We pursue research in four separate yet synergistic areas as follows:
- Complete a pathway for the synthesis of life’s building blocks that is geochemically plausible and leads naturally to the emergence of translation.
- Work to design and build a protocell from nonliving chemicals capable of reproduction and of environmentally driven Darwinian evolution.
- Identify and understand the environments allowing for life to emerge and sustain itself – from the protoplanetary disks forming rocky planets, to the atmospheres and aqueous reservoirs on early Earth and Mars, and on to the emergence of ecologically complex systems.
- Cast a wider net beyond the solar systems, with direct atmospheric studies of rocky exoplanets, the diversity of such environments, and questions like when does a biosphere affect a planet’s atmospheric composition.
Explore Our Research
Sponsors
The Origins Federation is grateful for the generous support of several private sponsors. As a science team based at Harvard, ETH-Zurich, Chicago and Cambridge, we have a proven track record in research and development, able to achieve milestones which science, and humanity more generally, has imagined for a long time: enabling some version of life from scratch and understanding its diversity and prevalence in the Universe. For more information on how to partner with us and support this effort, please contact us at the address below.