Charles Cockell received his first degree
in Biochemistry from Bristol University and
his doctorate in Molecular Biology from Oxford
University. He was a National Academy
of Sciences Associate at the NASA Ames Research Center, California for two years and spent two
years as a Visiting Scientist at Stanford
University and the University of Arizona and
worked for four years at the British Antarctic
Survey. His scientific interests currently
involve studies of the microbiology of rocky
deserts and the effects of extreme stress on
microorganisms. He has been on scientific expeditions
with NASA, the US Fish and Wildlife Service
and the US Antarctic Program. He led the first
western expedition to visit post-communist
Mongolia in 1990, an expedition that covered
2,500 km of Mongolia and an expedition to Indonesia
to pilot an insect-collecting ultralight above
the rainforest canopy in 1993. He has also
carried out extensive work in the high arctic.
He is an alumnus of the International Space
University (1991). He is a Fellow of the British
Interplanetary Society, the Royal Geographical
Society, the Royal Astronomical Society and
the Explorers Club of New York. He is a Professor
and Chair of Microbiology at the Open
University. He is author of the popular science
book, ‘Impossible Extinction’,
describing the survival of the microbial world
after natural catastrophes. |
