Dr. Laurie Barge is a research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. She received her BS in astronomy and astrophysics from Villanova University and her PhD in geological sciences from the University of Southern California; after graduate school she was a Caltech postdoctoral scholar and then a NASA Astrobiology Institute postdoctoral fellow. Currently, Barge co-leads the JPL Origins and Habitability Laboratory, a research group that studies how life can emerge and be detected in planetary environments. Barge’s research focuses on seafloor hydrothermal vents as planetary analogs and how prebiotic chemistry can emerge on Earth and other worlds; she leads various NASA project teams about origin of life, hydrothermal vent exploration, and planetary habitability.
