
NfoLD Organizational Structure
NfoLD is overseen by a representative from NASA headquarters, three co-leads, and a steering committee comprised of the PIs of NASA ROSES R&A awards. In the future, ROSES proposers will be able to volunteer to join NfoLD Steering Committee by responding to a query during the proposal submission process. NfoLD also offers affiliate membership to persons, groups, or organizations whose research interests, goals, and vision are aligned with those of NfoLD and would like to actively participate in NfoLD-organized activities.
LEADERSHIP TEAM
NASA HQ | HQ Liason
NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
Co-Lead
Laboratory for Agnostic Biosignatures (LAB)
TEAM MEMBERS: Eric Anslyn, Will Brinckerhoff, Pan Conrad, Lee Cronin, Andrew Elllington, Jamie Elsila, Matthew Fricke, Pete Girguis, Chris House, Chris Kempes, Xiang Li, Eric Libby, Barbara Sherwood Lollar, Paul Mahaffy, Jeff Marlow, Pedro Metola, Melanie Moses, Andrew Steele, Sara Walker
BROOK NUNN
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
Co-Lead
Using Proteome Dynamics of Psychrophilic Bacteria to Decipher Metabolic Strategies and Protein Signatures Indicative of Sustained Life in Ice
TEAM MEMBERS: Karen Junge, Bonnie Light, Brook Nunn, Marcella Ewart Sarmiento, Jonathon Toner
STEERING COMMITTEE

Jason Amsden
Duke University
TEAM MEMBERS: Jeffrey T. Glass, Charles B. Parker, Michael E. Gehm, M. Bonner Denton, Jennifer Stern Justin Keogh, Kathleen Horvath, Tanouir Aloui, Rafael Bento Serpa

Laurie Barge
NASA JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
In-Situ Vent Analysis Divebot for Exobiology Research / Phosphorous Redox Chemistry on Rocky and Icy Planets

Kristin Bergmann
MIT
The Thermal Maturity of Neoproterozoic Strata: Carbonate Clumped Isotope Thermometry and Biomarker Analyses
TEAM MEMBERS: Tyler Mackey, Julia Wilcots, Marjorie Cantine, Noah Anderson

Dina Bower
UMD/NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
Ultra-Violet Detector Innovation for Raman Exploration and CharacTerization (UV-DIRECT) of Ocean Worlds
TEAM MEMBERS: Shahid Aslam, Tilak Hewagama, Nicolas Gorius, Anand Sampath, Jonathan Schuster

Christopher E. Carr
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Microbial Functional and Evolutionary Adaptations to Aridity & Electronic Life-detection Instrument for Enceladus/Europa (ELIE)

Frank Corsetti
USC
Investigating a novel role for iron redox cycling in the lithification of microbial mats and the rise and fall of stromatolites in Earth history

Roland Hatzenpichler
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY
Probing in situ microbial activity and function using stable isotopes and substrate analogs
TEAM MEMBERS: Anthony Kohtz, Mackenzie Lynes, George Schaible

Sarah Johnson
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Laboratory for Agnostic Biosignatures
TEAM MEMBERS: Heather Graham, Eric V Anslyn, Pan Conrad, Lee Cronin, Andrew Ellington, Jamie Elsila Cook, Pete Girguis, Chris House, Chris Kempes, Eric Libby, Paul Mahaffy, Jay Nadeau, Barbara Sherwood Lollar, Andrew Steele, Anais Roussel, Andrew Hyde, Geoff Cooper, Xiang Li, Jeffrey Marlow, William B Brinckerhoff, Matthew Fricke, Melanie Moses

Fabien Kenig
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CHICAGO
fs-LDPI MS mapping of organic compounds in deep time Earth sediments: A tool for determination of the spatial distribution of lipid biosignatures at the micron scale
TEAM MEMBERS: Luke Hanley, Joey Pasterski, Raveendra C. Wickramasinghe

Gordon Love
UC RIVERSIDE
Exceptional preservation of Ediacaran organic biosignatures yields novel insights into the marine environments and ecology that hosted early multicellular organisms
TEAM MEMBERS: Andrey Bekker, Carina Lee, Kelden Pehr, Adam Hoffmann, Nathan Marshall, Adriana Rizzo

C Marshall
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
A feasibility study of Raman optical activity for the detection and discrimination of chiral biological compounds for planetary science instrumentation
TEAM MEMBERS: William Dufresne

Brook Nunn
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
Using Proteome Dynamics of Psychrophilic Bacteria to Decipher Metabolic Strategies and Protein Signatures Indicative of Sustained Life in Ice
TEAM MEMBERS: Karen Junge, Bonnie Light, Brook Nunn, Marcella Ewart Sarmiento, Jonathon Toner

Alexandra Pontefract
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Biosignature Preservation in Sulfate-Dominated Hypersaline Environments
TEAM MEMBERS: Magdalena Osburn, Christopher Carr, Jack Szostak, Shuhei Ono, Virgnia Walker

Pablo Sobron
SETI INSTITUTE
In-situ Vent Analysis Divebot for Exobiology Research (InVADER)
TEAM MEMBERS: Tayro Acosta-Maeda, Jan Amend, Justin Burnett, Renaud Detry, Ivria Doloboff, Ninos Hermis, Deborah Kelley, Dana Manalang, Aaron Margburg, Anupam Misra, Anuscheh Nawaz, Roy Price, Fredrik Rehnmark, Marianne Smith, Blair Thornton, David Yu, Kris Zacny

David Stillman
SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Toward Geophysical Detection of the Biological Modification of Ice
TEAM MEMBERS: Katie Primm

Wes Swingley
NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
Chlorophyll d as a model for biosignature evolution
TEAM MEMBERS: Nancy Kiang, Niki Parenteau, Min Chen, Robert Blankenship

Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
Cold and dry limit to life: Understanding microbial activity in dry permafrost samples from the newly discovered Elephants Head, Antarctica

Ricardo Arevalo
UMD
Miniaturized Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICPMS) for Trace Element Analysis
TEAM MEMBERS: Ben Farcy, William McDonough, Mazdak Taghioskoui, Mehdi Benna, William Brinckerhoff ,Grace Ni

Kathleen Benison
WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY
Preservation and detection of extremophiles in Mars-analog halite and gypsum
TEAM MEMBERS: Anna Sofia Andeskie

David Blake
NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER
Mapping X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (MapX)
TEAM MEMBERS: Thomas Bristow, Robert Downs, Marc Gailhanou, Franck Marchis, Douglas Ming, Richard Morris, Philippe Sarrazin, Vincent Armando Solé, Kathleen Thompson, Philippe Walter, Michael Wilson, Albert Yen, Samuel Webb, Richard Walroth

William Brinckerhoff
NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
Europan Molecular Indicators of Life Investigation (EMILI)
TEAM MEMBERS: Peter Willis, Tony Ricco, Andrej Grubisic, Jennifer Stern, Fernanda Mora, Jessica Creamer, Richard Quinn, Ryan Danell, Kris Zacny, Cyril Szopa

Gordon Chin
NASA'S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
Submillimeter Enceladus Life Fundamentals Instrument (SELFI)
TEAM MEMBERS: Carie Anderson, Damon Bradley, Terry Hurford, Tilak Hewagama, Tim Livengood, Paul Racette, Karen Junge

Christine Foreman
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY
Spectral Signs of Life in Ice (SLICE)
TEAM MEMBERS: Marco Tedesco and Shujie Wang, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University , Christine Foreman, Markus Dieser, Heidi Smith and Mitch Messmer, Montana State University
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Tori Hoehler
NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER
Center for Life Detection Science (CLDS)
TEAM MEMBERS: Lee Bebout, Will Brinckerhoff, Chris Dateo, Alfonso Davila, David Des Marais, Jen Eigenbrode, Craig Everroad, Stephanie Getty, Danny Glavin, Linda Jahnke, Barbara Lafuente Valverde, Owen Lehmer,Paul Mahaffy, Niki Parenteau, Andrew Porhille, Richard Quinn, Andro Rios, Sanjoy Som, Mary Beth Wilhelm

Daniel Jones
NEW MEXICO TECH
Gypsum-hosted biosignatures in subterranean chemosynthetic ecosystems
TEAM MEMBERS: Heather Graham, Jennifer Stern, Scott Wankel

Kostas Kostantinidis
GEORGIA TECH
How Microbes Adapt to Living in the Upper Atmosphere: Implications for Cloud Formation, and Life During Early Earth and Elsewhere in the Universe

Shannon MacKenzie
JHU APPLIED PHYSICS LAB
The Interior Life of Dunes
TEAM MEMBERS: Michael France, Jani Radebaugh, Ralph Lorenz, Jacques Ravel

Rich Mathies
BERKELEY
The Enceladus Organic Analyzer (EOA)
TEAM MEMBERS: Anna Butterwirth, Amanda Stockton, Jungkyu Kim, James New, Matin Golozar

Alex Pavlov
NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
Exploring destruction of biomolecules in Martian rocks and regolith by Cosmic Rays

Britney Schmidt
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
TEAM MEMBERS: Jeff Bowman, Doug Bartlett, Cristopher Carr, Anne Dekas, Peter Doran, Jennifer Glass. Ellery Ingall, Alison Olcott Marshall, Alexandra Pontefract, Christopher Reinhard, Krista Soderlund, Sanjoy Som, Frank Stewart, Amanda Stockton, James Wray, Joseph Levy, Greg Rouse, Craig MarshallChris Bennett, John Moores, Ray Jayawardhana, Tim Lyons, Natalie Robinson, Craig Stevens, Mike Williams, Inga Smith, Justin Lawrence, Jacob Buffo

William Sparks
SETI Institute
Detecting the fundamental chiral building blocks of life

Roger Summons
MIT
Biosignatures of the 'Dirty Ice' of the McMurdo Ice Shelf: Analogues for biological oases during the Cryogenian and on other icy world

Alexis Templeton
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
Targeted Life Detection in Subsurface Serpentinites
TEAM MEMBERS: Eric Boyd, Srishti Kashyap, Tristan Caro, Mason Munro-Ehrlich, Dan Colman, Rachel Spietz, Alexis England

Edward Young
UCLA
Developing Methane Isotopologues as Interplanetary Biosignatures