Life Webinar | Early Career Researchers in Origin of Life
Welcome from the Chair
2nd Life Webinar
Early Career Researchers in Origin of Life
“Early Career Researchers in Origins of Life” is a Life Special Issue aimed at early career researchers in origins of life (those in independent positions, up to 10 years post-PhD). This Special Issue aims to publish original research on all aspects of origins of life led by early career researchers, hoping to present cutting-edge topics regarding the origins of life and provide a glimpse towards the future topics of interest in this field of research. Here, we have organized a webinar featuring some early and mid-career researchers in origins of life as a means to encourage the next generation of origins of life researchers. We will hear about geochemistry, prebiotic chemistry, and protocell research, amongst others, and hope that the interdisciplinarity and internationality (each speaker is based in a different country) can also inspire early career origins of life researchers. We hope that this webinar will also pave the way for submissions from such researchers to the Special Issue, and look forward to your attendance!
Date: 12 January 2023
Time: 8:00 am CET | 2:00 am EST | 3:00 pm CST Asia | 12:30 pm IST | 3:00 pm MYT | 4:00 pm JST
Webinar ID: 864 8558 6660
Webinar Secretariat: life.webinar@mdpi.com
Chair
Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan,
Blue Marble Space Institute (BMSIS), Seattle, WA, USA
Tony started his research career at Caltech, where he completed his B.S. in Chemistry and Business, Economics, and Management in 2010. He then moved to Harvard University, where he received his PhD in Chemistry in 2016. Since 2017, he has been at ELSI, where he was a research scientist, specially appointed assistant professor, and lab manager. He is now associate PI and specially appointed associate professor at ELSI and a research investigator at BMSIS, and his current research focuses prebiotic chemistry, primitive compartments, and chemical evolution.
Invited Speakers
Dr. Sudha Rajamani did her postdoctoral research at the FAS Centre for Systems Biology at Harvard University, and at the Deamer lab at UCSC, where her research interests in Astrobiology, and especially in origins of life, were nurtured. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune. Sudha is the principal investigator of the Chemical Origins of Life (COoL) lab, where she and her team use tools from biology, chemistry, geochemistry and physics, to delineate the processes and niches that would have allowed for the transition from non-life to life on the early Earth. She is also deeply involved in Astrobiology education, both, formally and via science outreach programs. In particular, she feels strongly about mentoring school and university students in their pursuit of Astrobiology as a career.
Space Science Centre (ANGKASA), Institute of Climate Change, National University of Malaysia, Malaysia
Kuhan Chandru received his Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology from the University Terengganu Malaysia in 2005, and a Ph.D. in Material Chemistry from Yokohama National University, Japan, in 2013, with a dissertation on the stability of biomolecules in hydrothermal vent environments. In 2014 he worked at the Earth-Life Science Institute on problems of abiotic chemical constraints in hydrothermal vent environments. A focus of his current work at the National University of Malaysia is to discover new chemistries that could have been the precursor of modern biochemistries.
Webinar Content
Program
|
Speaker/Presentation |
Time in CET |
|
Dr. Tony Z. Jia Chair Introduction |
8:00 – 8:10 am |
|
Dr. Kuhan Chandru Rethinking Prebiotic Chemistry and the Origins of Life |
8:10 – 9:00 am |
|
Dr. Sudha Rajamani Delineating Life’s Origins at the COoL Lab…the Story Thus Far |
9:00 – 9:50 am |
|
Closing of Webinar |
9:50 – 10:00 am |
Relevant SI
Guest Editors: Dr. Tony Z. Jia and Dr. Kuhan Chandru
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2023
Sponsors and Partners
Organizers
