Sara Walker

“Professor Sara Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist, with research interests in the origins of life, artificial life, life and detection on other worlds. Since joining ASU in 2013 she has built a highly interdisciplinary research program to tackle the origin of life problem from all sides. She has mentored dozens of early career scientists and leads one of the largest theory groups in origins of life and astrobiology internationally. Her team’s major contributions are in theoretical advances in the field of astrobiology, developing new approaches to the problem of understanding universal features of life that might allow a general theory for solving the matter to life transition, detecting alien life and designing synthetic life. At Arizona State University, she is Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Associate Director of the ASU-Santa Fe Institute Center for Biosocial Complex Systems. She is an Associate Professor with joint appointments in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and in the School of Complex Adaptive Systems. She is also a member of the External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.”