Workshop goal

 

The goal of this workshop is to stimulate discussion around ways and means of exploring the diversity of life on earth and beyond. The workshop is forward looking, focused on facilitating discovery of new lineages and boundaries of life. Speakers are encouraged to bring forth thoughts, ideas and hypotheses for discussion, with minimal emphasis on past work, unless relevant. Ideally, speakers would introduce past work that has inspired a new idea or hypothesis. Additionally, we would like input from the speakers in answering the following:

 

1. What new technological developments would be useful for this work? 

2. Are there particular environmental niches that should be pursued?

3. Are there any major agencies or foundations that are funding work in this area (including in other countries), so how can we make this a self-sustaining activity?

 

 

Format 

 

30 minute block for each speaker; includes presentation time of 20 minutes followed by discussion. The presentation should be divided into approximately 10 minutes spent describing background and past work, which should then build towards a discussion of future work including hypotheses or idea presentation.