TAEM- With the interest in discovering new worlds in space, and the possibility of making a manned mission to Mars in the very near future, The Arts and Entertainment Magazine has sought scientific professionals and educators to interview so that they can reveal the many aspects of making these discoveries for our student readers. One of the main topics on many of our reader’s minds is what can be expected to be found there and can effect the astronauts that may go to these worlds.
One expert that we have found is Dr. Lewis Dartnell of the University of Leicester, England. Dr. Dartnell, tell our student readers about your formal education and how it has helped you in your work.
LD- I’ve come from a life sciences background – I read Biology at Oxford University, before moving to University College London for a Masters-PhD programme in a department called CoMPLEX (Centre for Mathematics & Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology – a real mouthful of an acronym!). This is a phenomenal inter-disciplinary doctoral training centre where mathematicians, physicists, computer programmers, and biologists like myself are all shoved into a room for a year and told to teach each other the stuff they don’t know yet. That year was incredibly hard work, but really paid-off in giving me a very broad understanding of scientific research and what sort of techniques and analyses can be used. It was after this that I was able to start a PhD in astrobiology – the science concerned with the search for possible life beyond the Earth. (more…)