Planetary Habitability

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 8th August 2024 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Meeting Room

Andrew's research interests are primarily focused on the broad discipline of planetary habitability and the distribution of habitable environments in the Galaxy. In particular, processes that maintain the long-term climate stability of terrestrial planets, biogeochemical and climate/physical feedback mechanisms within the planet system, atmospheric dynamics and evolution, and biosignature detection. 

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Speaker: Dr Andrew Rushby

Andrew's research interests are primarily focused within the broad discipline of planetary habitability and the distribution of habitable environments in the Galaxy. In particular, processes that maintain the long-term climate stability of terrestrial planets, biogeochemical and climate/physical feedback mechanisms within the planet system, atmospheric dynamics and evolution, as well as biosignature detection. He completed a PhD in Biogeochemistry at the University of East Anglia's Centre for Oceanic and Atmospheric Science (COAS) in 2015, where his thesis research was focused on the carbonate-silicate cycle and the long-term habitability of Earth-like planets. Andrew secured a NASA Postdoctoral Management Fellowship at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) in Mountain View, California in 2016. His responsibilities at NASA ARC were split between the management of NASA's novel astrobiology Research Coordination Network (RCN) the Nexus for Exoplanet Systems Science (NExSS) and continuing his research in planetary habitability. Along with the rest of the NExSS management team, he was involved in shaping the direction of astrobiology policy and funding at NASA and the adoption of the novel RCN model to the astrobiology program. Andrew moved on to the University of California Irvine (UCI) in 2018 and joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Astronomy. At UCI he worked closely with Professor Aomawa Shields to grow her research group and establish UCI as a centre for exoplanet climate research. The research focus at SCECIE was land and ice-albedo feedbacks and the atmospheric characterisation of Earth-like planets around M-dwarf stars.