Blog

It seemed to be just a normal morning, when I pulled into the parking lot. The excitement around the artwork that we hosted on OU campus for the weekend hadn't yet started. But there was a fire truck, and I couldn’t make out which building had been evacuated, and what was blocked and what wasn’t. So, I decided to walk over to the Berrill building to see the Mars installation by Luke Jerram (About – Mars) for the first time. Barriers were still up from the night, but there it was, orange in the bright morning sunshine! 

Take a deep breath, and while you exhale slowly, think about what has just happened: you have inhaled a few litres of Earth’s atmosphere, we call it air. Could you have taken that same breath on Mars?

So, how does one embark on the journey to be part of this kind of extraordinary experience? For me, it all started in a rather unexpected place: a science fiction movie. Life—a film about astronauts encountering a rapidly evolving alien organism on Mars. Despite the movie's terrifying premise, I was utterly fascinated by how such microscopic organisms could adapt to extreme environments in quick succession.

Labs have a greater environmental impact than offices by at least five times. Given that quite a few of the lab team are environmental scientists by training, we felt that it was about time we tackled this impact. So, in early 2023 we started our green lab accreditation adventures. We did this alongside two other lab teams, Graham Howell and the Ecosystems team, and Igor Kraev and the SEM suite. Our first base line assessment, before any recommendations were done, came back as gold standard so we were already doing a good deal to lessen our impact.

Last year I started a new outreach program at a primary school in Italy.
For me it was a big thing because that school is where I grow up and where my interest in science started.

This is the story about how saying yes to opportunities can lead to the highlight of your career so far, and even a chapter in my future thesis (yes, really!).

My interest for the area of astrobiology stems from the study of microbiology as an undergraduate student in biological sciences

After having completed a 10-week internship with SPS and Astrobiology, I can highly recommend the experience to anyone who may be interested. I first came across the opportunity on the OU’s OpportunityHub and sent my application into the OU internships team. I was invited for an online interview where I was asked to make a presentation outlining how I would drive engagement to a specific event. Once I started the internship my line managers, Alice and Hannah, were extremely supportive, empowering, encouraging and gave me autonomy over the projects I worked on.

Black holes are one of the most enigmatic cosmic phenomena in our fascinating universe. Most are formed from the remnants of massive stars that have collapsed under their own gravity, but a few black hole types even defy that explanation

If you read last week’s blog, you’ll already be familiar with some of the planets visible at this time of year.