 Are we alone in the universe is one of the fundamental questions of our time and involves a really interdisciplinary scientific approach? As a microbiologist I'm interested in understanding how microbes live in extreme environments for example hot pools and glacial environments. So using a combination of field work and also laboratory based experiments I try to understand the limits of life and also identifying molecules that could be used as signatures of life. Now this is really important because it could be used to understand the fundamentals of life itself, how life evolved on early earth and how microbes can adapt to live in these environments. It also has a biotechnological perspective so some of these enzymes could be used from these environments for example in washing powder. The information can be used to feed directly into interpreting data from life detection missions. For example this is really timely at the moment with Mars 2020 and ExoMars planned for early next year. I've recently been awarded 6.7 million by Research England and we're going to use that money to kind of develop the area and kind of go past those additional boundaries of science and start looking at from this from an ethical and governance perspective as well.