nai

September 12-14, 2018 In-Person EC

The NAI Executive Council meeting on September 12-15, 2018 will be held in Atlanta, GA and hosted by the Reliving the Past – Georgia Institute of Technology Team.

POC:
Desi Bridges
(510) 468-2413
desireemoi.r.bridges@nasa.gov

Please fill out the NAI EC Meeting RSVP page. We use this information for transportation planning and communication.

Meeting Location

Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience
Suddath Room, 1st floor
315 Ferst Dr. NW
Atlanta, GA 30332

Lodging Reservations

Georgia Tech Hotel
800 Spring St NW
Atlanta, GA 30308
Ph: (800) 706-2899 or (404) 838-2100

Room Block Name: NASA Astrobiology Institute
Room Block Dates: Tuesday, September 11, 2018 to Saturday, September 15, 2018
Room Rate: $166.00/$166.00/$176.00/ $186.00
Room Block Reservation Deadline: Sunday, August 12, 2018

Go to Hotel Reservation Link.

If you get to a password login page when clicking the above, copy paste this link into your browser and go from there: http://www.secure-res.com/res/vn3/cglogin.aspx?hotelid=2871&rlog=957&pd=nasaastro

Parking: $15 per night, or $18 unlimited in and out garage access

Directions

From hotel from the airport: Link to map with driving directions.

From hotel to Community Smith: Link to map with walking directions.

Meals

Wednesday, September 12, 2018 at 6:00pm

Dinner will be held at:

Community Smith
866 W Peachtree St
Atlanta, GA 30308

Cost: $60 per person – Please be sure to bring cash

https://www.communitysmithatl.com

Agenda

Wednesday, September 12th

07:45–08:45 BREAKFAST

08:45–09:00 Welcome and Introductions/ Objectives for Meeting (Penny Boston and Frank Rosenzweig, Georgia Tech Team PI)

09:00–10:30 State of the NAI (Penny Boston, All)

10:30–11:00 BREAK

11:00–11:45 State of the NAI, continued

11:45–12:00 Logistics (directions, map for dinner, group photo, etc.)

12:00–12:45 LUNCH

12:45–01:15 PI in camera Session

01:15–01:45 Report out from in camera session (NAI EC and NAI Central only)

01:45–03:15 Integration of Research Across the NAI Teams: Synergy Themes

03:15–03:45 BREAK

03:45–05:00 Institute Business
- Report-out from AbGradCon (George Tan)
- Annual Science Report Process
- Format of NAI in-person EC meetings
- Scheduling of NAI in-person EC meetings for next year
- Other

05:00 ADJOURN

06:00 Group Dinner
Community Smith
866 W Peachtree St
Atlanta, GA 30308

Cost: $60 per person -
Please be sure to bring cash for dinner

Thursday, September 13th

07:45–08:30 BREAKFAST

“Reliving the Past” Team Presentations
08:30–10:30 Session 1 RLP Team Presentations [12+3min]
• Frank Rosenzweig (PI, GaTech) Overview
• John McCutcheon (co-I Montana)
• Caroline Turner (NPP postdoc, Pittsburgh)
• Will Ratcliff (co-I, Georgia Tech)
• Margie Kinnersely (co-I, Montana)
• Scott Miller (co-I, Montana)
• Gavin Sherlock (co-I Stanford)

10:30–11:00 BREAK

11:00–01:00 SESSION 2: Team Presentations [12+3min]
• Matt Herron (co-I, Georgia Tech)
• Shelley Copley (co-I, Colorado)
• Paul Sniegowski (co-I, UPenn)
• Phil Gerrish (co-I, Georgia Tech/ELSI)
• Betul Kacar (co-I, UArizona)
• Eric Smith (co-I, Georgia Tech/ELSI)

01:00–02:00 LUNCH AND DISCUSSION

02:00–05:30 Civil and Human Rights Museum (optional)

05:30 Happy Hour

06:30 Dinner

Friday, September 14th

A Celebration of Georgia Tech Astrobiology

08:00 BREAKFAST

08:30 Penny Boston, Ph.D. – NAI Director
Welcoming Remarks

08:40 Thom Orlando, Ph.D. – CSTAR, SSERVI REVEALS, PI
“An overview of REVEALS and CSTAR programs”

09:00 Amanda Stockton, Ph.D. – PICASSO and PSTAR, PI; CCE, co-I
“High Impact Chemistry: The Icy Moons Penetrator Organic Analyzer”

09:20 Loren Williams, Ph.D. – COOL, PI
“Visualizing the origin of life – in biopolymers”

09:40 Nick Hud, Ph.D. – CCE, PI
“Some highlights of CCE discoveries on the possible origins and early evolution of biopolymers”

10:00 Martha Grover, Ph.D. – CCE, co-I
“Prebiotic replication of an RNA duplex containing an active ribozyme”

10:20 Chris Reinhard, Ph.D. – NAI Alternative Earths, co-I
“Climate and atmospheric biosignatures on reducing worlds”

10:40 COFFEE BREAK

11:10 Jeff Bowman, Ph.D., for Britney Schmidt, Ph.D. – PI for the CLD
“Oceans Across Space and Time: A multi-institutional effort to understand and identify life in extraterrestrial oceans”

11:30 Jennifer Glass, Ph.D. – NAI Alternative Earths and COOL, co-I
“Laughing gas as a precursor to aerobic life”

11:50 Will Ratcliff, Ph.D. – NAI Reliving the Past, co-I
“Solving physical challenges during the origin of multicellularity by evolving simple development”

12:10 James Wray, Ph.D. – SETI, co-I and SSERVI, co-I
“Orbital spectral signatures of changing habitable environments on Mars”

12:30 LUNCH (12:30) AND POSTER SESSION (1:00)

Poster presenters:
Marcus Bray (Glass)
Ozan Bozdag, Ph.D (Ratcliff)
Kimberly Chen, Ph.D (Rosenzweig)
Angela Dapremont (Wray)
Quinn Dickinson (Rosenzweig)
Zach Duca (Stockton)
Jay Haynes (Williams)
Zijian Li (Reinhard)
Kennda Lynch, Ph.D (Wray and Rosenzweig)
Lauren Kimbrough (Wray)
Ahmad Mohamed (Williams)
Petar Penev (Williams)
Aaron Pital (Stockton)
Kenneth Seaton (Stockton)
Alexander Sessa (Wray)
Yi Sun (Grover)
Scot Sutton (Stockton)
Nadia Szeinbaum, Ph.D (Glass)
George Tan (Stockton)
Pedro Marquez-Zacarias (Ratcliff)
George Dragos Zaharescu (Reinhard)

02:00 – 03:45 The Faces of Astrobiology’s Future: NASA Postdoctoral Fellows, Graduate Students, and Postdocs

• 02:00 Pedram Samani, Ph.D. – Postdoc (Rosenzweig)
“Experimental evolution of anisogamy: An inquiry into the origins of sexes”

• 02:15 Peter Conlin, NPP Fellow (Ratcliff)
“Experimental evolution of adaptive phenotypic plasticity in a temporally varying environment”

• 02:30 Caroline Turner, NPP Fellow (Vaughn Cooper, Univ. of Pittsburgh)
“Environmental similarity (mostly) predicts genetic similarity”

02:45 COFFEE BREAK

• 03:00 Nadia Szeinbaum, NPP Fellow (Glass)
“A microbial ecology perspective on the success of oxygenic photosynthesis”

• 03:15 Moran Frankel-Pinter, NPP Fellow (Hud, Grover, and Williams)
“Dynamic polymerization of prebiotic depsipeptides allows selection of stable structures”

• 3:30 Micah Schaible, NPP Fellow (Orlando)
“Ionizing radiation effects on the surfaces of airless bodies”

03:45 Frank Rosenzweig, Ph.D. – NAI Reliving the Past PI
Concluding Remarks

CCE: Center for Chemical Evolution
CLD: Center for Life Detection
CRE: Center for Ribosome Evolution
CSTAR: Center for Space, Technology and Research COOL: Center for the Origin of Life
NPP: NASA Postdoctoral Program
PICASSO: Planetary Instrument Concepts for the Advancement of Solar System Observations PSTAR: Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research
REVEALS: Radiation Effect on Volatiles and Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces SSERVI: Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute