Dr Sarah-Jane Davies

Astrobiology is an emerging scientific field and is driven by the question ‘are we alone in the Universe?’ With an increasing number of life-detection/habitability missions, astrobiology is at the core of nations’ space strategies. The Open University Astrobiology Unit focuses on understanding how, and where, life might be found, by combining field work, laboratory simulations and mission data. Building on this expertise, Unit members are involved in key astrobiology-related missions and in developing planetary protection regulations. E3 funding will build capacity in line with future missions by furthering our understanding of extraterrestrial environments and potential life, through developing facilities to simulate these environments and investigating analogue sites. This is aimed at understanding if, and where, life may be found beyond the Earth. The Unit will develop its expertise to meet the new challenges that arise as the private sector and smaller nations develop exploration capacity. This includes supporting the sector to meet, and define, planetary protection requirements and to address space governance, for example, ensuring environmental sustainability of missions. The Unit will develop relevant education material for the expanding space sector, and it will work to ensure knowledge and expertise in astrobiology is used in a just and equitable manner. Sustainability of the Unit will be underpinned by commercial services, external funding, and University investment. The Unit will support the growth of astrobiology networks of industry, higher educational institutes and policymakers, and early career researchers, to ensure that the UK is globally recognised and influential within the field.

Mobile technologies bring the digital and the physical worlds together by providing just-in-time/contextual information related to what people are observing, visiting or walking past. However, people with mobility disabilities or socio-economic limitations are often prevented from experiencing these new forms of user experience. We are proposing an alternative approach through developing hybrid ‘social inclusion’ solutions that aim to support collaboration between teams moving around ‘in the field’ and those ‘in the home’. This proposal will develop new ways of connecting existing mobile and shared table-top technologies to support synchronous distributed team collaboration that enables innovative forms of vicarious experiences. An educational prototype system for investigating aspects of the environment will be built to demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of the approach for supporting distributed team collaboration. With this project we seek to build systems with middlewear that will link information resource systems and co-located table-top collaboration applications at the home-base with and mobile data collection and communication devices. This will require seamless translation of mobile data collection (i.e. audio, video, geological readings) into table-top displays e.g. mash-ups between geological readings in the wild linked to mappings on table-tops. Partner companies will support the development of viable propositions. The software company, specialising in mobile learning applications, OOKL, will support the synchronous collaboration between mobile and home-based applications. SMART, who specialise in tabletop solutions for educational applications, are in the business of developing ‘ecology of technologies’ through the seamless interaction between devices and displays i.e middleware for table-tops.