I earned my MS at the University of Alaska Fairbanks under the supervision of Tom Shirley and my Ph.D. degree at the University of South Carolina in 1999 under the supervision of Bruce Coull, studying the genetic population structure of benthic copepods. After a 3-year postdoctoral position at the University of Chicago (supervised by Dick … Continued
Dr. Aparna Banerjee works as an academic-researcher at the Institute of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Talca. She is also the principal investigator of prestigious national projects such as Fondecyt Regular of ANID and INACH Regular of the Chilean Antarctic Institute. She is the author/co-author/communicator of more than 60 … Continued
Caitlyn Hubric is a Master’s student at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), supervised by Dr. Andrew Palmer. Her research focuses on the recycling of materials through decomposers and other microorganisms. She has received multiple awards for her undergraduate research focused on sustainable space exploration. For this expedition, she is particularly interested in finding microorganisms … Continued
Drew Palmer is an associate professor at the Florida Institute of Technology in the departments of: (i) Ocean Engineering and Marine Science, (ii) Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and (iii) Biomedical Engineering and Science. His areas of interest include ‘social’ microbial behaviors such as quorum sensing, plant-microbial interactions, and the development of sustainable space agriculture in … Continued
Jessica brings a diverse skill set and deep-sea sampling experience to the expedition team. With a Master of Science in Biological Oceanography from the Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, her research focuses on microbial communities in extreme environments. Previously, Jessica contributed to research cruises, data analysis, and publications as a Research … Continued
Amber Wu is an incoming PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University, USA. Her current research focuses on complex coacervate droplet formation as a primitive form of cellular compartmentalization. Amber received her BMSc in Medical Biophysics and Biochemistry from Western University, Canada, with a thesis on computational statistical mechanics modeling of … Continued
Guillermo Guzman is a marine biologist of the Arturo Prat University with a Doctorate in Sciences from Sao Paulo University, Brazil. Guillermo Guzman’s career is marked by extensive research on the marine biodiversity of Chile. His papers, which include records of species from the North of Chile and studies on the associated pelagic fauna in … Continued
Isabel Herreros obtained her degree in Astrophysics at Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) in 1999. In 2003, she obtained her Ph.D. degree in Computational Fluid Dynamics at the Faculty of Physics of the same University. From 2003 to 2019, Dr. Herreros served as a researcher and Program Director at Centro de Estudios y Experimentacion de … Continued
Mara is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) in Spain. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and an M.Sc. in Evolutionary Biology from Complutense University of Madrid, as well as an M.Ed. in Teacher Training for Secondary Education from Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid. She began her academic journey … Continued
