2026 LIFE NASA RCN Seminar: Sara Imari Walker and L. Felipe Benites

Zoom: Join the 2026 LIFE NASA RCN Seminar Series

Title: Quantitative Prebiotic Chemistry and Defining the Abiotic Baseline Reveals why RNA may be unique to Earth

Dr. Sara Imari Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist whose research focuses on new approaches to the origins of life, artificial life, and the detection of alien life on other worlds. She is the author of Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence (Riverhead, 2024), which argues for a radical new thinking around what constitutes life. Walker is Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University (ASU) and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.

Title: Deep-time evolution of proteome elemental composition in viruses and cells

Dr. L. Felipe Benites is a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University who investigates the fundamental principles that constrain biological diversity across cellular and viral life. His work sits at the intersection of astrobiology, evolution, and genomics, where he explores how life might differ under alternative chemical, evolutionary and planetary conditions.