The Lost City Hydrothermal Field is a unique vent field located in the Atlantic Ocean along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This vent system is the only one discovered so far on Earth to have been created through a process called “serpentinization”, a chemical and geological interaction between Earth’s mantle and seawater. Hydrogen is produced here as a by-product of the reaction, which fuels the generation of compounds that are considered the precursors of DNA and could possibly give clues as to […]

Hello! My name is Beatriz Akiti, I am currently finishing my studies as an undergrad student in the University of São Paulo, in Brazil. Since I was a child, I have had a great curiosity about our own world and the worlds beyond. I loved investigating and understanding our relationships with the living beings around me and the way everything worked. Not only did this influence my interest in sustainability, but it was my great inspiration for me to pursue […]

Hello everyone! My name is Gülay, and I am an undergraduate student majoring in Molecular Biology & Genetics at Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. When I was a little kid, I want to become a scientist and work in lab enviroment. I always love biology and I want to understand mechanisms of living organisms; therefore, I choosed molecular biology and genetics as a study field. Then, I wanted to learn deeply evolution because it is a bases for biology. I became […]

Hello everyone! I’m Alexis Torres, a new Staff Scientist here at Blue Marble. I recently completed my MS in Bioinformatics at San Jose State University. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, I got my first look at the scientific community’s fervor and collaboration in addressing pressing challenges, which was truly inspiring. At the same time, I was learning about applications of bioinformatics in astrobiology, and was compelled to get involved in this frontier in biological research. This led me to join […]

I am a space microbiology enthusiast from Kurdistan. Back when I was in high school, I used to be very good at science but I wouldn’t use it as a way of knowledge. This changed when, before joining university, I picked up some scientific books from the likes of Stephen Hawking’s Theory of Everything and Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden and read them avidly. These readings and further intellectual practices changed my mindset about the world and science and […]

I am Payel Das, an undergrad student from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. I study microbiology, which I really enjoy. But I also have had a huge passion for astronomy forever. So, I kept searching for a subject that combines my interests. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I found out about astrobiology, an exciting and relatively new field that connects both astronomy and microbiology. As an undergraduate aspiring researcher, I was searching for space-related research opportunities in my country. But sadly, […]

My name is Sebastián Alejandro Valencia Meza. I studied for my Bachelor’s Degree in Biology at the University of Sonora, where I have lived my entire life and grew my love for the desert. From the beginning of my studies, I knew I wanted to become an astrobiologist since I was passionate about an integrative vision of all sciences. However, a challenge I had to face was that there is not any astrobiological research at my University, so I chose […]

Hey people! This is Shivani Muthineni. I would prefer to be called Shivani. With a degree in microbiology, I recently worked with Research Scientists at BMSIS YSP as a Research Associate, and now make the transition to the Visiting Scholars Program. In a way, I worked to rule out the possibilities of aliens being more like humans by analyzing the samples of Icelands’ Mars Analog Sites, for presence lipids that belong to microbes. Do watch the recorded talk on my […]

Allison Tee is a student at Stanford University studying math and music with a coterm MS in computer science, but they’re originally from Wichita, Kansas. As a Visiting Scholar at BMSIS, they are continuing to work with Dr. Celia Blanco on developing a new biocomputational tool to process deep sequencing data. They are also currently a machine learning engineer intern at NASA, where they enjoy working on AI applications for biomimicry and volunteering at educational outreach events. Some of their […]

Sriya is a first-year Ph.D. student in Genetics at Clemson University under the direction of Dr. James Lewis. Her research at Clemson will be focused around studying the genetics of adaptation in butterflies. Sriya graduated in May 2023 with her B.S. in BioEngineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. During her time at UMD, Sriya was a Bioengineering Departmental Honors researcher in Dr. Jeffery Klauda’s Laboratory of Molecular and Thermodynamic Modeling, an Undergraduate Teaching Fellow for Synthetic Biology, a Resident […]