NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI)

Welcome to the NAI Newsletter! The Newsletter is a compendium of announcements, events, updates, and news items related to the NAI and its research. If you have news items or suggestions you can send them to the editor, Marco Boldt at: Marco.Boldt@nasa.gov.

NAI News

NASA-Supported Researcher Shares in Nobel Prize

Jack W. Szostak, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, is among a group of three researchers who have been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Szostak, who shares this year’s prestigious scientific award with Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, and Carol W. Greider of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is also a principal investigator with NASA’s Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program and a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. The award was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on October 5th, and was given to the group “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.”

According to the Royal Swedish Academy, this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to these three scientists for solving a major problem in biology: how chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation.

For more information: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/

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NAI Member Beth Shapiro Receives MacArthur Fellow Award

The NAI extends its congratulations to Beth Shapiro, member of NAI's Pennsylvania State University team. Beth, Shaffer Career Development Assistant Professor of Biology at Penn State, has been selected as a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. According to the foundation, the prestigious award is given to talented individuals, in a variety of fields, who have shown exceptional creativity, originality, dedication to their creative pursuits, and potential to make important contributions in the future.

For more information: http://live.psu.edu/story/41679

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NAI-Sponsored Conferences and Workshops

The NAI supports workshops and other meetings of its members and the broader scientific community that will advance any of the objectives identified in the Institute’s mission statement. These include, but are not limited to, the integration of Institute research, mission planning, the coordination of field expeditions, international or inter-agency collaboration, training in astrobiology, or support of Education and Public Outreach.

Recent and upcoming activities supported by this fund include:

• August 16 – 20. 2009 - A session at the American Chemical Society National Meeting, entitled Astrochemistry: Chemistry of the Planets, Interstellar Dust and Beyond, organized by Gozen Ertem; Washington, DC


• Fall 2009 – 2010 Johns Hopkins University Astrobiology Seminar Series, organized by Jocelyne DiRuggiero and Luann Becker


• January 9 – 15, 2010 - The NAI will co-sponsor the 2010 Gordon Research Conference and Graduate Research Seminar on the Origin of Life, organized by H. James Cleaves; Galveston, TX


• The NAI will support a series of four Virtual Workshops on the Study of Intelligence in Astrobiology, organized by Lori Marino and Kathryn Denning.


• June 13 – 18, 2010 – The NAI will co-sponsor the Gordon Research Conference on Environmental Bioinorganic Chemistry, organized by Ariel Anbar and Rachel Narehood Austin; Newport, Rhode Island.


• June 14 – 18, 2010 - The NAI will provide funding for US student participation in the 2010 Astrobiology Graduate Student Conference (AbGradCon), Tallberg, Sweden, organized by Eva Steeuken


• July 18 – 25, 2010 38th COSPAR Assembly – The NAI will support the participation of US astrobiologists at the meeting to be held in Bremen, Germany.

For more information: http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/funding/nai-conference-and-workshop-fund

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Podcast on the NAI and Astrobiology

Tune into the latest from Omega Tau, a wide-reaching podcast series from Stuttgart, Germany, for an interview with NAI’s Director Carl Pilcher as he talks about NAI, astrobiology, and the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

For more information: http://omegataupodcast.net/2009/09/18-astrobiology-at-the-nasa-astrobiology-institute/

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Recently Published Research from the NAI

Dinosaur-Killer was Soft on Algae

The asteroid impact that many researchers claim was the cause of the dinosaur die-off was bad news for marine life at the time as well. But new research from NAI's Massachusetts Institute of Technology team published in the October 2nd issue of Science shows that microalgae – one of the major primary producers in the ocean – bounced back from the near global extinction in about 100 years or less.

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For Students and Young Investigators

NASA Postdoctoral Program Proposal Deadline November 1, 2009

The next application deadline for the NASA Postdoctoral Program is November 1, 2009. The program provides opportunities for Ph.D. scientists and engineers to perform research on problems largely of their own choosing, yet compatible with the research interests of NASA and the member teams of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. The NAI currently supports the research of 10 such postdoctoral fellows in NAI labs. For more information see http://nasa.orau.org/postdoc .

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Report on the Meeting of the First Early-Career Astrobiology Research Focus Group (RFG)

In July a group of early-career astrobiologists (graduate students and postdocs) spent two days engaged in intensive brainstorming at the first ever Early-Career Astrobiology Research Focus Group (RFG). The goal of the RFG was to foster interdisciplinary collaborative work in a simulated proposal submission process. At the end of two days of grant writing, peer-reviewing, oral presentations and group discussions, the participants voted on the best proposals.

The RFG was an outstanding success, exceeding all expectations. The 30 participants covered the full range of specialties relevant to astrobiology, and represented 7 different countries across North and South America, Europe and Australia. Not only was the RFG successful in its original goal of strengthening interdisciplinary and international links between early-career astrobiologists (9 out of 10 participants thought that having participated in the RFG would definitely help them to work more effectively in an interdisciplinary way in the future) but as a result of the dedication and commitment shown by the participants, several highly original ideas for future research were generated. Over ninety per cent of the participants thought that the ideas that were produced would definitely (50%) or possibly (42%) affect the direction of their future research, and two-thirds of participants wanted to continue collaboration on their ideas.

The RFG workshop was entirely conceived and organized by early-career astrobiologists themselves. The organizing committee consisted of Marina Antonio, (Washington State University, lead organizer), Katherine Wright (University of Colorado at Boulder), Rika Anderson (University of Washington), Dimitra Atri (University of Kansas), Armando Azua-Bustos (Universidad Catolica de Chile), Laurie Barge (University of Southern California), Mark Claire (University of Washington), Jacob Haqq Misra (Pennsylvania State University) and Sanjoy Som (University of Washington). Marina and Katherine ran the workshop while other organizers participated in the focus groups. The NAI provided funding for the workshop, and both the organizers and participants would like to thank NAI for their ongoing support for early-career astrobiologists and for making the event possible.

The “RFG experience” began 3 weeks before the event, when the organizers put the participants into focus groups of 3 or 4 people who had expressed an interest in similar research areas, but who had different backgrounds, in order to ensure interdisciplinary collaboration. They were asked to initiate brainstorming and the summary of their proposal was due on the day of arrival at the workshop. Each group was then given 16 hours to write the full proposal, and several participants worked those 16 hours straight through the night, depriving themselves of sleep! Participants peer-reviewed each others’ proposals, as well as presenting their own, and finally voted to rank the proposals.

For more information: http://sites.google.com/a/u.washington.edu/abgradcon09/Home/workshop

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For the Astrobiology Community

Final Call for 2009 Nominations: The Martha T. Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica

The “Martha T. Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica” is a US $100,000 unrestricted award presented to an individual in the fields of Antarctic science or policy that has demonstrated potential for sustained and significant contributions that will enhance the understanding and/or preservation of Antarctica. The Prize is inspired by Martha T. Muse’s passion for Antarctica and is intended to be a legacy of the International Polar Year 2007-2008. The prize-winner can be from any country and work in any field of Antarctic science or policy. The goal is to provide recognition of the important work being done by the individual and to call attention to the significance of understanding Antarctica in a time of change. A web site with further details, including the process of nomination and selection of the Prize recipients is available at www.museprize.org .

The Prize is awarded by the Tinker Foundation (http://foundationcenter.org/grantmaker/tinker/) and administered by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). (http://www.scar.org/)

Note the deadline for nominations is the 15th of October.

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New Book: "Exploring the Origin, Extent, and Future of Life: Philosophical, Ethical and Theological Perspectives"

This new book, edited by Constance M. Bertka is now available.

From the publisher:

Where did we come from? Are we alone? Where are we going? These are the questions that define the field of astrobiology. New discoveries about life on Earth, the increasing numbers of extrasolar planets being identified, and the technologies being developed to locate and characterize Earth-like planets around other stars are continually challenging our views of nature and our connection to the rest of the universe. In this book, philosophers, historians, ethicists, and theologians provide the perspectives of their fields on the research and discoveries of astrobiology. A valuable resource for graduate students and researchers, the book provides an introduction to astrobiology, and explores subjects such as the implications of current origin of life research, the possible discovery of extraterrestrial microbial life, and the possibility of altering the environment of Mars.

• An introduction to astrobiology exploring the origin of life, the extent of life, and the possibility of life on Mars • Provides philosophical, historical, ethical and theological perspectives on astrobiology • No prior knowledge of the subject is needed as each chapter has been written to be understood by readers new to the field

For more information: http://www.cup.es/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521863636

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Collaborative Technologies

Collaborative Tools Training Sessions to be held Wednesdays in October

Do you collaborate with team members over distances? Did you know there are tools available to NAI members to use for working with distributed teams?

The NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) and NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) are hosting five weeks of training sessions to demonstrate how to use some of the latest collaborative technologies, including videoconferencing, Adobe Connect (real-time meeting software) and online communities. The training sessions will be held every Wednesday at 10:00am PT (7:00am HT, 11:00am MT, 12:00pm CT and 1:00pm ET), from September 30 through October 28th.

For more information please contact Estelle Dodson (Estelle.Dodson@nasa.gov) or Marco Boldt (Marco.Boldt@nasa.gov)

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