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About

Dr. Jennifer Wadsworth is a leading astrobiologist whose research focuses on the habitability of Mars and the survival of life in extreme environments. Her most impactful work, published in 2017, demonstrated that perchlorates—chemicals abundant in Martian regolith—become strongly bacteriocidal when exposed to ultraviolet radiation, a finding that has reshaped our understanding of Mars’ surface habitability (113 citations). She has also characterized a low-diversity microbial community inhabiting extreme terrestrial basaltic terrains and fumaroles, providing a crucial analogue for potential Martian ecosystems (44 citations). Beyond the lab, Dr. Wadsworth has contributed to the MINAR 5 program, which uses the Boulby Mine in the UK as a deep subsurface analogue for extraterrestrial exploration, integrating science, technology, and education (25 citations). Her work bridges planetary science and microbiology, offering critical insights into where and how we might search for life on Mars.