Voyage from the Gates of the Hadean - Origins of Life Research at Georgia Tech

• This event is a production of the Atlanta Science Tavern.
• It is free and open to the public.
• Seating is on a first-come basis.
• RSVPs are not required to attend nor do they reserve seats.
• Doors open at 6:00 pm for early arrival.
• Gather for dinner by 7:00.
• The evening's presentation gets under way around 7:45.
• Parking at Manuel's has changed; refer to the note below for details.
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Loren Williams, Professor
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Georgia Institute of Technology

The origin of life (OOL) took place around 4 billion years ago, soon after the Earth cooled in the Hadean Eon. Water-based chemistry converted small building blocks to large polymeric molecules. Polymers have incredible properties, including ability to form assemblies. Polymers can assemble into compartments, fibers, enzymes and motors and can store and transduce information.

We have models, that are testable by experiment, to explain how increasing complexity of polymers led to simple microbial cells. For nearly 3 billion years microbes ruled the planet. Complex plants and animals are relatively recent branches on the tree of life.

The OOL can be studied from the bottom up (using chemical principles) or from the top down (mining information from biological systems). In this presentation I will discuss progress from long-running efforts at Georgia Tech that use both top-down and bottom-up approaches to unravel the OOL.

Consideration of OOL forces us to frame and confront the most profound and vexing questions in science and philosophy. The OOL tests our understanding of geological, chemical and biological principles and unsettles our sense of place in the universe.

About our speaker
Loren Williams is currently a Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech and a Co-Lead of the Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environment Consortium (PCE3 a NASA Research Coordination Network) and is Director of the NASA-funded Center for the Origin of Life (COOL).

Loren is from Seattle. He received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Washington and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Duke University. He was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard, and an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT (with Alexander Rich).

Loren received an NSF CAREER Award in 1995, and a Sigma Xi Award for best paper from Georgia Tech in 1996. He received the Student Advisement Award in 2012, the Petit Institute "Above and Beyond" Award in 2012, Georgia Tech's Faculty Award for Academic Outreach in 2013, and the Georgia Tech College of Science Faculty Mentor Award in 2013. He was granted the Georgia Tech Disability Services Access Alley Award in 2017 for advocating for handicapped students. He received the Vasser Woolley Award for Excellence in Instruction in 2019. He was Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute funded RiboEvo Center from 2008 to 2015.

Parking changes at Manuel's
The parking situation at Manuel's Tavern has changed since last spring. What was once Manuel's large parking lot on N. Highland Avenue is now a construction site for future townhomes. This leaves two options for parking lots nearby. One is the small lot behind Manuel's. The other is the larger lot across N. Highland next to Java Vino. If you do choose to use this, please be very careful crossing N. Highland. A crosswalk has been striped leading to and from this lot, but, as of yet, signs have not been erected to alert drivers to this fact. There is limited on-street parking available in the neighborhood.