C-DEBI Research Support > Request for Research Proposals

Katrina Edwards on the Atlantis

I have always been fascinated by life in extreme places on the planet. And somehow I have managed to do projects on microbes from places like Antarctica, boiling hotsprings in Yellowstone and Kamchatka, acid pools, and more. The extremes are fascinating to me because they tell us a lot about the limits of life as well as indirectly about life in "normal" places.

And of course, I am not alone. Many many scientists are fascinated by life's extremes. But not everyone ends up studying life in extreme environments of course. One reason for this is that many extreme environments that might be of interest are kind of hard to study. Consider the deep sea. Not so easy to do work there and just getting samples can be a massive undertaking.

Just imagine though. What if there were a way to "tag along" on an existing project studying life's extremes at no cost to you or your grants? Even better what if there were a way to get extra funds to not just tag along on a project but to carry out detailed research at the same time?

Well, amazingly, there is such a chance right now. The C-DEBI "Center for Dark Energy Biosphere" project is calling for proposals. C-DEBI Research Support > Request for Research Proposals



They have money. They have drills. They have been and will continue to be collecting lots of samples from the bottom of the ocean and the crust below.  They are doing a bunch of microbiology (as well as other things). And they are calling for people out there to join them in various ways including;

• Research Proposals
• Research and Travel Exchange Program
• Post doc scholar program
• Graduate fellow program
• Education and outreach proposals

And if you are interested they are heading out in a few days on a cruise to study the seafloor at "North Pond" a site in the bottom of the ocean on the Mid=Atlantic Ridge. For more information about this cruise see

• http://www.darkenergybiosphere.org/return-to-northpond/
• http://aam.darkenergybiosphere.org/
• http://www.darkenergybiosphere.org/classroomconnection
• http://joidesresolution.org/node/1983

I note - I was a visiting scientist for a few days at one of the C-DEBI meetings about evolution earlier this year. It was a great meeting - on Catalina Island - and I wrote a VERY long blog post about it: The Tree of Life: A "work" trip to Catalina Island: USC, Wrigley, C-DEBI, dark energy biosphere, Virgin Oceanic, Deep Five, & more. You can learn more about the C-DEBI project by reading that post.  And you can look at my pretty pictures below:

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I note in addition, I am forever in debt to Katrina Edwards the PI of the C-DEBI project ever since she gave a frigging awesome tour to my kids of the Atlantis when it was docked in San Francisco

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But regardless of the personal connections I have to C-DEBI, the project is very interesting and the fact that they are offering up funds to support "outsiders" who want to participate in the project in some way is great.