Prebiotic Chemistry | Origins of Life | Biosignatures | Habitability | Ocean Worlds | Icy Moons | Exoplanets | Biogeochemical Cycles | Extremophiles | Geomicrobiology | Climate–Chemistry Coupling | Early Earth Analogs | Spectroscopic Detection
The Astrobiology Research Group works within the Atmospheric Models & Plasma Simulations (AMPS) Laboratory, the Astrobiology and Geochemistry Laboratory, and the Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Laboratory at Florida Tech. Current research spans theoretical, computational, laboratory, and field-based investigations into the origins, evolution, and potential distribution of life in the universe. Active projects include modeling planetary habitability across ocean worlds, terrestrial planets, and exoplanets; simulating the co-evolution of climates, geochemical cycles, and potential biospheres; and examining how stellar environments—including high-energy radiation, flares, and particle events—shape atmospheric composition and biological viability.
A major focus of the group is the emergence and detectability of biosignatures under diverse planetary conditions, from hydrogen-rich proto-atmospheres to oxidizing modern analogs. Researchers develop and apply integrated photochemical, climate, and biogeochemical models to explore metabolic pathways, chemical disequilibria, and spectral features that could reveal active or past biology. Complementary laboratory and field campaigns investigate extremophile communities, prebiotic synthesis routes, mineral–organic interactions, and environmental analog sites that replicate early Earth, Mars, icy-moon oceans, and exoplanetary settings.
Ongoing and planned studies evaluate how biological and abiotic processes compete, coexist, or mimic one another in planetary atmospheres and subsurface environments. This includes quantifying false-positive and false-negative biosignatures, assessing the resilience of hypothetical biospheres to stellar variability and impacts, and determining how geophysical and geochemical contexts constrain habitability. These efforts provide a framework for interpreting observations from ground-based telescopes, JWST, Europa Clipper, Dragonfly, and future flagship missions, advancing our understanding of life’s potential emergence and persistence across the cosmos.
Faculty: Howard Chen, Manasvi Lingam