 Mae'r ysgolwch, everybody, i osion i'r ffrigg hon i gael i nesaf ar wazwni am le野ar. Felly mae'n Kevin Shakespeare, wondering for research, entrepreneurship and scholarship, here at the Open University. Oping up our inaugural lectures... ...is one of the real pleasures of the job. I think that they're a fantastic celebration of academic careers and the great things that universities do. So, I'm delighted to be here this evening. The inaugural lectures are actually invited by the Vice-Chancellor and Tim's here this evening and they are an opportunity to celebrate our academic excellence and the great diversity that we see during the year is one of the real celebrations. So this evening we're hearing from Professor Karen Olson Francis and she's going to explore her work on rethinking the boundaries of life and astrobiology. I should say the lecture is also available in Welsh and the reasons will become clear during the lecture. So let me now introduce Professor Nick Braithwaite who will be known to many of you as the Executive Dean for the STEM faculty and he's going to take us through the introduction to Karen. Over to you Nick. Yes hello everybody and it includes people who are watching online various parts of this planet and possibly for all I know other planets too. It's a great pleasure to be here talking about Karen Olson Francis. Karen is Professor of Geo-microbiology. There's a lot of words coming up now so be careful. Geo-microbiology it's all one word and she's operating in the School of Environment, Earth and Ecosystem Sciences. And she's Director of Astrobiology. Astrobiology possibly one thinks of it as being closer here but there is a very strong connection which she has been responsible for developing certainly around here at the OU hence she is Director of Astrobiology at the OU. And there she's got a group of about 60 scientists and social scientists, governance experts, educators. There's an interesting thing there how broad this team is. And they are there to create a large interdisciplinary group the largest one in Europe working on Astrobiology. She's homegrown she's one of us we claim her she studied with us as a postdoc and has been developing her career ever since. But I think it's that ability to connect across the boundaries which distinguishes her from many others. And I think that's one of the strengths we'll be hearing about look out for it. She bridges traditional boundaries in her work across multiple schools here in the faculty and across the faculties. The Arts and Social Sciences faculty and the Business and Law faculty are involved in Karen's work. And she's worked in some of the most extreme environments and as many as you will know working in a lecture theatre can be considered an extreme environment as well. And she's operated experiments on the International Space Station. Karen is in the UK, she is the UK's national representative on the Committee on Space Research International Planetary Protection Paddle. What she's doing is very germane to that and that's why she gets singled out for these things. She's also part of UK Space Exploration Advisory Group, she's chair of the Geomicrobiology Committee, a founding member of the European Astrobiology Institute and an elected member of the European Astrobiology Association. That's an impressive list of credentials and I can tell you no more. I need Karen to come here and tell you some more in her lecture. Karen, please come and join us. So thank you everybody. The last time I actually gave a lecture in public was actually standing here back in January 2020 where we actually launched Astrobiology OU. And a lot has happened since then and I'll be touching on some of that work here today. If you want to follow us on Twitter, here are our Twitter handles down here on the right. And actually we'll be live tweeting some of the relevant papers that the group have produced, some of the work that we talk about. So if you see a symbol and you follow us on Twitter, there'll be a link to the papers as well. So are we alone in the universe is probably one of the most captivating questions in our time. It's one of the driving forces behind the field of Astrobiology. It covers everything from the origins of life on early Earth, right through to habitability in our solar system and finding evidence of life through life detection missions. As a science, it crosses the boundaries between planetary, Earth and biological sciences. But here at the Open University, we push those boundaries. We push those boundaries to include science, social sciences and humanities. As Nick mentioned, we've formed Astrobiology OU, which is a unique group which brings together experts from across multiple faculties within the university. In this lecture, I will out roll the small part that I've played in building this group, the life choices that have led to the role I'm in today and the support that I've had over the years which have made all of this possible. So going back to Kevin's note about why you're going to be translated into Welsh. Well, growing up in a small Welsh village in North Wales being educated to the medium of Welsh, Astrobiology wasn't a natural career decision for me. I actually spent my summers working in the Wrexham Lager and if any of you have ever tasted the delights of Wrexham Lager, it has to be one of the most finest beers in the world. But I went to university convinced I was going to do a degree in brewing and distilling. But it was actually, while I was at university, I developed an interest in microbiology. So microbiology is the study of microbial life and these microbes are generally naked to the eye. And what we know about microbes is that they are ubiquitous on earth so they are fine to nearly everywhere. So this is going to scare you guys. This picture here is of a swipe from the surface of a mobile phone. You've all got the mini pockets, I know I admit it, but there's going to be microbes like this growing on there, so just be prepared for that. But seriously though, that microbes do play such a huge part in everyday life. They shape the environment that we live in and our health. And there's approximately 5 million trillion, trillion microbial cells on earth and then one of the major courses of sources of organic carbon. And what we know about microbial life is probably one of the most earliest forms of life. Evidence suggests that about 3.7 billion years ago that evidence of life existing. So we think that microbial life is one of the most earliest forms. What we do know, like most life, that there's three key requirements. It all needs a liquid water, it needs chemicals, bioressential elements and it needs an energy source. So as us as humans, we get energy from eating food and respiring oxygen. But life either or is evolved to use a much wider array of chemicals. So for example, there's lots of microorganisms that actually live in anaerobic environments and oxygen actually kills them. Also we have organisms that can use inorganic compounds rather than organic compounds. So for example, molecular hydrogen, sulfide, phloethions, to name but a few. And studying these microbes and the complexity and extremity of these microbial life on earth actually enables us to speculate about the existence of life on other planets both within our solar system and beyond. And the way that these microorganisms adapt mean that they can live in some of the most extreme environments on earth. These are not my holiday shots but they are if New Zealand, Louise Thomas actually proudly let me have these. And we know from looking at these kind of extreme environments that there's a number of, they're teaming with microbial life. So we know that life can live in hydrothermic vents, in mud pools and the environmental conditions of these are really extremes. A microbes that can live in these environments are what we call extremophiles. So extreme loving microorganisms. It's a bit of a OU video here I had to put in just to keep you all on your toes. So microbes can live in hot pools and desert environments, the bottom of the ocean. So microbes that live in hot environments above 65 degrees are called thermophiles. We have microbes that can live in really cold environments that are called sacrophiles and they can live in, and then we have microbes that can live in multiple extremes. Everything from high pH and temperature through to desiccation and UV resistant. And then we kind of have this group of organisms that are called, like they're very much the superhero of the microbial world, which can survive everything as high temperatures, low pH, high salinity, and even nuclear waste. But some of those environments that I showed you towards the end are actually, it's more common to have more than one extreme. These are kind of environments, so for example we look at hydrothermic systems, we don't just have the high temperatures, they're normally either highly acidic or highly alkaline as well. And the life that live within these environments are called poly-extruneophiles. Do you see a trend coming in here? Poly-extruneophiles are microbes that can live in multiple extreme environments. Everything from salinity to high pH, etc. So, when I started to think about doing a PhD, I just finished travelling around New Zealand and I felt, I really love microbiology and studying extremophiles to me was kind of a natural step. At the time, there had been a lot of work looking at individual extremes on microbes very much from a biotechnological perspective. But there wasn't much work that's been done looking at the mechanisms and evolution of adaptation to multiple extremes. So, when I was doing my PhD, this is when this kind of work was starting. I was lucky to get an international fellowship to go to the University of Targo in New Zealand where I was able to study this. Going back to those initial photos, New Zealand is a prime location to look at these extreme environments. But also, obviously you can't go to New Zealand without appreciating the culture, the environment and obviously the all blacks. I have to put that one in there. So, the work that I was particularly looking at was a microbe. That sounds just one microbe. I spent three years studying a microbe, that's correct. But this microbe was special. It was isolated from a geyser on Mount Tadahau, which is the only Maori word I know but translates to the mountain of love. If anyone's ever interested, I can do a Maori translation for you. But what was interesting about this geyser is that the pH was about 9.5 and the temperature was above 65 degrees. So, this microorganism, which was called TA201, which hasn't actually been classified, was able to survive in these extreme environments. What we know from studying extreme trials under single conditions that high temperature causes problems with membrane fluidity and this causes problems with biochemistry, we know that in highly alkaline environments the microbes have to maintain the pH within the cytoplasm to keep it near neutral, otherwise it impacts on biochemical processes. So, the work that I was doing was looking at how a microconvines were able to survive both of these conditions. So, I did a lot of work looking at the bioenegetics, so looking at how it could produce ATP under these multiple conditions. So, what we were able to look at was looking at the physiology of it, looking at the sodium anti-porters that could survive and the mechanisms that it could ploy. But when I started my PhD, though, probably two years into my PhD, Lyn and Rocco, Lyn Rothschild and Rocco Mancinelli, who wrote this review paper, and it's probably one of the most pivotal papers of my career. It was a review in nature about, and it talked about space as a new category for studying extreme environments. When I meet Lyn and Rocco at conferences, I constantly bring up this paper and this is one of the pivotal moments for me. In that paper, Lyn and Rocco talk about space as another frontier for studying extrema files. They look at it and they talk about it in two ways. They talk about it in the concept of lithopanspermia, which is the transfer of life in one planet to another. So, for example, life from Earth that can be transferred to life on Mars. They also look at it and talk about it as a way of habitability, which has become very key to the work we've been doing over the years. They think about habitability in the solar system. There's two areas that we're focusing on at the moment. Predominantly, that's the icy moons and Mars. If we go back to this diagram I showed you previously, there's key requirements for life. It needs liquid water, it needs chemical energy, and it needs biorecentral elements. If we look at the icy moons, for example, Europa and Salatus, evidence suggests that these deep oceans there, which supplies water and a watery environment, and there's also think that there's hydrothermic activity within the deep subsurface. These produce chemical gradients, which can allow microorganisms to live. Thermochemical modelling of the composition of this ocean suggests that potentially microbial lives could exist within these oceans. Again, when we look at Mars, when we think about Mars, about 3.6 billion years ago, the conditions on early Mars, we think, were very similar to that on early Earth. These large fluvial systems existed, which evidence suggests for some of the work that's ongoing at the moment. As time and the atmosphere evaporated, it lead to the evaporation of the water, leaving to these evaporative deposits on the surface. If life did exist within the subsurface today on Mars, it would be in the subsurface where it is actually protected from the detrimental conditions on the surface, because the surface is very arid, and it's really highly exposed to radiation. That was a bit of a quick slide. I didn't do my introduction there. Although I was starting to become interested in astrobiology, my career kind of took a bit of a shift. I left academia for two years and went to go and work in a research institute in New Zealand called Ag Research, and this is a Crown Research Institute that was very much focused on doing science to help society. At the time, New Zealand was very much involved with the Kyoto Agreement about methane emissions. It might not surprise you, but there's more sheep and more livestock in New Zealand and there are people. There's about 5 million people in New Zealand where there's about 35 million livestock, and these livestock are called aruminants. This means that when they eat their food, they break down the food, they ferment it, and they're leasing methane into the environment. Methane from cows and livestock in New Zealand contribute about 43% of their greenhouse emissions, which is really high for developed countries. The work that we were doing that I was focused on was trying to manipulate the ecosystems within the aruminants, changing the composition of it, if by changing foods or using phages or viruses to change it so the methanogens within the aruminants would not produce methane by changing the ecosystem in there. I promise you that there is a reason for this slide and I will come back to it. It does fit into the astrobiology story. I promise you. But after that, though, I decided, I did have a permanent position and gave it up because I wanted to go back into academia, and Rob and I decided we were going to move back to the UK for two years. We were just coming for two years. The plan was we'd be back for 2011 for the rugby world cup in New Zealand. 14 years later, we're still here. It gets worse. The picture here. The picture here, Copega Banner Beach. I was sitting on a beach with Rob drinking this, and I was like, Rob, there's this job coming up. It's in Milton Keynes. You are going to love Milton Keynes. It's right on the beach. At the time, I hadn't lived in the New Zealand in the UK for eight years, so my geography was a little bit scary. I do know that we are at the most landlocked place within the whole of the UK. But we're still here. We're still living the dream in Milton Keynes. But what we did find, though, that job that was advertised was working with Professor Charles Clarkell, who was an established astrobiologist. It still is an established astrobiologist. The work that he was looking at, that I was involved with, was looking at the survivability of microorganisms and simulated unreal low-worth orbit conditions. At the time, and it still is, the OU was a fantastic place to do this. It's such an honour to have, Judith Pellinger, actually, in the crowd today. She played such a key part in that at the time. We have some amazing environmental simulation chambers, which manage Paterlvins now, which allow us to actually simulate some of these conditions at the Open University, which is really unique and a great opportunity for us as researchers. At the time, experiments in low-worth orbit were coming really exciting times. I joined the OU in 2008, and it was just coming to the end of the biopun experiments. On the left, the big ball there, that's a biome experiment, and basically it is launched into low-worth orbit on a photon rocket, opens up exposing experiments, closes, and then it's returned to Earth. The very short time experiments, typical between 10 and 13 days, but in 2008, I think that was probably the last one, we got some experiments brought back from that, but this also coincided with the start of experiments on the International Space Station. The advantage of the International Space Station was that these are experiments that could be taken on yearly time scales, normally between 18 months upwards. What we do with these, you can see quite clearly in the image on the right, is that we can put samples in them and then using filters with different intensities, we can manipulate the conditions within the chambers. If we use a cut-off filter of 200 nanometers and we can put a Martian gas composition in there, we can simulate the conditions on the surface of Mars. These experiments are not just looking at low-worth orbit conditions, but they also allow us to look at simulated Mars conditions in low-worth orbit as well. Over the years, there's been a lot of experiments that have been looking at the survival of microbes and biosignatures in space. I think there's something like a thousand species that have been looked at over the years. What we did here at the OU was a very different approach. What we were focused on was actually, rather than looking at survival organisms in low-worth orbit, we were using the conditions of low-worth orbit to select from extreme micro-organisms. Again, another nice, sunny coastal picture here. This time we have bear in Devon. What we did was we collected samples from the Lime Scope cliffs, as you can see in the image on the left. These Lime Scope cliffs are exposed to periods of desiccation, radiation and high salinity. As you can see this green layer here, this is cyanobacteria and algae. What we did was we were able to collect samples from here and we could expose them to a lot of the exposed mission and the Biopan mission. At the bottom right corner here, you can see some of the dark controls. Under the layer we have the samples that expose to space conditions, we also have dark controls as well. The work that we did we were able to isolate an organism called Gleircapser among Brantyr OU-20. We were able to study that to look at how microbes can survive. These organisms were able to produce this really thick extra polysaccharide which could support which could let it the radiation not penetrate and also they produced these big clump materials as you can see on this image close on the right so they can kind of stump together. Although the radiation and the conditions could penetrate the first couple of layers they were still able to survive the cells in the middle. I'm going to do another celebrity shot. Continuing working although this work ended up beginning as postdocs we've continued to work in this area and we've recently just done some work just finished analysing some experiments on the biomexperiments so we've got Nisha Ramkison here in the audience we were looking at the effect of low earth orbit conditions on key biosignatures so looking at how molecules were actually degraded under Mars conditions and making a database that could be then used in instruments that are on Mars at the moment to see how they compare. But this is probably one of my favourite Issa stories is that biomex experiment actually came down with Tim Peake and the email I got from Issa we all got from Issa were saying we're a bit worried about the vibration sharks returning to earth so we've asked the astronauts to use their dirty clothes and stuff it under their seats so it doesn't vibrate and I asked him about this at the time and well afterwards when I met him and he goes actually that is a true story and as a microbiologist I'm a little bit concerned about the integrity of those samples but hey who am I to complain and I think then though there was a bit of a shift a change you know I was very lucky we had Emily and Matthew Emily and this and as everybody who's in planetary science in the UK did at this time a contract was coming to an end my life was in the gods of the consolidated grant SCSC consolidated grant I was waiting to see what would happen there so we were lucky I think there was Manish and Vik and Charles wrote a grant and it was successful I was named postdoc but by a twist of fate Charles took the labs and moved to Edinburgh which was a fantastic opportunity for him but it meant for us as a family that we were very settled down here so I stayed which meant when I went on maternity leave I had about a year left on my contract but thankfully to Suhorn and the UK space agency in the Aurora there was a call of Aurora fellowships out at the time so I packed I think it was it kind of got announced just after I went on maternity leave and I packed up my six year old six week old daughter and moved in with my parents and wrote a fellowship and it was successful but we're going back to the cow story so this is where it all fits together now so in 2004 Mars Express suggested there was methane on Mars 2011 NASA reported high resolution of methane from Earth observations and then 2012 which happened to coincided with my fellowship application Curiosity Rover repeated methane measured methane on the surface of Mars so on Earth methane's either produced abiotically and this can be due to syphonisation of rocks producing hydrogen which reacts with carbon dioxide to produce methane or as I showed with the cows it can be used by biology so what the work that I was doing was very much looking to see if methanogenic microbes from extreme environments were able to grow under simulated combustion conditions so we can simulate the conditions of Mars by using regolith we know what the chemistry is so we can simulate that here on Earth to see if these microbes could actually live in the subsurface and produce methane but this was linked to the Aurora mission so very much focused on biosignatures and as well as the methane being potential biosignature I got interested in looking at the colleagues which I'll mention geological biosignatures so these are actually secondary minerals alteration minerals that are formed due to physical chemical alteration to existing primary minerals and these minerals are produced differently depending if it's an abiotic or biotic system so they can be used as a signature to detect life and the instruments that we have on Mars at the moment are able to measure some of these key secondary minerals as well so at the time I was really lucky to be at the Open University I felt I had such a great group of peers around me so Suzanne Twencer who has Covid tonight so hi Susanna she was part of the Curiosity Science team so she was actually involved in the mission that I mentioned back in 2012 she was also a Martian guru mineralogist and then as well as that we have Manish Patel who is the co-PI of the Nomad instrument which is on the Trace Gas Orbiter which is Circulate which is orbiting around Mars one of its goals was to look for methane and then we have Vic Pearson who is an absolute guru on organic geochemistry and understanding carbon on Mars and is a very good translator between me and Susanna when we couldn't understand each other because interdisciplinary science can be very difficult we now get each other it's just taken a bit of time but what this did mean though was that we weren't just coming from disciplinary boundaries different points of view it meant that we could look at experiments different and this is kind of the way that we've started to do our research so we could take data from Mars missions Susanna could thermochemically model it so look at that using that information to predict what the chemical environment would be so this would allow us to look at the composition of potential water on Mars to see if it has the chemicals that we need and the physical environment and then this is where I come in we would take microbes from extreme environments and then we could simulate them under lab conditions to look if they could grow under Mars conditions and what biosignatures that they could produce so in this chamber we actually officially opened the labs today we would put in some martian regolith again Nisha Rancasyn was leading on this work and looking at how they can change the if the microbes can grow in those environments and what biosignatures they could use I was doing as well as the lab work we were doing a lot of simulation sorry analogue work in field work, analogue field work so this is a game we play when we do outreach it's guess which is Mars and which is Earth but I'm not going to make you a guest today on the right here we have the Atacama and on the left here we have the surface of Mars and if you take the roads and the buildings that have the Atacama in picture they do look very similar but it's don't just look similar some of the parameters within them are very similar as well so we have fluctuations in temperature they're very desiccated environments they could be high UV well not as high obviously on Mars they are on Earth but those kind of environments which allow us to look at microbial life in a similar way as we can on Earth so we kind of use this model to look at habitability on beyond the Earth by using analogues on Earth and there's no perfect analogue site it all depends on what environment you're looking and what time period you're looking at as well so here are some of the places that the group's been over the last few years so we've been everywhere from the salt pans in Botswana right through where we're using as an analogue for present day service of Mars right through to Spellbaud and Iceland looking at these cold environments as well so there's a whole selection of environments that we can use to look at these so there's no one perfect analogue I think for me though personally probably the most extreme environment that I've ever been to is the Danachal Depression the hydrothermic system there this was back in 2017 when access to the sites were becoming more open infrastructures put in place it's really extreme so this water you think water is actually acid so the temperatures about in the morning when you go sampling is about 36 to 38 degrees but actually can rise up to 50 degrees in the heat of the sea so these are like super saturated hydrothermic waters and they form this bedrock in a very sulphuric acid environment so the work we were doing was looking at if biosignatures of life could exist within these evaporitic deposits so the environment is actually too extreme for active life to be definitely growing within these environments but what we can see are kind of little cells like morphological biosignatures within the evaporitic deposits I think you know from a scientific perspective going out into the field was an absolutely amazing opportunity for me but I think what did hit me more though and I think this was again a very pivotal point to my career was actually the people the local and indigenous communities so this is the local village that we stayed in so the beds that we slept in can be seen down here on the right the picture above is that hut is where we kept all our science equipment we had armed guards because even back in 2017 there was still concern about terrorism attacks and the whole economy before tourism and science came through there was very much driven by the salt industry in the region and this place really touched me and I think I wanted to give back to the environment, the community that we were there with so back in 2018 myself and Barbara Cavalatski from the University of Bologna went back to the University of Macalai in Ethiopia and set up a workshop which the aim of it was to teach teachers in that region in the Afar region of Ethiopia about the local environment it was about science but it was about helping them in business ecotourism was starting to become a big thing at the time so it was giving them that information we were lucky it was a very difficult time because just after we came back in there the civil unrest in Ethiopia happened so we can't actually communicate with our colleagues at the University of Macalai at the moment we haven't for a few years now but we were planning, the Open University had gifted us a set of microscopes when we were going to go out there and set up this infrastructure out there for local schools and I hope one day that we can go back and do that we have still kept our links with Ethiopia Michael Macy and I have a Ph.D. student at the University of Science and Technology in others, Barbara in Ethiopia and he'll hopefully be coming over in September to use molecular biology facilities we've trying to help the University there set up the first molecular biology labs in North Africa but with a situation there at the moment it's quite difficult so where we can help we can support them to come over and work with us but at the time we were, the science and the analog work were starting to develop but we also started to realise that the research that we were doing had an application as well it could be applied one of the things that we started to look at Manish you're going to love this picture aren't you you're shaking your head you gave me the photo it's about financial protection and this is about the practice of protecting solar system bodies from contamination by earth life and protecting earth from possible life forms that have been returned from other solar systems body, sorry at the time Vic Pearson and I had been doing some work on regulations of planetary protection and the outer solar system as part of a project that the EU had funded and I was quite lucky because also at the time again I'm going to do a photo here's me at the UN in Vienna I was very lucky that the UK space agency were looking for a representative on the cost bar panel planetary protection panel and I was lucky enough to be selected and we're very lucky today to have Athena panel in the audience so thank you Athena so we started to start thinking about planetary protection so from a regulation perspective but also as a science very much interested in looking at using that whole concept of biosignatures to look at bioburden so some of the work we've been doing with Esgi and one of our project officers is looking at using quick methods to be able to monitor these in clean rooms and we've been working a little bit with Airbus in this area and they co-funded a PhD student with us who, Sylvia who is now planetary protection officer at ESA and we're looking at work at the survivability of organisms from clean room environments under simulated Mars conditions seeing how this can impact our understanding of what is going, what actually these bioburden environments are and this also led to other commercial opportunities we had the pleasure at the Open University of working with Garrett Morgan who is our this is Suzanne Schwenson not Garrett Morgan sorry I should have explained that Garrett Morgan who is our knowledge exchange expert some of the work that he's done again is looking going back to that concept are looking at biosignatures for evidence of life or contamination whichever way you look at it Susanna at the time was also doing project work for Airbus with the XMRs but what Taft did was he opened eyes to opportunities that what you can do with science commercial opportunities it can offer so with his help we put together an STFC IAA award which has allowed us to look at the commercial opportunities of this work and that was was a bit of a change in mindset for us so we kind of as a group we started to think about astrobiology in the context of not just science but international development education governance and commercialization and what we realised was that this was like had the opportunity to be such a big multidisciplinary research area so when a call came out to look to build a multidisciplinary research centre we called on a cold called actually the heads of the strategic research areas within the university so Simon Lee was head of citizens and governance at the time we had Giles on your hand was international development inclusive innovation and Anu Hollins was his head of the space SRA and I remember Cole calling and go look I've got this idea is there any chance we can get people together from across the university and we did I think I've never had in past syndrome so much of my life was as an early career lecturer I think I just made a lecture I think that was senior lecturer at the time and we had this meeting where it was just us and a group of professors across the university and I think that was a game changer because having the support and the support and belief of those academics really helped us to kind of formulate this concept of astrobiology OU you know the African saying says it builds it takes a community to build a child I think for us astrobiology OU was built by the support that we had from the academics around us because I think you know that has made such a difference for us so when research England put out a call back in 2018 for a research group where they were looking at these kind of these five specific things about taking a small research group with the potential to grow that could deliver economic and societal impact we felt we're in a strong position that we hit a lot of these that we hit a lot of these points so we put together as a team that an expand an excellent in England award and we were lucky enough to be awarded 6.7 million and this allowed us to build astrobiology OU so the kind of the key take home message of astrobiology OU is to address the scientific governance and ethical challenges associated with astrobiology in a sustainable way and the way you do that is we work across disabilities but not just from scientific and bringing in our colleagues and the other faculties as well and we're kind of focused around these key areas so finding evidence of life that's not just from a science perspective so looking at how a tool environment it's also looking at the ethical implications of this and of looking for life and finding evidence and we actually have a new fellow starting later this year who is looking at environmental ethics very much looking at plant protection again building on some of the work that I mentioned about detecting developing protocols for measuring bioburden. We've also recently started somewhere with the UK space agency looking at their regulations and regarding plant protection and UK launch and then the earthen analog so again looking at it from a scientific perspective of these extreme environments understanding how microbial life lives in them but also looking at the impact this has on the local human populations and I suppose in the middle of that is the societal impact so international development engagement and seeing how we can apply astrobiology as research to meet societal needs so although we have been hit by Covid over the last three years I think we've been pretty successful I think we've managed, I think for me though the main points is we've managed to keep 21 PhD students alive during Covid I think that has to be a big achievement and the fact that we have had 6 vivas and they've all gone well as well so I think that has to be the major achievement for me a wise I would say old professor told me that you should always finish your inaugural about talking about where you're going to be for your career, I've got at least 20 years left I'm not going anywhere soon but as astrobiology I think the next 20 years also is going to be so exciting we've got Mars sample return we've got missions to the icy moons including Europa and Enceladus we've got the James Webb telescope you've all seen the pictures hopefully this morning one of their goals is to look at atmosphere on exoplanets to search the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe and we'll even potentially have humans on the moon and Mars, again this is prime opportunity for astrobiology personally I have a lot of ideas that I'd like to do over this time and I need for a small part of them coming to fruition I will be extremely busy and extremely happy but success is not the key to happiness happiness is the key to success so for me it's about the future generation in astrobiology we've spent a lot of time building up the next generation and I will be successful if I can play a small part in these guys and what they can do in the future because I'm really excited to see what the group can do going forward I have thank you there's so many people I would like to thank you but specifically I would like to thank Julia Barkin and the lab team I mean you guys have been amazing we went from 0 to quite a few labs now so thank you for all the support during that I'd like to thank Suzanne Schwentzer and Vic Pearson for sharing a brain cell for being the best work colleagues and friends someone can have especially over the last 5-10 years I'd love to thank Louise for keeping me on the straight and narrow not breaking too many OU rules and my family and my husband for not trying to change me and my children for just being amazing so thank you Karen thank you very much for that thrilling account of what got you here an inaugural lecture should be about the beginning we're inaugurating something but what a basis for that beginning thank you very much let's go across there and we'll take some questions if we could please we've been joined online I know by all the places that you've referred to around the world Botswana, Ethiopia I think you should take that one I thought I could take this one look out at your audience there come around a bit there we are that's better Ethiopia, Botswana they were mentioned in New Zealand we've probably got questions from them online and they will be relayed from the bottom here with roving microphones going around if you wait for a roving microphone we'll be able to get your question in keep it short please but start by saying who you are so we'll open for questions and while people are thinking I hope you have been thinking just now I might go for an online contribution first can I do that and while that's happening could I get a microphone down to there please Hannah have you got something for us Hannah hasn't got a microphone Hannah have that microphone thank you thank you very much there have been plenty of questions coming through so I'm just going to quickly filter through to see which ones we've got please keep them coming so the first one is a nice sciencey one for Karen so how does studying the halo files and how are they significant to astrobiology rather than studying extrema files I think it depends on what you're trying to study I think halo files are particularly of relevance when we're looking at the surface of Mars nowadays so we know that there's a vaperitic deposits on the surface of Mars and that microbes potentially could be entwined within those salt crystals and what we know from looking at Earth that the helophilic organisms can actually live in these entwined salt they can survive in those entwined salts and this is some work that the group's been doing so halo files are very relevant for present day preservation of biosignatures I think we'll cover it Mark Brandon, stem faculty you seem to have banished quite a lot of members of astrobiology OU around all of the extreme environments on the Earth I wondered if you had any extreme environments you haven't visited yet and why would you want to go to them that's a good question I haven't been to hardly any of them all the team that gets to go, they get the exciting part I think the Azores would be quite an interesting the Azores would be quite interesting there's quite a lot of hydrothermic activity going on there I think some of the remote I think Africa's got a lot to offer for analogue work I think there's so many untapped resources there and we recently actually had Professor from Botswana over visiting and we're discussing about the possibilities of setting up a North African analogue sites because there's so much variety and I think a lot of them are untapped and it's just getting that balance about going there and studying them so I think it's very much what's the space as we open up some of these analogue sites When I wait for the next question I think one of the things that you've done as well isn't it, is that you use the local indigenous peoples so that this is from a sustainability point of view which matters a lot to me you're not necessarily sending people out Tell us one of those So a prime example would be the work we did in Botswana so Alex is actually in the crowd today so we went out, visited the University of Buse we went in the field with their master students we collected cores we split the cores 50-50 they analysed their half, we analysed ours and we published papers together so it's very much about that relationship and then it worked when we couldn't go out with Covid they went and collected samples because we have such a nice working relationship with them that they want to work with us so it is, it's about building that trust and developing that work with them Excellent Let's see is there another question in the room Hands up if you have Yes there's one here Could you get a microphone across please Hi Monica Grady, STEM faculty You talked about ethics and you said you've got an ethics fellow coming later on in the year All right What do you think the effect will be on humanity if we find life say on Mars or in the oceans of Enceladus or Europa What is your perspective? Monica, why did you have to ask that? I know, I know, I know it's cause lots of people ask me and it's like I don't know the answer I think that's a really interesting question I think it also depends where you find it cause if you find it in the subsurface oceans of Europa it's probably going to be different genesis of life so to me that is a very complicated question I think it'll have a profound effect if you do find life you're nodding so I'm saying the right thing here I think it would have a profound effect and I think we would have to be careful with how it's dealt and how it's communicated the paper that came out from Jim Green in Nature a couple of months ago about how we have to make sure we get the evidence for that and I think that's all important as scientists we need to take responsibility for that communication and how we interact with the public on that as well so I think it would very be a much an open, it could go one way or the other Yes, question here please I'm sorry, I'll come back to you in a minute David Mow from Life Sciences if you got an organism back from Mars say what criteria would you use to decide whether it had evolved on Mars or whether it had arrived from Earth say That's a good question there's a big debate about that I think if life had evolved on Mars we would look at the idea would be that if it is very similar to Tresdure Life secrecy and looking where it fits within the finely digested tree these are always in means of doing it and to see if it's deeply branched because it could be from earlier to earlier Mars the conditions are very similar and if life was transferred it could be very similar in that way so I think it would be very much a look and see as we develop the information about the organism OK, let's go to Hannah for another online one please Lovely, so this has come in from an OU student and hopefully this will be an easier question than perhaps one that was posed slightly earlier Astrobiology is a multidisciplinary subject but are some STEM degrees better suited to work in astrobiology? That's from Guy I think it depends what part of astrobiology you want to do because it's so interdisciplinary it depends it depends what you're interested in so I was obviously interested in biology and life sciences so that's the degree decision that I took then I look at other members of the group they took more of a geology background so I think it's what interests you because I think astrobiology is so diverse it's multifaceted and I think you need to pick what's interested for you and then you can apply it to astrobiology Can I pick up on that one as well and just ask you talked about the way that Vic Pearson acted as a translator between you and Susanna Schvenser Can you give us an illustration of the sorts of things that you were finding difficult to communicate about? Geologists, I mean they type of different languages I think it's really interesting and I think we've found this terminology is very different between I can't think of an example right now but I habitability me Susanna is looking at very methodically about what is in the environment and life, living there so it's kind of that way and I think I had to learn a lot about geology from Susanna and Vic and they hopefully learn a little bit from me about biology and it's just understanding that actually it's okay to go do you know what, I don't understand what you're saying can you please explain and I think that's what we've done as a group because it has been a problem because we've done that, we've had to do it from a science perspective but then bringing in the social scientists and it's a whole different board game is a different conversation as well so it's just being open and trying to work that and I think we discussed having a dictionary where we can translate some of these words and I think that's something we should probably readjust another publication now have we another question from the room, some questions over on this side here yes please Hi Rick Holland from Stem Faculty thank you Karen fabulous talk I'm going to take you back to the start young person in the Welsh village in north Wales or indeed potentially somebody in an Ethiopian village and ask you what piece of advice would you give them if you could give one piece of advice to a young aspiring scientist to become somebody like you don't do it, no I think I think it's very much about only doing it if you enjoy it and also respect the people you're working with and a communication is key to that and I think it's about enjoyment and really wanting to do it and just being kind to people as well because you're going to meet a lot of people and collaborate with lots of people and I think it's just about having those traits and just enjoying what you're doing really because science can be tough you know there's a lot of lows there's some highs but there's a lot of lows and you need to really love what you're doing to do it thank you was there another question over here hey Karen congratulations first of all and I just wanted to say how lucky we are in our ghostbar panel on planetary protection to have Karen not only because she can translate all the difficult words I'm a planetologist so I don't understand everything but also she knows how to explain the methane thing in a politically correct way and so because you are an expert on methane and you brought all those cows out there I had a question that relates to that because like Monica I've been asked regularly as a titan expert what do you think about methanogens and whether those things can exist and be this little organisms and if you could say something about that I mean methanogens are the easiest thing to grow on earth as I can see some of the people giggling in the group but I think the concept of what they need to grow is just hydrogen CO2 and if you have you've got hydrogen CO2 and you've got the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus in that environment and the liquid water potentially you have the ingredients if it's there potentially they could grow I think that they're a group of organisms which you know they're very well adapted to some of these extreme environments I'm Athena Gustanis and I'm from France not from France originally but in France anyway Thank you Okay Any other question from the room? We're at the back please, yes Hi I'm Veli from the Astrobiology group so I was wondering what in your opinion will this more sample return mean for the future of astrobiology? I think more sample return is such an exciting mission the fact that we'll be able to bring samples back and analyse them I think the missions we've got the rovers on Mars at the moment are great we can do some analysis there but actually getting them back so we can do some analysis with the high-tech equipment that we have here on earth I think it's just fantastic for astrobiology hopefully it'll answer some of those questions that we want to know about habitability and life on Mars To what extent are you worried about us taking things to Mars? Big question I think pine protection needs to be respected I think that there are such stringent methods and protocols in place to make sure that we don't contaminate Mars I think for the exo-Mars rover there was over 30,000 swipes taken to look at the bi-contamination so as a community we take it very seriously and I think that's something which we need to maintain There's a question in the middle of the front here one row back Thank you very much Karen don't look scared please Helen Fraser's STEM faculty so I want to follow on from that question actually you've mentioned that you're doing a lot of work with the UK Space Agency around UK launch and obviously we've all seen and I think I can say it without being libelous some commercial entities launch a lot of things and some sovereign nations launch things accidentally crash them into planets which have led to contamination so can you comment on how much the sort of sphere of where you're working and the risk of planetary protection is changing as space becomes an incredibly commercial entity and that is what's driving us forward there I think that's more than a UK launch because I think what you're talking about specifically is around probably the Mars environment I think it's about working together it's getting buy-in from the community and I think cost-barth the castle planet protection has done a lot of work on this and it's about working as a community to ensure that we keep Mars we don't contaminate it and working together with the agencies to make sure that we're in a situation where we have these guidelines and these regulations in place these guidelines OK, we're going to go back to Hannah for some online we've had a question from online which says do we assume that life on other planets is similar to life on Earth and how can we detect life elsewhere if it works completely different way and that's from Stacey Phillips who in fact made our Lego videos I'm sure she says hi I think that's another one of those big questions and I think the way I look at it I'm very much focused on it it's probably going to be potentially like what we have it's not going to be little green men it's going to be very much if we did find life for single organisms so that's why we used to study microbiology and I think there would be we know what the key ingredients for life is on Earth so we would be able to look at this potential life to see if it has some of those key traits and I think it depends on the location as well so for example as I mentioned the icy moons it would be a different genesis whereas Mars it could potentially be transported from Earth Thank you very much I've just got one last thing from online we received an email in fact from your PhD student in Ethiopia and I just wanted to read it to you if that's OK it's just very short and I am pleased to say congratulations on your inaugural lecture you are the one going to make the great impact on my career and I look forward to your mentorship as my PhD supervisor too may the event be successful and best wishes in your continued success Very good and it's a good point I think to draw the conversation here to a close we've got the things to go on and think about and Kevin over to you Thanks very much Nick A part of everybody thanks to Karen but also to Nick for a great discussion, a great lecture Karen what really shone through to me there obviously your own personal commitment and determination but also the fact that your successes are down to a large community and I think it's great that so many people are here today in Milton Keynes but I'm also sure online the local OU family that supported you the UK community but also the international community and I think that's a lot down to you but also I'd like to thank on behalf of Karen everyone who's been part of this fantastic story so let me bring things to a close today just to say that if you have attended today we will ask you for some feedback on the organisation and the session today so look out for that we also want to advertise our next inaugural lecture which is going to be by John Butcher John's going to be speaking on the theme of widening participation so we hope you're able to make that either in person or online and after the lecture we're going to have a few refreshments so if you can join us downstairs if you're able to that would be fantastic and finally just on behalf of everyone can we again just thank Karen for a fantastic lecture