Sara Walker, PHD
Photo Credit: Deanna Dent
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Sara Imari Walker is a theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life and how to find life on other worlds. Her work focuses on whether or not there are ‘laws of life’ - related to how information structures the physical world - that could universally describe life here on Earth and on other planets. The goal of her research program is therefore to understand what new physics might be discovered by a first principles approach to the open questions of how life emerges from non-life, and how we might recognize life. While building new theories is necessarily an exercise in abstraction, those theories that stand the test of time should have real-world impact and thus a focus of her research team at ASU is on theory-to-practice, including designing new algorithms, new experiments and patentable technologies.
At Arizona State University she is Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, and a Full Professor with a joint appointment between the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the School of Complex Adaptive Systems. She is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, a Fellow at the Berggruen Institute and serves on several advisory boards, including the Board of Advisors for the Sloan Foundation's Matter-to-Life Initiative and the Board of Advisors for the digital chemistry company Chemify. She is active in public engagement (see Media and Press) because the conversation around the nature of what life is - and ultimately what we are as living things - is to big to be held solely within the confines of the academy.
Contact: sara.i.walker@asu.edu
Twitter: @sara_imari
At Arizona State University she is Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, and a Full Professor with a joint appointment between the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the School of Complex Adaptive Systems. She is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, a Fellow at the Berggruen Institute and serves on several advisory boards, including the Board of Advisors for the Sloan Foundation's Matter-to-Life Initiative and the Board of Advisors for the digital chemistry company Chemify. She is active in public engagement (see Media and Press) because the conversation around the nature of what life is - and ultimately what we are as living things - is to big to be held solely within the confines of the academy.
Contact: sara.i.walker@asu.edu
Twitter: @sara_imari