Caleb Scharf – NASA’s Senior Scientist for Astrobiology at Ames Research

# The Search for Life in the Universe: 2024 and beyond

THE CLASSROOM WILL BE CLOSED FOR THIS EVENT

###### This lecture will be hosted as a Webinar on Zoom as well as a live stream on our YouTube channel. We encourage you to participate, ask questions, and be a part of the live meeting.

We welcome back for the third time our friend and NASA’s Senior Scientist for Astrobiology at the Ames Research Center, Dr. Caleb Scharf. Caleb has previously spoken to WAS back in September 2015 about Gravity’s Engines and again in November 2018 about the Zoomable Universe (available on our YouTube channel).

I’ll present a round-up of where things are at for the pursuit of evidence for life elsewhere in the universe, and I’ll discuss where things are going. This will cover research in exoplanetary science, exploration of the solar system, and upcoming plans for Mars, Titan, and the Habitable Worlds Observatory – NASA’s future space telescope.

Caleb Scharf is the Senior Scientist for Astrobiology at NASA Ames in Silicon Valley. Prior to joining NASA in 2022 he was Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University in New York. He has also served as a global science coordinator for the Earth-Life Science Institute’s Origins Network at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 2022 Scharf was the recipient of the Carl Sagan Medal for excellence in public communication in planetary science from the American Astronomical Society. His research spans cosmology, exoplanetary science, and astrobiology, where he is helping lead NASA’s scientific efforts to find life in the universe.