Dr. Rika Anderson Awarded NAI Fellowship

Our own Dr. Rika Anderson was selected for the prestigious NASA Astrobiology Postdoctoral Program for her proposal titled, “Unraveling the impact of ecological selection pressures on the archaeal pangenome”. In her research, Dr. Anderson seeks to understand the evolution of microorganisms and how they adapt to fill new ecological niches. She will compare the genomics of organisms adapted to extreme environments by studying several species collected from Yellowstone National Park. The goal of this research is to understand the factors that allowed these organisms to adapt to such extreme conditions.