The Earth Life Science Institute (ELSI) will hold the 5th ELSI International Symposium Public Lecture on January 11, 2017.
Main Title: We Don't Know "How We Began" - Quest of Astrobiology for Origin of Life -

Dr. Kosuke Fujishima (ELSI, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and NASA's Ames Research Center) and Dr. Lynn Rothschild (NASA's Ames Research Center) will explore the world of astrobiology for origin of life through their talk.
Simultaneous interpretation (Japanese and English) will be provided.

Details

*Please note that this event will be streamed online.
*The planned online streaming of this event has been cancelled. We apologize for the inconvenience.
*Please understand that the simultaneous interpreting equipments are limited in number.

Abstracts

Lecture 1

Title: A tale of Origin of Life spun by two polymers
Speaker : Kosuke Fujishima (ELSI, Tokyo Institute of Technology, NASA Ames Research Center)

Astrobiology is an interdisciplinary research field coined by NASA in the 90's aiming to tackle the questions of origin, distribution and future of life in the universe. It is a fundamentally fascinating and interdisciplinary challenge to understand how life originated in this universe, and ultimately redefining to our perspective towards "what is life". The two essential features of life as we know it are "Harvesting Energy from environment" and "Evolvability", which are sustained by through chemical reactions governed by amino acid polymer (protein) and information storing nucleotide polymer (DNA/RNA). I will provide a story of these two polymers with regards to the latest approaches in the Origin of Life research.

Reseacher Profile
Kosuke Fujishima is an EON research fellow at Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Tokyo Institute of Technology and a visiting scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. His research is centered on using synthetic biology as a toolkit to tackle fundamental questions of Astrobiology. Research focus includes Origin of life, mission concept for life detection on Enceladus, and developing synthetic microbes for Mars settlement.

Related Links
Earth-Life Science Institute | Reseachers | Kosuke Fujishima
WIRED Audi INNOVATION AWARD (external site, *sorry, Japanese page only)

Lecture 2

Title: Are we alone? The search for life in the universe
Speaker: Lynn Rothschild (NASA Ames Research Center)

Each report of liquid water existing elsewhere in the solar system has reverberated through the international press and excited the imagination of humankind. We have come to realize that where there is liquid water on Earth, virtually no matter what the physical conditions, there is life. Dr. Lynn Rothschild, an evolutionary biologist known for her work on life in extreme environments and a founder of the field of astrobiology, tells us about intriguing new data. The prevalence of potential abodes for life in our solar system and beyond, the survival of microbes in the space environment, modeling of the potential for transfer of life between celestial bodies, and advances in synthetic biology suggest that life could be more common than previously thought. Are we truly alone?

Reseacher Profile
Lynn Rothschild is a senior scientist NASA Ames Research Center as well as and Adjunct Professor at Brown University, and the University of California Santa Cruz. Her research has focused on how life, particularly microbes, has evolved in the context of the physical environment, both here and potentially elsewhere. Her lab will be begin to move these plans into space in the form of the PowerCell synthetic biology secondary payload on a DLR satellite, EuCROPIS, scheduled to launch in July 2017. In 2015 she was awarded the Isaac Asimov Award from the American Humanist Association, and was the recipient of the Horace Mann Award from Brown University.

Related Link
NASA Planetary Science Division | People | Lynn Rothschild

for download:
A2poster.pdf (4C, 2.3MB)
A4flyer.pdf (4C/1C, 3MB)