Valeria Souza has a bachelor’s degree in Biology, master’s degree in Genetics and PhD in Ecology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). In 1990 Valeria worked with Rich Lenski at Irvine California (UCI), where she gained experience in experimental evolution. In 1993, she took on a research position at UNAM in Mexico, where she still works today. She was one of the first researchers worldwide to study the evolutionary ecology of microbes. In 1999, Valeria and Dr. Eguiarte were invited by NASA to explore a new world on an expedition that led them to study microbial biodiversity in an unlikely oasis in the Chihuahuan desert. She is an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Antígona Segura has a bachelor’s degree in Physics, a master’s in Astronomy and a PhD in Earth Sciences. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Penn State Astrobiology Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California, where she worked with the Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL) led by Dr. Victoria Meadows. She is now a researcher at the Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her research focuses on understanding the habitability potential of rocky planets around low mass stars (red dwarfs). Jamie S. Foster is a Professor at the University of Florida Space Life Science Laboratory. Her research interests are astrobiology, microbial ecology, and host-microbe interactions during spaceflight. Her current research activities include examining the processes by which biological ecosystems co-evolve with their environment, thereby driving the evolution of life and influencing Earth’s habitability. Her group works to delineate and characterize the reciprocal interactions between microbialite-forming communities and their environment to improve our understanding of how these feedbacks help shape community structure and ecosystem function. Professor Foster also examines the impact of the space environment, specifically microgravity, on microbe-animal interactions.
