The Martian Mindset Seminar with Dirk Schulze-Makuch

Thu, Nov 19, 2026, 7:15 AM – 8:30 AM (EST)
University of Bremen
AIB, room 1020/30 Hochschulring 40, Bremen, HB, DE, 28359

Registration: https://www.linkedin.com/events/themartianmindsetseminarwithdir7526638347679703040/

Zoom: https://uni-bremen.zoom.us/meeting/register/dBn3ZQgkTYOwgrIVPZDlvQ#/registration

Life on Earth has adapted to multiple environmental stresses including lack of water, temperature and pressure extremes, and high salinities. In order to understand the effect of these stresses on possible life on other planets, we have to go to extreme locations on Earth to test life´s adaptability.

Here, Dr. Schulze-Makuch will focus on three of these extreme environments, the hyperarid Atacama Desert in Chile, a liquid asphalt lake in Trinidad, and the Don Juan Pond in Antarctica. Insights from these environments has provides critical knowledge about putative life on Mars and possibly Titan.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch received his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Afterwards, he had a fellowship at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and also worked as Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, and as Associate and Full Professor at Washington State University before returning to Germany. He still holds an Adjunct Professorship at Washington State University, Dirk published more than 200 papers and 8 books in the field of planetary habitability and astrobiology, including the 3rd edition of Life in the Universe: Expectations and Constraints. In 2010 he received the Friedrich-Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Humboldt Foundation for extraordinary achievements in theoretical biology.