Dr. Sara Imari Walker

Sara Imari Walker, Ph.D. is NASA Postdoctoral Fellow, NASA Astrobiology Institute; Adjunct Faculty, Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Arizona State University; and Research Scientist, Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.
 
Sara’s research interests include astrobiology, origin of life, emergence, self-organization, homochirality, and artificial life.
 
Her papers include Autocatalytic Replication and Homochirality in Biopolymers: Is Homochirality a Requirement of Life or a Result of It?, Universal Sequence Replication, Reversible Polymerization and Early Functional Biopolymers: A Model for the Initiation of Prebiotic Sequence Evolution, A Series of One-Way Missions to Explore and Colonize Mars: Proceedings of the 2012 Global Space Exploration Conference, Chiral Polymerization in Open Systems From Chiral-Selective Reaction Rates, Toward Homochiral Protocells in Noncatalytic Peptide Systems, The Algorithmic Origins of Life, Evolutionary Transitions and Top-Down Causation, Life’s Chirality From Prebiotic Environments, The Chirality Of Life: From Phase Transitions To Astrobiology, An Extended Model for the Evolution of Prebiotic Homochirality: A Bottom-Up Approach to the Origin of Life, and Punctuated Chirality.
 
Sara earned her A.A. in Math/Science/Pre-Engineering at Cape Cod Community College in 2003. She earned her B.S. in Physics at the Florida Institute of Technology in 2005. She earned her Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College in 2010 with the thesis “Theoretical Models for the Emergence of Biomolecular Homochirality”. She was also a postdoctoral fellow in the NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
 
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