unc senior wins scholarship
Kate Harris is oxford bound with Rhodes scholarship Since her sophomore year, Harris has worked in the microbial ecology lab of Dr. Andreas Teske, a University Of North Carolina associate professor of marine sciences, on NASA-funded research. The project examines microbial life in geothermal fluids in a borehole into the Pacific Ocean crust.
"If life can flourish beneath the ocean floor, an environment once deemed too hostile for life, it might prove equally resourceful at adapting to extreme conditions on other worlds," Harris said. "Mars might lack little green men, but little green microbes are a real possibility." Harris said that the best analog on Earth for Mars is in Antarctica, "the coldest and most inaccessible place on this planet." She took the spring semester off from the university this year to conduct research on the polar ice cap, delaying her graduation from last May until next month (December. 18). Last January, Harris hiked up to 6 hours daily in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region of the continent, collecting samples of surface water. Her mission: to discover whether this seepage in gullies of the valleys came from melting subsurface ice or glacial melting. |
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Afterward, she tested the samples in an internship at
the Byrd Polar Research Center in Ohio, learning that the seepage had indeed
come from underground. If the same thing happens on Mars – where scientists have detected similar gullies – water may be available there to sustain life, Harris said. She presented her findings at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City. Previously, in January 2003, Harris had experienced a simulation of life in the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars. Hiking along in her spacesuit and helmet with colleagues from Austria, Canada, Israel and the United States, Harris was the youngest researcher ever invited to the Utah research station. Her summer experiences through the Morehead program at the university began with Outward Bound training before her freshman year and took her to the island of Borneo in Malaysia the following summer, in 2002. |
There she volunteered for an environmental group devoted to protecting the endangered Sumatran rhinoceros. Harris surveyed wildlife and produced a video documentary about the rhinos.
From February through July of her sophomore year, Kate studied abroad in Mongolia. That May, she helped an environmental group observe native wild horses, track wolves and survey the wildlife population in the Gobi Desert. She led a Three-hundred mile, 3 week backpacking trip in Mongolia later that summer. Harris has run 2 marathons and biked across the United States.
She was awarded an American Society for Microbiology undergraduate research fellowship and a NASA Alaska Space Grant scholarship for the summer of 2004. Working with the Juneau Icefield Research Program, she traversed Two-hundred miles of the Juneau Icefield on cross-country skis, studying glaciers along the way.
"From Antarctica to Alaska, to the Mars Station in Utah, to the classrooms and labs at UNC, Harris has embarked upon her scientific passion to discover the possibility of life on Mars," said Dr. George Lensing, director of the Office of Distinguished Scholarships.
"Her findings have already achieved national recognition through publications in scientific journals and presentations at national conferences. A professor in the biology department calls her a budding superstar. Modest and yet unfailingly gracious to all who know her, Kate Harris is a very special student, a Canadian with tar on her heels reaching for outer space."
This article is in 3 parts. This is part 3. 1 2 3
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