DRI research linked to life-on-Mars debate gets boost from Kenny Guinn Environmental Fellowship
Graduate research assistant will use $15,000 to study microbial life in ice
Work being done by Desert Research Institute scientists may one day shed light on the debate about life on Mars, and a University of Nevada, Reno student may play a role in such a discovery.
DRI Graduate Research Assistant Annika Mosier, a master’s degree candidate at UNR, in the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, has been awarded the Kenny Guinn Environmental Fellowship, DRI President Stephen G. Wells announced today. Wells said the DRI Research Foundation is underwriting the annual $15,000 fellowship, which was established by DRI in 2001 to acknowledge Governor Guinn's Millennium Scholarship Program.
Mosier is studying under scientists in DRI’s Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences investigating microbes within the 2,800-year-old ice cover of Lake Vida, Antarctica. She will use the fellowship to help the team analyze previously unknown microbial communities that live in an environment scientists previously believed was too cold and barren to support life.
While Lake Vida is unique by Earth standards, it may prove to be similar to lakes that existed on Mars during its early history. If so, DRI's research could someday help resolve questions about life on the red planet.
A nonprofit, statewide division of the University and Community College System of Nevada, DRI pursues a full-time program of basic and applied environmental research on a local, national, and international scale. Nearly 500 full- and part-time scientists, technicians, and support staff conduct some 150 research projects at DRI annually. More than 85 percent of DRI's annual $37 million operating budget consists of research grants and contracts obtained by its scientists. The balance is received from the state of Nevada for administrative costs.