Associate Professor Michael Rowe is the program lead for Earth Sciences at the University of Auckland. As a passionate educator, Michael strives to get students involved in research opportunities early, often linking research to teaching.
As a geochemist, petrologist, and geologist, his multi-disciplinary research in the lab and field has focused on novel approaches for analysing and understanding planetary materials and their relation to early life, both here on Earth and on Mars. He currently leads a Marsden Fund-supported project on inorganic techniques to identify organic processes preserved in rock.
Michael is a steering group member for LifeSpringsMars, a multi-national grassroots effort exploring the potential sample return of silica deposits from the Columbia Hills, Mars. As an expert in various analytical techniques, he has led efforts to characterise and understand similar materials here on Earth, focusing on hot springs silica, in the hopes that when samples do come back, we will be able to interpret what we find.
Talk Title 2025 Ten Years of Astrobiology Event: Novel approaches to looking for life in really old rocks: Bringing current research to the classroom
