... or at least that is what Prof Walker and SFI's Michael Lachmann argue in a new essay appearing in ​Aeon.  Read the essay here. 

Four members of our research team are headed to the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference to be held in Seattle WA, June 24 - 28th. 

Grad student Tessa Fisher will give a talk titled, "Atmospheric Chemical Reaction Network Topology as an Indicator of Disequilibrium: Implications for Biosignature Detection", abstract here. 

Grad student Dylan Gagler will present a poster titled, "Investigating the role of oxidation-reduction reactions in biochemical network structure across levels of organization", abstract here. 

Assistant Research Prof. Hyunju Kim will present a talk titled, "Characteristic Chiral Nature of Hierarchical Biochemical Networks", abstract here. 

Professor Sara Walker will present two talks. The first is part of the plenary on 'Frontiers in Biosignature Science' on "Statistical Frameworks for Life Detection". The second is titled, "Intelligence as a Planetary Process", abstract here. 

In addition, lab alumni Dr. Harrison Smith (now at the Earth-Life Science Institute at Tokyo Tech) will present work he did while on our team, presenting a poster titled "Assessing the Viability of Biochemical Networks Across Planets", abstract here. 

ASU Alum Amanda Truitt also leads a poster titled "A Flexible Bayesian Framework for Assessing Habitability with Joint Observational and Model Constraints", abstract here, with Walker as a co-author. 

Prof. Walker will head to Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory to deliver a seminar, More details here. 

Monday, June 10, 2019 - 11:00
Event Host: 
Shaunna MorrisonDr. Sara Walker of ASU is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life and how to find life on other worlds. She presented on "Planetary systems biochemistry - inferring the laws of life at a global scale."
Currently we do not know what life is, or whether there exist universal laws - in the same sense the laws of physics and chemistry are universal - that describe life. If we could understand the fundamental physics of life it would be possible to not only engineer the creation of de novo life in the lab, but also to provide better quantitative methods for identifying life on other worlds. In this talk I discuss new approaches to understanding what universal principles might underlie living matter, based on studying biochemical networks on Earth from the scale of individual organisms to the planetary scale.

Graduate student John Malloy will participate in this year's Complex Systems Summer School sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute. The program offers an intensive 4-week introduction to complex behavior in mathematical, physical, living, and social systems, with lectures taught by the faculty of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) and other leading educators and scholars.