2018 Georgia Tech Astrobiology Colloquium

March 30th, 2018

Georgia Tech Astrobiology is proud to announce that the 2018 Astrobiology Colloquium will take place on March 30th, 2018. This is a new early career event for the Georgia Tech astrobiology community and will consist of presentations and talks by students (both graduate and undergraduate) and post-doctoral fellows working in astrobiology, space science, and engineering across the Georgia Tech campus and greater Atlanta. There will also be plenary lectures given by distinguished members of the global astrobiology community.Our theme, for what we hope is the inauguration of an annual event is: Exploring Life Origins and the Universe: A Networking Event. As such, in addition to our early career speakers, poster presentations, and our plenary lectures, there will be networking and innovation platform activities to forge connections and explore collaborative ideas among participants. Hence, senior researchers and faculty are highly encouraged to attend.

Registration for the 2018 Georgia Tech Astrobiology Colloquium is now closed as the event has reached capacity. However, an overflow space with a direct feed to the conference presentations is available in the Suddath Symposium Room located on the first floor of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience Building (IBB).  This room will have a view-only feed from the main colloquium in EBB and is open to the entire campus community. Space is limited and first come-first served.

For colloquium updates and notifications please join our mailing list by clicking here

(Please Note: This is an announcement e-mail list only for updates about the colloquium.)

For all other questions, please contact us

Plenary Speakers

Organizing Committee

Faculty Advisors

Martha Grover

Glenn Lightsey

Jennifer Glass

Exploring Life Origins and the Universe: Program

March 30, 2018

  • 8:15-9:00: Coffee and Poster Setup
  • 9:00-9:10: Welcome by Paul M. Goldbart, Dean of Georgia Tech College of Sciences
  • 9:10-10:10: Plenary 1: Ada Yonath, Weizmann Institute, Israel
    What Was First, the Genetic Code or its Products? 
  • 10:10-10:30 Coffee Break and Posters 1
  • 10:30-10:45: Burcar, B.; Lago, J.; Pasek, M.; Menor-Salvan, C.; Hud, N.
    Phosphorylation in Urea-Rich Eutectic Solvents
  • 10:45-11:00: Taran, O.
    Iron Sulfide Minerals in Prebiotic Redox Chemistry
  • 11:00-11:15: McKee, A.
    A Possible Path to Prebiotic Peptides Involving Mineral Substrates and Hydroxy Acid-mediated Amide Bond Formation
  • 11:15-11:30: Fialho, D.; Clarke, K.; Moore, M.; Schuster, G.; Krishnamurthy, R.; Hud, N.
    Glycosylation of a Model Proto-RNA Nucleobase with non-Ribose Sugars: Implications for the Prebiotic Synthesis of Nucleosides
  • 11:30-11:45: Solano, M.; frenkel-Pinter, M.; Grover, M.; Hud, N
    Selection and Assembly of Prebiotically Plausible Protopeptides
  • 11:45-12:00: Bray, M.; Bowman, J; Petrov, A.; REddi, R.
    Iron: Primordial Cofactor for the Translation System
  • 12:00-1:15: Lunch, atrium of the Integrated Biosciences Building (IBB)
  • 1:15-2:15: Plenary 2: Niles Lehman, Portland State University
    Scrambling to Build the RNA World
  • 2:15-2:35: Coffee Break and Posters 2
  • 2:35-2:50: Márquez-Zacarías, P.; Ratcliff, W. C.
    How to Describe Exo-Evo? An Organismal Approach to Evolutionary Dynamics
  • 2:50- 3:05: Chen, K.; Rosenzweig, R. F.; Herron, M. D.
    Genetic Basis Underlying De Novo Origins of Multicellularity in Response to Predation
  • 3:05-3:20: Szeinbaum, N.; Henry, C.; Crowe, S. A.; Stewart, F. J.; DiChristina, T. J.; Reinhard, C. T.; Nunn, B. L.; Glass, J. B.
    Metaproteomics Reveals a Novel Betaproteobacterium with Roles in Metal and Nitrogen Cycling in the Deep Subsurface
  • 3:20-3:35: Krafft, A.; Colvin, T.; Homar, K.; Lynch, K. L.; Greene, R. Fitzsimmons, R.; Zaharescu, G. D.
    The Embedded Scientist Program 
  • 3:35-3:50: Lourenco, N. E.; Williams, W. L.; Coen, C. t.; Frounchi, M.; Cressler, J. D.
    MicroNimbus: a Spaceborne mm-Wave Temperature Profilometer for the Earth’s Atmosphere
  • 3:50-4:05: Duca, Z.; Cantrell, T.; Speller, N. C.; Stockton, A. M.
    Quantitative, Compositional Analysis of Trace Amino Acids in Europa: analogues with a modular μCE-LIF System
  • 4:05-4:55: Transport to Evening Venue
  • 4:55-5:45: Round Table Activities
  • 5:45-6:15 Summary and Wrapup
  • 6:00: Dinner, Ironmonger Brewing, Marietta, GA
  • 7:00: Plenary 3: Shawn Domagal-Goldman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
    LUVOIR: An Astrobiology Mission to Targets Near and Far
  • 9:00: Transport back to Georgia Tech