Over the past several months, the NASA Astrobiology Program has hosted the 2012 FameLab Astrobiology competition. Over the course of four preliminary rounds in Houston, Denver, DC, and YouTube, 68 early career astrobiologists have competed for one of the 10 spots in the Final to be held at AbSciCon in Atlanta, GA on April 16th. Both Chemical & Engineering News and AGU covered the DC event.

The winners of each of these four preliminaries (Kate Follette, Noah Hammond, Rebecca Turk MacLeod, and Aomawa Shields) will advance to Atlanta, and the six others from the wild card pool that will join them will be announced next week.