August 2017: Where Are They Now featuring Laurie Barge

At Villanova I was an Astronomy and Astrophysics major and my dream was always to work for NASA, specifically to work on the robotic exploration of other planets. Right after graduation in the summer of 2004, I did an internship at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where my project was about detecting organics in Mars samples in preparation for the then-upcoming Curiosity rover mission (which launched in 2011). At the end of that summer I moved to Los Angeles to start graduate school at the University of Southern California (USC) in geological sciences, as a USC College Merit Fellow and later as a NASA Harriet G. Jenkins fellow.

My thesis project was about chemical self-organization in geological systems, so I was looking at interesting pat-terns that minerals make that are not biological but still seem to imply some past organic chemical process. I did lab experiments at USC and field work in the Navajo Sandstone formation in Utah, studying analogs of small iron oxide spheres ("concretions") similar to what had been discovered on Mars by the Opportunity rover in 2004. As a graduate student I also worked at JPL as an intern making landing site hazard maps for the future Mars landers / rovers (using images from HiRISE), and in the summer of 2008 I did a petro physics internship at Marathon Oil Company in Houston, Texas

During the graduate school years I became a part of the NASA Astrobiology early-career community which cemented my desire to do astrobiology as a full time job. To build my net-work in that area I went to various exciting programs like a summer school in Spain, winter school in Hawaii, the astrobiology graduate student conference in Stockholm, and my first keynote talk was at an earth science conference in Australia. I originally got into this to work on space missions, but it was a pleasant surprise that being a scientist also involves so much interesting travel!

Currently I'm a Research Scientist in Astrobiology at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. I study the emergence of life on Earth and ways that we can detect life on other worlds. Some of what I do is similar to a university professor: my research group of undergraduate / graduate students works on planetary science projects that we publish in scientific journals and present at conferences. Our research is lab chemistry based and we make our own synthetic "early Earth seafloor minerals" or "Mars minerals" and use them to drive reactions like organic synthesis for the origin of life. I'm also fascinated by underwater geothermal vents and am working on projects with collaborators from all over the world to understand how hydrothermal vents might lead to life on the icy moons of Jupiter and Sat-urn. You can see me describing some of our vent research here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/make-your-own-vent.html.

The other half of what I do is working on missions. Right now I am the Investigation Scientist for the HiRISE instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been studying Mars from orbit since 2006. HiRISE (the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) is a very high-resolution camera that images geological features on Mars and can also image the rovers and landers on the surface. In my Investigation Scientist role I help coordinate between the HiRISE instrument team at the University of Arizona and the MRO mission at JPL so that they can get the best possible science data. One of the first things I worked on in this role was helping to coordinate taking a photo of Earth and Moon from Mars, which was used for calibration purposes: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/earth-and-its-moon-as-seen-from-mars. So many factors go into taking a special image like this and it takes a lot of work to execute it properly!

I graduated with my Ph.D. in Geological Sciences in 2009, then I pursued working at JPL. I did two postdocs: one as a Caltech Postdoctoral Scholar at JPL working on origin of life in hydrothermal systems, and one as a NASA Astrobiology Institute Postdoctoral Fellow working with the "Icy Worlds" team at JPL to study ways that life could exist on Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Enceladus. Being a post-doc was fun since it was the first time I could build my group of students and my own research program. I traveled even more for work in those years, including many trips to Europe and frequently to Tokyo to see collaborators that I work with on vent experiments. I've learned that doing research science, especially planetary science, is a huge endeavor that requires you to keep up a big network of friends and colleagues worldwide, so it's always a high priority for me to visit collaborators, attend conferences, and host them visiting me here in LA. In 2015 my post-doc ended, I solo hiked the Camino trail in Portugal and Spain, and then I accepted my full-time job at JPL.

P.S. Now I live near downtown Los Angeles with my husband. He ’s a JPL Engineer leading the avionics section that programs the flight software; he has worked on the Curiosity rover that land-ed in 2012, the InSight mission to Mars that will launch in 2018, and the Psyche mission that will go to an iron-rich asteroid. We actually met because we were both student interns in that NASA Goddard internship program in 2004; we've been together ever since that summer and were married in 2010. We enjoy the LA urban lifestyle - apartment living, taking the metro to free concerts, and exploring the city. I spend my non-working hours having adventures with my two running clubs, cycling, and doing half marathons and other races in fun locations like Vegas or Hawaii (soon upcoming is a 200-mile relay race with friends at Niagara Falls!).