The Coursera Massively Open On-Line Course (MOOC), Emergence of Life, is built upon the pioneering work of Carl Woese, on which the modern synthesis of the Tree of Life has been established.

No prior knowledge is required, just a willingness to learn and a desire to delve into Earth’s 4-billion-year history of Life. The course will traverse from the ancient primordial soup into the expansive and diverse Tree of Life, and how these understandings might point us towards the existence of Life elsewhere in the universe.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the NASA Astrobiology Institute for Universal Biology, and the Institute for Genomic Biology have partnered to present this educational opportunity, made possible with the contributions of scientific experts from around the world, including Karl Stetter, Norm Pace, Jan Sapp, Mike Russell, and Nigel Goldenfeld.

Please join us in this unique 8-week journey through history, evolution, geologic change, and discovery of the universality of Life! Registration, course information and a 2-minute video overview are available at http://go.illinois.edu/emergenceoflife.