Palmer Lab of Chemical Ecology and Astrobiology

12/10/2025

Headed back from the annual American Society of Gravitational and Space Research conference! Here is a shot with some lab members as well as some old and new friends! Congratulations to my MS Student, Trent Causey who gave his first talk (a 3 minute thesis competition talk) and won the People's Choice Award. My team gave three 3-minute thesis talks, 2 technical session talks on regolith ceramics and fungal pathogens in space, and a total of 7 posters.... Lab alum David Handy shared some of his awesome work on growing potatoes in Regolith for his postdoc and McKenna (now in the Kiss lab) revisited some of her co-culture work and hung out with us as well.

11/20/2025

An opinion/position paper prepared in partnership with our collaborator Rafael Loureiro is out!
https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ppp3.70124

As humanity prepares for sustained life beyond Earth, developing resilient, resource-efficient food systems is essential. This research outlines a strategic roadmap for scalable space agriculture, ad...

11/19/2025

Congratulations to Haley Fleming a cell and molecular biology MS student in our lab who successfully defended her MS thesis! She has identified two potential isolates of bacteria that may 'eat' PET plastic from the Indian River Lagoon! Very cool work from an excellent student! We will miss her! All this in spite of the projector issue that put this lovely yellow dot on the screen!

11/03/2025

Celebrating Halloween with our annual lab costume shoot!

10/28/2025

It was my sincerest pleasure to represent the efforts of my students at the 1st annual symposium on space agriculture in Brazil earlier this month! What a fantastic opportunity to meet some collaborators face-to-face, visit just a small part of Brazil (beautiful!), and talk with some amazing scientists! So much good research being done in support of space agriculture here!
https://www.embrapa.br/en/pecuaria-sudeste/agricultura-espacial/siae

10/23/2025

Had a wonderful opportunity to be on one of my favorite NPR podcasts not long ago. I stuff starts around 15minutes in!

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cfpublic.org%2Fpodcast%2Fare-we-there-yet%2F2025-09-30%2Fbottle-rockets-and-space-agriculture%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR4mkwGlYI5Jpm43RODZoTrjXidgGVvsmnr5R4XPl-VWDQeRThNdZrqWJwsvdg_aem_IKNJIuC0nvRQYy5fh66tmg&h=AT1On2OdsYYz5mtXrJkkRIuqYZBwUHqecQePpraxj2OZg9iQtaRpsI6JRdgXj4KIyYkjyQWCoVlNkiVM5eDdpAZmEJ27jN-XMGMxk6BPfBx-pozeUMgB32s8R-vnhh6Jze3X18GNWzZlUpkD&__tn__=H-R&c[0]=AT0UeIAXlTS6KgIw7jw81zVaUFdUoIcsl8SvbjmAhFbItNUn48QB6H5pAknZhQ-skIgXB_NCeVD_j3aqujp32ZRjCcuSiHJn1plqu-becC3mFwoMUmxP7wFw5ClsJ7B2iLSO0pJ8WLs-4CsUHW7P9L8fouLwIxKqma0zWNjnPgUe6RMSyOs

Emily Calandrelli, also known online as The Space Gal, is encouraging kids to make their own rockets for the second annual Baking Soda Rocket Day. Plus, scientists are looking at how to grow plants off our planet.

09/24/2025

Check out this great non-technical write up on some of the projects my amazing students are working on. Also talks about the work of some of our awesome collaborators!

As humanity sets its sights on Mars, scientists are hungry to answer an essential question: How will our interplanetary travelers eat?

05/02/2025

Congratulations to all of our graduating seniors from the Palmer Lab! Undergraduates in the lab presented projects in electrical engineering, marine biology, environmental science, biology, and astrobiology.

Special congratulations to Trent Causey, Mia Markiet,and Emily Soucy. Between them they picked up awards for Best in Show in Astrobiology and Environmental Science, as well as the honors college best poster award, and the Northrip Grumman best in show science award!

12/10/2024

First batch of action shots from ! Here are Palmer Lab members at the PI and grad student poster sessions. Hiking pics to come soon! We also have some pics from the undergrad poster session and 3 min thesis competition.

12/08/2024

The lab is headed back to the mainland after 4 days in Puerto Rico attending many more posts to come. We made new friends, saw old ones, and had a wonderful time