Speaker Biographies

Carol Cleland

Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado

Lab website

Carol Cleland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado (Boulder). She received her B.A. in mathematics at the University of California (Santa Barbara) and her Ph.D. in philosophy at Brown University. Her current research interests are in the areas of philosophy of science (the methodology of historical science, the nature and origin of life, the evolution and diversity of microbial life, and the search for extraterrestrial life). She is a member of the NASA Institute of Astrobiology (NAI) and the University of Colorado's Center for Astrobiology. Cleland's published work has appeared in major science journals (Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Geology, International Journal of Astrobiology, and Theoretical Computer Science) as well as in leading philosophy journals.

References for the symposium:

  • Cleland, C. E. & Copley, S. D. (2005). The possibility of alternative microbial life on Earth, International Journal of Astrobiology 4, 165-173.
  • Cleland, C. E. (2007). Epistemological issues in the study of microbial life: alternative biospheres, Stud. Hist. Phil. Bio. & Biomed. Sci. 38, 847-861.
  • Davies, P. C. W. & Lineweaver, C.H. (2005). Finding a second sample of life on Earth, Astrobiology 5, 154-163.

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Marc Bedau

Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Reed College

Adjunct Professor of Systems Science, Portland State and European Center for Living Technology

Lab website

Mark A. Bedau (Ph.D. Philosophy, UC Berkeley, 1985; Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College; Visiting Professor at the European School of Molecular Medicine) is an internationally recognized leader in artificial life. He has published and lectured extensively on philosophical and scientific issues concerning emergence, evolution, life, mind, and the social and ethical implications of creating life from scratch. He has published over 90 research papers and produced seven books, including Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science, Protocells: Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter, and The Prospect of Protocells: Social and Ethical Implications of Recreating Life. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Artificial Life. Most recently, he co-founded a start-up company, ProtoLife SRL, in Venice, Italy, and co-founded the European Center for Living Technology, a research institute in Venice, Italy, that investigates theoretical and practical issues associated with living systems.

References for the symposium:

  • S. Rasmussen, M. A. Bedau, L. Chen, D. Deamer, D. C. Krakauer, N. H. Packard, P. F. Stadler, eds. 2008. Protocells: bridging nonliving and living matter. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • M. A. Bedau and E. C. Parke, eds. 2008. The prospect of protocells: social and ethical implications of recreating life. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Abigail Allwood

NASA Post-doctoral Fellow, Jet Propulsion Lab

Lab website

Dr. Allwood’s research focuses on identification of early life.  Evidence of early life is difficult to identify unambiguously.  By examining various microbial fossil records, Dr. Allwood is developing methods for identifying early life using sedimentology, paleobiology, structural geology and geochemistry.  Her work impacts not only identification of early life on earth, but also the search for life on other planets.

References for the symposium:

  • Allwood, A.C., Walter, M.R., Kamber, B.S., Marshall, C.P., Burch, I.W., 2006. Stromatolite reef from the Early Archaean era of Australia. Nature, 441: 714-718.
  • Allwood, A.C., Burch, I.W., Walter, M.R. and Kamber, B.S., 2007, 3.43 billion-year-old stromatolite reef from the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia: ecosystem-scale insights to early life on Earth. Precambrian Research, 158: .198-227

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Janet Siefert

Faculty Fellow, Rice University

Lab website

Dr. Siefert is interested in the evolution of microbial world and the interactions between the microbial community and the environment.  Prokaryotes exploit a wide range of metabolic pathways, some of which are ancient, such as photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation and methanogenesis.  These ancient metabolic pathways impacted the environment through geobiochemical recycling.  Dr. Siefert will talk about the evolution and function of microbial metabolism and the environmental effects of this community.

References for the symposium:

  • Denues, C., Rodriquez-Brito, B., Rayhawk, S., Kelley, S., Tran, T., Haynes, M., Liu, H., Furlan, M., Wegley, L., Chau, B., Ruan, Y., Hall, D., Angly, F.E., Edwards, R.A., Thurber, R.V., Reid, R.P., Siefert, J., Souza, V., Valentine, D.L., Swan, B.K., Brietbart, M., Rowher, F. (In Press) Biodiversity and biogeography of phages in modern stromatolites and thrombolites. Nature 2008
  • Souza, V., Eguiarte, L., Brietbart, M., Escalante, A.E. Falcon, L., Olmeda, G., Siefert, J., Travisano, M., Elser, J.J. (In Press) Cuatro Cienagas (Mexico) A microbial Galapagos. Nature 2008

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Andrew Roger

Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University and Fellow, CIAR Program in Evolutionary Biology

Lab website

Dr. Roger is interested in the history of early life on Earth and the forces that influence the evolution of genes and genomes. His group has made important contributions to: (1) clarifying the endosymbiotic origin and diversity of mitochondrion-related organelles in eukaryotes; elucidating the super-kingdom level relationships in the tree of Life; (3) understanding the role of lateral gene transfer in eukaryotic genome evolution, and, (4) computational modeling of gene, protein, genome and proteome evolution.

References for the symposium:

  • Roger, A.J. and Hug, L. A. (2006) The origin and diversification of eukaryotes: problems with molecular phylogenetics and molecular clock estimation. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 361:1039-1054
  • Ruiz-Trillo, I., Burger, G., Holland, P., King, N., Lang, B.F., Roger, A.J. and Gray, M.W. (2007) The origins of multicellularity: a multi-taxon genome initiative. Trends Genet. 23:113-118
  • Rodriguez-Ezpeleta, N., Brinkmann, H., Burger, G., Roger, A.J., Gray, M.W., Philippe, H., and Lang, B.F. (2007) Toward resolving the eukaryotic tree: the phylogenetic position of jakobids and cercozoans. Curr. Biol. 17:1420-1425.

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Laura Landweber

Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University

Lab website

Dr. Landweber’s research is in early molecular evolution, the origin of the genetic code and genetic systems, and how cells and DNA solve biological problems, such as the creation and assembly of genes.  By focusing on the unexpected diversity of gene organization found in protists, such as scrambled genes in ciliates, bizarre RNA processing and non-standard genetic codes, Dr. Landweber hopes to learn more about primitive genetic systems.

References for the symposium:

  • Nowacki, M., Vijayan, V., Zhou, Y, Schotanus, K., Doak, T. G. and Landweber, L.F. (2008) RNA-mediated epigenetic programming of a genome-rearrangement pathway. Nature 451: 153-159.
  • Landweber, L.F. (2007) Why Genomes in Pieces? Science 318: 405-407.

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