Kennda Lynch

Last updated
Kennda Lynch
DrKenndaLynch (cropped).JPG
Lynch at a Mars analog field site in Pilot Valley, Utah, U.S.
Born
United States
Occupation(s)Astrobiologist, scientist, engineer
Scientific career
FieldsAstrobiology, science, engineering
Institutions Universities Space. Research Association - Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA Johnson Space Center, Georgia Institute of Technology/University of Montana, Jacobs Sverdrup/ Lockheed Martin Space Operations, International Space Station Program, Abbott Laboratories, The Boeing Company
Academic advisorsDr. David Klaus (grad), Dr. Junko Munakata Marr (grad), Dr. John Spear (grad)

Kennda Lian Lynch is an American astrobiologist and geomicrobiologist who studies polyextremophiles. [1] [2] She has primarily been affiliated with NASA. [3] She identifies environments on Earth with characteristics that may be similar to environments on other planets, and creates models that help identify characteristics that would indicate an environment might host life. [4] Lynch also identifies what biosignatures might look like on other planets. [4] [5] Much of Lynch's research on analog environments has taken place in the Pilot Valley Basin in the Great Salt Desert of northwestern Utah, U.S. [6] Her work in that paleolake basin informed the landing location of NASA's Perseverance Rover mission—at another paleolake basin called Jezero Crater. [7] Jim Green, Chief Scientist at NASA, called Lynch "a perfect expert to be involved in the Perseverance rover." [8] Helping to select the proper landing site for NASA's first crewed mission to Mars in 2035 is another of Lynch's projects. [9] Lynch has appeared in multiple television series, as well as The New York Times , [7] Nature , [10] Scientific American , [11] and Popular Science. [6] Cell Press designated Lynch one of the most inspiring Black scientists in the United States. [12]

Contents

Early life and education

Kennda Lynch is the daughter of Marlene Cosby and Kenneth Lynch. [3] Both her parents worked at Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation, a defense contractor in Rockford, IL that worked on NASAs space shuttles. [3] After seeing The Empire Strikes Back just before her sixth birthday kindled Lynch's passion for space, her parents brought home pictures of space shuttles from Sundstrand, which further fed her interest. [3] Her mother was a Trekkie, so they also watched television shows from that franchise together. [3] [9] Lynch jokes that her mother takes less credit for her interest, however, quoting Cosby as saying: “You were an alien from the beginning.” [9]

Lynch's mother was a Girl Scout and served as the chief executive officer of Drifting Dunes Girl Scout Council Inc, [13] [14] and was a zoology major who wanted to be a veterinarian. [9] Her father also was a Boy Scout. [15] Lynch was also Girl Scout, including being appointed as the student delegate to the National Girl Scout Program Conference. [16] Lynch was raised spending a lot of time in nature. [15]

Lynch attended Boylan Catholic High School, where she was on the student council. [3] In 1991, Lynch was one of 40 Young Americans, a long-running program of the local newspaper, the Rockford Register, honoring extraordinary teenagers in the Rock River Valley. [3] She graduated from Boylan in 1993. [3]

Lynch attended the University of Illinois, planning to study general engineering. [3] [5] She completed a summer internship with Mark R. Patterson [5] and another at Kennedy Space Center where she saw a space shuttle liftoff [8] and also discovered the field of Astrobiology. [5] Lynch and some friends also ran a theater company, "Actors in the Attic." [17] In 1999, Lynch was team leader for a NASA competition that was part of NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program at Ellington Field, near Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. [18] [16] That competition won Lynch and her teammates an opportunity to carry out a fluid research experiment aboard the KC-135, an airplane that escapes Earth's gravity. [16] In 1999, Lynch graduated with a dual major in engineering and biology. [16] [3]

Lynch earned a master's in aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. [3] [17] [16] She then received the NASA Harriet Jenkins Predoctoral Fellowship to complete her Ph.D. in environmental science and engineering at Colorado School of Mines. [19] [20] [16] During her doctoral program, she began her research in Utah. [21] She completed her Ph.D. in 2015 [5] and moved to Georgia Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow, where she continued her study of Mars analog environments. [5] [9]

Career

Lynch first worked as a Metrology Engineer, Corporate Engineering Division at Abbot Laboratories. She then worked for Lockheed Martin for several years, followed by additional year at Jacobs Sverdrup. These two jobs were located in Houston, TX, at NASA Johnson Space Center. [3] [4] [5] [16] At first Lynch worked as a project engineer on human space flight in the Crew and Thermal Systems division, where she developed habitation hardware for International Space Station astronauts. [4] [16] Lynch met Kathy Thomas-Keprta, a specialist on the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite [17] and through Thomas-Kerpta, chief astrobiological scientist David S. McKay, for whom she went to work as a systems engineer. [5] Lynch contributed to the prototyping of robots for missions to Mars. [4] [22]

While at graduate school, Lynch was a graduate research assistant, first at BioServe Space Technologies and then at the Laboratory For Atmospheric and Space Physics. [23] Her work was affiliated with NASA through NASA's Harriett Jenkins Pre-Doctoral Fellowship which funded her role as a predoctoral research fellow at the Colorado School of Mines. [19]

Postdoctoral work

In 2016, Lynch was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Rosenzweig Group at the University of Montana, in Missoula, MT, before moving to Georgia Tech, where she was a postdoctoral fellow from 2016 to 2019. Lynch started at Georgia Tech in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, working with James Wray, then worked with Frank Rosenzweig in the School of Biological Sciences. [24] [25] When Lynch received a grant from the Ford Foundation she shifted her primary base of operations to the lab of EAS Assistant Jennifer Glass. During this period, astrobiology research took off at Georgia Tech, and Lynch was part of the Georgia Tech NASA Astrobiology Institute team. [26] [25]

Since 2019, Lynch has been a staff scientist for Universities Space Research Association (USRA), located at Georgia Tech. [27] [28]

Teaching, outreach, and mentoring

Lynch teaches and mentors students and also works to expand diversity in STEM education. [4] In her early years of working for at Johnson Space Center, she mentored high school and undergraduate students. In graduate school, she was a lab instructor, a teaching assistant, and a Teaching Fellow for Bechtel's K-5 Educational Initiative. Since 2013 she has been working with the SAGANet Virtual Mentoring Program. [29] [30] She served a two-year term as a NASA Students Ambassador from 2010 to 2012. Additionally, Lynch does a lot of explaining of space science to the public, both directly and through the media. [4]

Research

Lynch summarizes her biosignature research as "All life poops." [8] [31] In other words, all life uses energy and excretes waste products. Some of those waste products might be preserved and appear as biosignatures, telling us that life exists—or formerly existed. [8] [32] Lynch identifies biosignatures in environments on Earth that might be analogous to ones on other planets, teaching us what signals we might use to recognize extraterrestrial life. [2] [5] [4] [32]

Much of Lynch's biosignature research has focused on perchlorates, a kind of salt, in the Pilot Valley part of Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah, USA. [8] [32] Pilot Valley is a hypersaline paleolake basin, an ancient lake that used to be quite deep but has now receded. It used to be a freshwater lake, but as climate change caused evaporation, it has become increasingly salinated. A lot of lake sediments remain, teeming with a diversity of microbes. [8] [4] [32] Lynch looks for microbial DNA and strives to understand what the microbial communities look like with regard to diversity, aspects of life such as what they eat or how they obtain energy, and even how various microbes interact with each other. [8] [4] [32] Lynch discovered the first known place on earth where there are both perchlorates and perchlorates-reducing (essentially perchlorates-consuming) microbes. [8]

Lynch selected Pilot Valley as the site to carry out research for her doctoral dissertation, "A Geobiological Investigation of the Hypersaline Sediments of Pilot Valley, Utah: A Terrestrial Analog to Ancient Lake Basins on Mars." [33] Ultimately, Jezero Crater was selected as the landing site for the 2020 Mars mission, Perseverance, because it is also a paleolake. [7] [8] It is expected to contain percholates, and would be an ideal candidate for a location containing percholates-reducing bacteria, should there be signs of life on Mars. Because Jezero Crater has signs of a former delta, meaning water was flowing in from an upstream location, Lynch argues that sediments from three environments potentially converge there—from streams that flowed into the ancient lake; the actual Jezero lake; and groundwater that has surfaced following evaporation of the lake and the streams that feed it. [8] [4]

Lynch won NASA's 2020 Selections for the Astrobiology Program Early Career Collaboration Award. [34] She will collaborate with University of Florida's Amy Williams on sample analysis and Georgetown University's Sarah Stewart on creating a tool for “Working Towards Life Detection Capability in Subsurface Transitional Habitable Zones on Mars.” [34]

Selected publications

Lynch has over fifty publications and conference publications as of early 2021. [32] She also serves as a manuscript reviewer for JGR Planets, [35] Geobiology,Astrobiology,Planetary and Space Science, as well as a peer reviewer for grants with the NASA Exobiology Program Peer Review Panel and the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF). Lynch also serves on the organizing committee of many conferences in her field and is a frequent presenter at conferences. [32] [36]

Astrobiology

Education, outreach, and equity

Other media

Lynch is a featured expert in three television episodes about life on other planets:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Astrobiology</span> Science concerned with life in the universe

Astrobiology is a scientific field within the life and environmental sciences that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe by investigating its deterministic conditions and contingent events. As a discipline, astrobiology is founded on the premise that life may exist beyond Earth.

The possibility of life on Mars is a subject of interest in astrobiology due to the planet's proximity and similarities to Earth. To date, no conclusive evidence of past or present life has been found on Mars. Cumulative evidence suggests that during the ancient Noachian time period, the surface environment of Mars had liquid water and may have been habitable for microorganisms, but habitable conditions do not necessarily indicate life.

A biosignature is any substance – such as an element, isotope, molecule, or phenomenon – that provides scientific evidence of past or present life on a planet. Measurable attributes of life include its physical or chemical structures, its use of free energy, and the production of biomass and wastes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viking lander biological experiments</span> Mars life detection experiments

In 1976 two identical Viking program landers each carried four types of biological experiments to the surface of Mars. The first successful Mars landers, Viking 1 and Viking 2, then carried out experiments to look for biosignatures of microbial life on Mars. The landers each used a robotic arm to pick up and place soil samples into sealed test containers on the craft.

Melissa G. Trainer is an American astrobiologist who in 2004 demonstrated empirically that life could have formed on Earth through the interaction of methane, carbon dioxide and ultraviolet light (sunlight). She is Assistant Chief for Science, Operations, and Strategic Planning in the Planetary Environments Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David S. McKay</span> American planetary geologist (1936-2013)

David Stewart McKay was chief scientist for astrobiology at the Johnson Space Center. During the Apollo program, McKay provided geology training to the first men to walk on the Moon in the late 1960s. McKay was the first author of a scientific paper postulating past life on Mars on the basis of evidence in Martian meteorite ALH 84001, which had been found in Antarctica. This paper has become one of the most heavily cited papers in planetary science. The NASA Astrobiology Institute was founded partially as a result of community interest in this paper and related topics. He was a native of Titusville, Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jezero (crater)</span> Crater on Mars

Jezero is a crater on Mars in the Syrtis Major quadrangle, about 45.0 km (28.0 mi) in diameter. Thought to have once been flooded with water, the crater contains a fan-delta deposit rich in clays. The lake in the crater was present when valley networks were forming on Mars. Besides having a delta, the crater shows point bars and inverted channels. From a study of the delta and channels, it was concluded that the lake inside the crater probably formed during a period in which there was continual surface runoff.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets</span> Former NASA program

Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) was a program established by NASA to sponsor research projects that advance the technology and techniques used in planetary exploration. The objective was to enable the study of astrobiology and to aid the planning of extraterrestrial exploration missions while prioritizing science, technology, and field campaigns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penelope Boston</span> American speleologist

Penelope J. Boston is a speleologist and astrobiologist. She was associate director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute in Carlsbad, New Mexico, along with founding and directing the Cave and Karst Studies Program at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. Among her research interests are geomicrobiology of caves and mines, extraterrestrial speleogenesis, and space exploration and astrobiology generally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Icebreaker Life</span> Proposed NASA Mars lander

Icebreaker Life is a Mars lander mission concept proposed to NASA's Discovery Program. The mission involves a stationary lander that would be a near copy of the successful 2008 Phoenix and InSight spacecraft, but would carry an astrobiology scientific payload, including a drill to sample ice-cemented ground in the northern plains to conduct a search for biosignatures of current or past life on Mars.

ExoLance is a low-cost mission concept that could hitch a ride on other missions to Mars in an effort to look for evidence of subsurface life.

The Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL) is a virtual institute based at the University of Washington that studies how to detect exoplanetary habitability and their potential biosignatures. First formed in 2001, the VPL is part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) and connects more than fifty researchers at twenty institutions together in an interdisciplinary effort. VPL is also part of the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) network, with principal investigator Victoria Meadows leading the NExSS VPL team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathalie Cabrol</span> French American astrobiologist

Nathalie A. Cabrol is a French American astrobiologist specializing in planetary science. Cabrol studies ancient lakes on Mars, and undertakes high-altitude scientific expeditions in the Central Andes of Chile as the principal investigator of the "High Lakes Project" funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI). There, with her team, she documents life's adaptation to extreme environments, the effect of rapid climate change on lake ecosystems and habitats, its geobiological signatures, and relevance to planetary exploration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shawn Domagal-Goldman</span>

Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman is a research space scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, who specializes in exoplanets, Archean geochemistry, planetary atmospheres, and astrobiology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Betül Kaçar</span> Turkish academic

Betül Kacar is a Turkish-American astrobiologist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin. She directs a NASA Astrobiology Research Center exploring the essential attributes of life, its origins and how they should shape our notions of habitability and the search for life on other worlds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darlene Lim</span> NASA geobiologist and exobiologist

Darlene Sze Shien Lim is a NASA geobiologist and exobiologist who prepares astronauts for scientific exploration of the Moon, Deep Space and Mars. Her expertise involves Mars human analog missions, in which extreme landscapes like volcanoes and Arctic deserts serve as physical or operational substitutes for various planetary bodies. She has become a leading public figure for Mars exploration, having presented her missions publicly at academic institutions and public events around the world. She has also discussed her work for various media groups such as NPR, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Signs Of LIfe Detector (SOLID) is an analytical instrument under development to detect extraterrestrial life in the form of organic biosignatures obtained from a core drill during planetary exploration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antígona Segura</span> Mexican physicist and astrobiologist

Antígona Segura Peralta is a Mexican physicist and astrobiologist. Since 2006, she has been a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and collaborator at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. As a feminist she actively advocates for the inclusion of women in the exact sciences, mathematics, and engineering. Segura has participated in several activities in and outside UNAM defending women's rights; she was awarded with the 2021 Hermila Galindo medal by the Congress of Mexico City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Eigenbrode</span> American astrobiologist

Jennifer Eigenbrode is an interdisciplinary astrobiologist who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. She specializes in organic chemistry, geology, and organic bio-geochemistry of Martian and ocean-world environments.

The UK Centre for Astrobiology was set up at the University of Edinburgh in 2011 by Charles Cockell. It was set up as a UK node, formally affiliated as an international partner with the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) alongside other national nodes until the NAI's dissolution in 2019. It was established as a virtual centre to sit at the interdisciplinary boundary of planetary sciences/astronomy and biological/earth sciences investigating numerous aspects of life in the universe, specifically 'how habitable worlds form in the Universe and how life emerges, proliferates and leaves traces on these worlds' as well as engaging in work on the robotic and human exploration of space and in space ethics, philosophy and governance.

References

  1. ↑ "Astrobiologist: We should gene-hack new traits into Mars settlers". Futurism. 19 May 2020. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  2. 1 2 Oakes, Kelly (2019-06-18). "Ethiopia's Strange Volcanic Landscapes Are Irresistible to Scientists (and Tourists)". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Gary, Alex. "1991 Young American: Kennda Lynch". Rockford Register Star. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Smith, Yvette (2021-02-02). "Astrobiologist Kennda Lynch Uses Analogs on Earth to Find Life on Mars". NASA. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Emily, Scott (2017-05-10). "Exploring new worlds: GE alumna Kennda Lynch creates a career in astrobiology". The Grainger College of Engineering - University of Illinois. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  6. 1 2 Kaufman, Mark D. (15 February 2017). "Aliens are probably out there, according to Winston Churchill". Popular Science. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  7. 1 2 3 Chang, Kenneth (2020-07-28). "How NASA Found the Ideal Hole on Mars to Land In". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Daines, Gary (2020-08-14). "Looking For Life in Ancient Lakes" (Season 4, Episode 15 ). Gravity Assist. NASA. Podcast. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 San Miguel, Renay (2019-02-26). "Searching for Life on Mars and Beyond". ScienceMatters. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  10. ↑ Witze, Alexandra (2020-07-30). "NASA has launched the most ambitious Mars rover ever built: here's what happens next". Nature. 584 (7819): 15–16. Bibcode:2020Natur.584...15W. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-02257-w. PMID   32733099.
  11. ↑ O'Callaghan, Jonathan. "Summer on Mars: NASA's Perseverance Rover Is One of Three Missions Ready to Launch". Scientific American. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  12. ↑ Hinton, Antentor O. Jr. "100 more inspiring Black scientists in America". crosstalk.cell.com. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  13. ↑ McCOLLUM, CARMEN (2 March 2007). "Local Girl Scout councils merge with Chicago". nwitimes.com. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  14. ↑ "2019 Adult Recognition Program Book | Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana". Issuu. 2019-04-06. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  15. 1 2 Soroye, Peter; Lynch, Kennda; Dalu, Tatenda; Ware, Jessica; Troutman, Alex; Matiwane, Aviwe; Patterson, Angelica (2020-10-29). "Black in Nature". Cell. 183 (3): 556–558. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.10.013 . ISSN   0092-8674. PMID   33125878.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Woodmansee, Laura S. (2003). Women of space : cool careers on the final frontier. Burlington, Ont: Apogee Books. ISBN   1-894959-03-5. OCLC   52566600.
  17. 1 2 3 "LPI recently welcomed a new staff scientist, Dr. Kennda Lynch, an astrobiologist and geomicrobiologist". Lunar and Planetary Institute. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  18. ↑ Jon Hilkevitch Jon Hilkevitch is the Tribune's, transportation writer. "LOSE WEIGHT, THE NASA WAY STUDENTS GRAVITATE TO HOUSTON FOR A LITTLE ZERO-G ACTION: [CHICAGOLAND FINAL EDITION]." Chicago Tribune, Aug 29, 1999, pp. 10.
  19. 1 2 "NASA Harriett G. Jenkins Pre-doctoral Fellowship Project (JPFP)" (PDF). NASA.
  20. ↑ "Bioastronautics Research Group". spot.colorado.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  21. ↑ Kuzma, Cindy (2019-03-21). "University of Illinois Alumni". University of Illinois Alumni. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  22. ↑ "Dr. Kennda L. Lynch". Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI). Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  23. ↑ Hoehn, Alexander; Lynch, Kennda L.; Clawson, James; Freeman, Jacob B.; Kapit, Jason; Young, Suzanne M. M.; Kounaves, Samuel P.; Brown, Igor I. (2007-07-09). "Microbial Detection Array (MDA), a Novel Instrument for Unambiguous Detection of Microbial Metabolic Activity in Astrobiology Applications". Technical Paper. SAE Technical Paper Series. 1. Warrendale, PA. doi:10.4271/2007-01-3190.
  24. ↑ "NASA Astrobiology Institute". astrobiology.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  25. 1 2 "Delving into the Perchlorate Diners of Pilot Valley, Utah". 2018-06-19.
  26. ↑ "Delving into the Perchlorate Diners of Pilot Valley, Utah". Georgia Institute of Technology. 2018. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  27. ↑ "A Celebration of NASA Astrobiology NAI: CAN-7 Grand Finale Jan. 25, 2020 Weblog post." NASA Astrobiology Blog, Washington: Newstex. Jan 27, 2020.
  28. ↑ Talbert, Tricia (2016-05-27). "HLS2 Lectures and Briefings". NASA. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  29. ↑ "Mentor Introduction Video". SAGANet. 2013. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  30. ↑ Domagal-Goldman, Shawn D.; Wright, Katherine E.; Domagal-Goldman, Shawn D.; Wright, Katherine E.; Adamala, Katarzyna; Arina de la Rubia, Leigh; Bond, Jade; Dartnell, Lewis R.; Goldman, Aaron D.; Lynch, Kennda; Naud, Marie-Eve (2016-08-01). "The Astrobiology Primer v2.0". Astrobiology. 16 (8): 561–653. Bibcode:2016AsBio..16..561D. doi:10.1089/ast.2015.1460. ISSN   1531-1074. PMC   5008114 . PMID   27532777.
  31. ↑ Lynch, Kennda (2013-05-01). "All Life Poops! Kennda Lynch at LPSC". NASA Astrobiology. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  32. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Kennda Lynch". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  33. ↑ Lynch, K. L. (2015). Geobiological investigation of the hypersaline sediments of Pilot Valley, Utah: a terrestrial analog to ancient lake basins on Mars, A (Doctoral dissertation, Colorado School of Mines).
  34. 1 2 "NASA Astrobiology". astrobiology.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  35. ↑ Hauck, Steven A.; Baratoux, David; Stanley, Sabine (2016). "The 2015 peer reviewer appreciation". Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. 121 (2): 108–110. Bibcode:2016JGRE..121..108H. doi: 10.1002/2016JE005002 . ISSN   2169-9100.
  36. ↑ "News". jenniferglass.com. Retrieved 2021-03-03.
  37. 1 2 3 "Kennda Lynch". IMDb. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
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