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[silence]

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[music]

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my title is Assistant Research Scientist, and I work

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in the Planetary Environments Laboratory.

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Astrobiology, I would say, is the field of study that looks for

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life outside the earth, but also for the origin of life. And--

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the way that my work is involved in astrobiology is--I'm looking

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at organics, and actually, my daily job is focused

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on developing--or, helping develop instruments that are related

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to those kind of organic materials, especially organic compounds that are

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part of life as we know it. Currently, I'm spending most of my time working on

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an instrument called VAPOR, which analyzes the volatile

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contents of samples--either from the Moon, or maybe from

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an asteroid or Mars--by heating the soil sample up

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at a real slow pace, and then analyzing the gases with a mass

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spectrometer. Yeah, what I like about the group I'm working in--not only the

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group related to the instrument--the VAPOR instrument--but the whole group that I'm working in--is

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that the group consists of both scientists and engineers, and

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so, we have a really good mix in our group, and a good interaction

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between the engineers and the scientists. So, the fact that, as a scientist, you actually get to tinker around

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a little bit as an engineer. And since my background is in engineering, I really

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like to have that link as well.

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