LIFE NASA RCN Seminar 6 January 2026

Join the 2026 LIFE NASA RCN Seminar Series! This month’s speakers are Dr. Ilya Bobrovskiy and Dr. Tharika Liyanage.

Time: January 6th, 8AM PDT/11AM EDT
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Title: Unmixing ancient biomarker signals to recover primary ecosystem composition.

Dr. Ilya Bobrovskiy leads a research group at MARUM that seeks to deconvolve the early record of eukaryotic evolution using organic geochemistry. Ilya received his Ph.D. from the Australian National University, where he established the cutting-edge techniques for extracting and quantifying biomarkers from ancient animal fossils. Since then, he has held positions at Caltech and GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences before starting his own group in Bremen.

Title: Finding families for orphan biomarkers

Dr. Tharika Liyanage is a geobiologist focusing on the missing links between the evolution of microbial life and their fossilized lipid biomolecules in the geological record. Her research works towards making our reconstructions of microbial ecosystems and environments in Earth’s early biosphere more robust. She is currently an Agouron Geobiology Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and earned her Ph. D. at the Australian National University.

Astrobiology