ALT Dr. Rachel Moore is a microbial ecologist in the Planetary eXploration Laboratory specializing in the microbiology of extreme habitats. Her research involves fieldwork, labwork, and computational biology to understand single-celled life in extremely dry and/or deep environments, such as the surface and subsurface of Mars, the oceans of Enceladus and Europa, and the clouds of Venus. For example, last spring, Rachel collected sediments across the Atacama Desert in Chile and sequenced the DNA present there to gain insights into how microbes can survive in a Mars-like environment. Using computer modeling she uncovered that a cyanobacterium isolated in the Atacama Desert can produce sugars at an extremely low water activity (read her new preprint here: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3079482/latest). Rachel recently returned from an eight-week field campaign at Summit Station in the center of the Greenland Ice Sheet.