Mars, and whether those environments may have once been habitable. |
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| Morgan Cable, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA Morgan Cable is a research scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2010, where she investigated life in extreme environments. Her current work in the Instrument Systems Implementation and Concepts Section at JPL focuses on organic and biomarker detection strategies, through both in situ and remote sensing techniques. |
 | Gayathri Murukesan, University of Turku, Finland My research areas of interest includes testing of various cyano bacterial strains on different rock substrates , testing the effects on growth under very low pressure and 100% carbon dioxide environment (Martian �like conditions), considering the use of cyanobacteria as a source of food, oxygen and fuel for long-term manned space missions. To explore the possibility of using Martian regolith for renewing life-support materials by natural processes like bioweathering, leaching, etc. My other interests include exploitation of local marine and fresh water algae for possible biofuel production. |
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Amanda Stockton, Georgia Tech University, USA Her research plans include (1) instrument development for in situ organic analysis in the search for extraterrestrial life, (2) microfluidic approaches to experimentally evaluating hypotheses on the origin of biomolecules and the emergence of life, and (3) terrestrial applications of these technologies for environmental analysis and point-of-care diagnostics |
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| Sampling at lava field | Glacier excursion | Sampling at hot springs |
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