[Baps] Ken Williford, Mars 2020 Deputy PS — Tuesday Feb 23rd @ 12:30 PM

[Jason Soderblom]

Hello NE planetary community,

Please join us next Tuesday (Feb 23rd) at 12:30 PM on Zoom (link below) to hear about the first few days of the Mars 2020 (Perseverance) mission from Ken Williford, the mission’s Deputy Project Scientist.

Bio: In addition to serving as the Mars 2020 Deputy PS, Ken is the director of the JPL Astrobiogeochemistry Laboratory(abcLab). Research in the abcLab is broadly concerned with tracing the flow of biologically important elements (e.g. C, H, O, N, S) through Earth systems. To do this, we use the tools of "biogeochemistry" - uncovering the chemical traces of life (bio) preserved in Earth materials (geo) - within the context of astrobiology (the search for life on other planets). In recent years, Williford has focused on developing analytical techniques to search for signs of life and environment in some of the oldest rocks on Earth. Fossils are very rare in these rocks, and those that do exist are almost always microscopic. In the abcLab at JPL, Ken studies the biogeochemistry of ancient Earth rocks in part to understand how we can apply similar techniques to the search for evidence of life on other planets - in rocks returned to Earth from the surface of Mars, for example.


The Zoom link for this meeting is:
https://mit.zoom.us/j/99369967203?pwd=eXp4YU1ZUGZreHBPYWJwUDVMSTN1QT09
password: mitPLS12#$

You can find the upcoming talks for the semester below. If you have a suggestion for a speaker next Fall, please fill up this form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/1Uuo2IhfhF-Mrve4EXLFFv8y4h8NFddPhb8NVr-tyOIc/edit?usp=drive_web
It is always very helpful to have suggestions and feedbacks.

See you all on Tuesday,
Jason & the PLS team



Upcoming talks

3/09
Emily Worsham (U. of Münster, Germany) Isotopic evidence against a cataclysmic Late Heavy Bombardment of the Earth and Moon

3/23
Kate Follette (Amherst U.) How to take a photo of a baby planet, and why you should care: direct observations of proto-planets

4/06
Thomas Ronnet (U. of Lund, Sweden) Giant planets’ moons as scaled-down super-Earth systems

4/20
Amy Mainzer (U. of Arizona, LPL) TBD

5/04
Lynnae Quick (NASA/GSFC) Cryovolcanism and the Creation of Habitable Niches on Ocean Worlds in Our Solar System, and Beyond


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/baps/attachments/20210218/3d988bb0/attachment.html