
Dr. Kelsey Moore
Dr. Kelsey Moore is a geobiologist and astrobiologist with a focus on microbial life on early Earth and potentially on Mars. Her research centers around the ways in which microbes—through their biochemical makeup and their metabolic activity—interact with the environment. She is interested in how ancient microbes shaped young planets and, in parallel, how ancient environments impacted microbes and their evolution. She addresses questions related to the evolution of the biosphere on Earth and the preservation of organic matter and fossils. This includes investigations of microfossils and organic matter that were preserved during the Proterozoic and Archean eons and experiments that shed light on the microbe-mineral interactions that may have promoted fossilization in ancient environments. As a member of the Mars2020 science team and the PIXL and SHERLOC instrument teams, she extends her research to the search for biosignatures on Mars.