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Science 20 September 2002:
Vol. 297. no. 5589, p. 1975
DOI: 10.1126/science.297.5589.1975b
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ScienceScope

An Australian geologist is NASA's choice to take over its Astrobiology Institute. Bruce Runnegar, a 61-year-old professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), will succeed the first director, Nobel laureate and biologist Baruch Blumberg, who said last year he was stepping down from the job.

Figure 1

CREDIT: ARC/NASA

The institute is a "virtual organization" based at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California (Science, 29 May 1998, p. 1338). It pulls together NASA field centers, universities, and research organizations to study the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe. Runnegar currently heads UCLA's astrobiology center under contract with NASA.

Researchers say Runnegar's broad credentials--he has been a Sloan fellow in molecular evolution and has authored dozens of papers on everything from mollusk paleontology to oxygen in Earth's ancient atmosphere--will give a boost to the young, interdisciplinary enterprise. Runnegar says he'll start work at the beginning of next year.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)