Louisa Preston

Louisa Preston is a UK Space Agency Aurora Research Fellow, astrobiologist, planetary geologist and author based at Birkbeck, University of London. She works in environments across the Earth, where life is able to survive our planet’s most extreme conditions, using them as blueprints for possible extra-terrestrial life forms and habitats. Having worked on projects for NASA and the Canadian, European and UK Space Agencies, the only thing she enjoys more than devising ways to find life on Mars is writing about it. She has published numerous articles and academic papers, and her first book - Goldilocks and the Water Bears - is out now. She is also an avid believer in the power of science communication, having regularly appeared on radio and television programmes, such as the BBC’s The Sky at Night, and spoken about the search for life on Mars at the TED Conference in 2013.