About the Institute for Planets and Life
A highly interdisciplinary team of scientists at Johns Hopkins University, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the Applied Physics Laboratory combine their expertise to address fundamental questions about the origins, evolution, and prevalence of life in the universe. In addition to providing guidance for research, the team administers graduate and undergraduate lecture courses on these topics.
The institute also hosts the Planets, Life, and the Universe (PLU) Lecture Series, which brings high-profile speakers from prominent universities and organizations to campus to discuss current topics in astrobiology. The presentations are available live and as webcasts online.
To foster interdisciplinary research between universities and institutions.
By bringing together experts from a wide range of scientific fields, we encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration and address key astrobiology questions in novel and creative ways.
To train the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers.
Our faculty reaches beyond astrophysics, planetary sciences, and biological sciences to build projects that involve the most talented students at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels.
To engage the community at large with exciting research and discussion.
Our lecture series provides opportunities to learn about the latest research to our students, colleagues, and anyone interested in the quest to find life elsewhere in the universe.
Upcoming Planets, Life, and the Universe Lectures
The Planets, Life, and the Universe Lecture Series is supported by the NASA Astrobiology Program, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Department of Biology, the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Biophysics, the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Johns Hopkins University, and the Ernst Cloos Memorial Fund from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences of Johns Hopkins University. Upcoming lectures are highlighted below.
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Exoplanet Characterization from JWST
We are now one full year into the era of JWST, NASA’s flagship observatory and the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Exoplanet characterization has historically been dominated...
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Rise of the Glass Animals (and Protozoans): Tracking the Paleozoic Transformation of the Silica Cycle by Biomineralizers
Phanerozoic oceans have witnessed the transformation of the marine silica cycle from a system primarily controlled by abiotic precipitation reactions to one in which silica biomineralization...
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How Do New Protein Structures Emerge?
The advent of the Artificial Intelligence era has granted us unprecedented access to protein structural data. How did nature discover folded proteins more than 3 billion years ago?...
Our Research Areas
Driven by the recent and profound discovery of ubiquitous Earth-like exoplanets, our central quest is to understand the origin and prevalence of life in exoplanetary systems using our knowledge of the universe.
We seek to understand how atmospheric chemistry, geochemical processes, and environmental conditions affect the habitability of planets in our solar system and those that lie beyond it.
With the study of microbial communities from extreme environments we seek to determine the limits for life as we know it, where else life might be found, and which biosignatures we should look for in our solar system and beyond.
Resources
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