Dr Petrignani, who heads a research team at HIMS on Chemistry in Space to the Origins of Life, will co-lead the research ‘Atmospheres as interfaces between geology, life, and detectability’ together with Dr Michiel Min at the Space Research Organisation Netherlands SRON. She will also contribute her expertise to three other consortium work packages, which focus respectively on oxygenation, photosynthesis and seawater chemistry across the Great Oxidation; the influence of life on the dynamics of a planet; and experimental limits on the habitable zone for exoplanets.

Dr Alberto Pérez de Alba Ortíz, who has a joint appointment in Computational Soft Matter and Chemistry both at HIMS and the Informatics Institute, participates in two work packages. The first focuses on coevolution of life and earth; timing the evolution of key transitions in cellular evolution in light of Earth history. The second aims to reconstruct ancestral genomes and proteins to infer ancient physiology and function across the Tree of Life.

Living Planet will closely connect HIMS’s chemical expertise and facilities with research across the consortium, spanning fields from astronomy to biology. A joint PhD position with SRON will strengthen HIMS’s research capacity and build links between chemical research at HIMS and astronomical research at SRON.

Substantial contribution at the UvA Faculty of Science

The 15 integrated projects of Living Planet are carried out across multiple Dutch universities and research institutes. At the UvA Faculty of Science, five other institutes are part of Living Planet (IvI, IoP, API, IBED, and SILS) and three PhD projects will be hosted. The UvA Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS) will lead an educational living lab where education, research, and society converge.