ELLEN COSTA-ALMEIDA
she/her

"I fell in love with Astronomy since the first day that I looked up and noticed the stars and planets, but never thought of making a career out of it because it felt so distant, but in the last year of high school, I had the most amazing biology teacher that made me enjoy Biology and believe that I could be a scientist. I was conflicted about which path to take, to be an astronomer or a biologist, until the day that I read the term 'Astrobiology' and I noticed that actually I had a third possible path, a mix of both of them. So, I decided to study astronomy and my undergraduate research was in Stellar Astrophysics, studying red-dwarf stars. Now, I am a PhD student and, since my Masters, I work with chemical abundances of CHNOPS (main components of life on Earth) in solar-type stars.”

FATIMA LI-HAU
she/her

"Since I can remember I have felt passionate about space and the mistery of the origin of life. In high school I found out about Astrobiology, specifically extremophiles, during a science communication talk at my alma mater. Since then, extremophiles and their amazing physiologies have fascinated me. This planted the seeds of my main research question: How far can life go? In order to study extremophiles, I wanted to go directly into a Microbiology degree, unavailable in Mexico at the time. Instead, I studied Biology (UNAM, Mexico) and chose my thesis laboratory and courses accordingly. That experience is now extremely valuable to me, as it allowed me to have a broad idea of life on Earth. For my PhD I worked with microbes in iron-rich hot springs as analogues to early Earth ocean. I am currently a postdoc at the model-based evolutionary genommics unit focusing on machine learning and computational biology.”

PAULA PRONDZINSKY
she/her

"I became interested in astrobiology in high school, but could not find a straightforward way to become an astrobiologist, since there was no undergraduate program for it. In my undergraduate I studied Earth and Space Science (a mixture of geoscience, astronomy and oceanography) and then moved on to an MSc program in Marine Microbiology (both in Bremen, Germany). I then joined the Earth-Life Science Institute (Tokyo, Japan) for a combined MSc/PhD through the department of Chemical Science and Engineering, though my research here is focused on microbial physiology and bioinformatics.”

SERHAT SEVGEN
he/him

"During my undergraduate years, I developed an appreciation on the co-evolution of Earth and life throughout geological history after taking several courses on paleontology and evolutionary biology in Turkey. Thinking about life in the geological time perspective allowed me to think critically about the famous questions that humans have been asking for centuries: “How did life start on our planet and in what conditions?” and “Is life special only to Earth or can it be found somewhere else?”. Accordingly, I met with a scientific research discipline known as “Astrobiology”, which is in the core of those questions. After having my BSc in Geology, my passion for astrobiology continuously increased, and I decided to conduct research on how geochemistry shapes the environment for life. Accordingly I got my MSc degree in Oceanography from METU, Turkey (with a focus on deep-sea hydrothermal vents) and I am now a PhD candidate in the field of aqueous geochemistry at University of Calgary, Canada. I am conducting experiments in the lab in order to understand how geochemistry of early Earth was operating at the dawn of life."