"I apologize for that background noise. I do live in an orphanage," said Julia Neubauer with commotion going on around her that only a group of children can make - laughing, playing games or make-believe with all the necessary sound effects.
A close family: Julia Neubauer and the children of AIC, Pune, India.
Believe it or not, these children had probably been awake since 5:30 a.m., when their daily routine starts. And at 6:30 p.m. they were still going strong. But this is a typical day in Pune, India, where Julia Neubauer, CFO and site director for the Ashraya Initiative for Children (AIC), operates a home for children with care, kindness, and international charity.
Twenty-five-year-old Neubauer is a native of Rohrbach, Austria. Partly inspired by some of her international pen pals and partly wanting to see life outside of the picture-perfect surroundings of her hometown, she set her sights on going abroad. "I grew up in a pretty sheltered environment. I had a very good time in my hometown and very positive experiences growing up, but everything was almost a little too perfect and I wanted to go abroad and see more of the world," said Neubauer.
"There are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours. For the atoms being infinite in number ... are borne far out into space ... We must believe that in all worlds there are living creatures and plants and other things we see in this world."
- the atomist philosopher Epicurus (c. 341-270 B.C) in a letter to Herodotus
For centuries mankind has been struggling to answer the question of the origin of life. In present times, the fairly young interdisciplinary field of astrobiology is trying to shed some light on this complex question. One person who has investigated the subject extensively is Pascale Ehrenfreund, a professor of astrobiology at the University of Leiden and research professor of political science and international affairs at the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University.
The making of an astrobiologist
In 1988, after obtaining her master's degree in molecular biology from the University of Vienna, Ehrenfreund attended the European Space Agency's (ESA's) summer school on fundamental physics. There she got introduced to the so-called "PAH hypothesis" that the astrophysicist Alain Léger had proven just a few years earlier: in 1985, Léger, along with Louis d'Hendecourt, detected for the first time polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in space. These complex organic molecules can also be found on Earth, where more often than not they are harmful - for example they are found in car exhausts, cigarette smoke, and grilled or charred meat, and can be carcinogenic. The detection of PAHs in space, however, was of tremendous importance for scientists, as these molecules are suspected to be the most abundant molecules in space. This discovery or, more precisely, the possibility of studying these molecules under space conditions, made Ehrenfreund decide to combine her chemistry knowledge with astrophysics and pursue her Ph.D. studies in astrophysics at the University of Paris VII under the supervision of Alain Léger.
Asteroid 9826 Ehrenfreund 2114 T-3 orbits currently at 3.2 AU from the Sun (click image to enlarge).
After several postdoctoral fellowships at renowned organizations like ESA, Ehrenfreund was awarded the renowned APART (Austrian Program for Advanced Research and Technology) prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1996, which enabled her to focus on her habilitation on "Cosmic Dust." Being one of the few women doing a habilitation in astrochemistry at that time, she was honored with a special gift - an asteroid bearing her name - "Asteroid 9826 Ehrenfreund 2114 T-3."
With her broad knowledge in molecular biology, astrophysics, and astrochemistry, moving into the new emerging field of astrobiology was just "a logical consequence of my previous career," Ehrenfreund remembers.
bridges vol. 25, April 2010 / News from the Network: Austrian Researchers Abroad
In its "moves & milestones" section, bridgespresents career
steps and other outstanding events in the professional lives of
Austrian scientists and scholars in the US and Canada.
Walter Munk
has been awarded the 2010 Crafoord Prize in Geosciences for his research on ocean circulation by Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences. He will receive the 4 million kronor ($560,000) prize at a ceremony in Stockholm on May 11, 2010, in the presence of Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf, where the Crafoord award has been given annually since 1982 for scientific research in areas not covered by the Nobel Prizes.
Born in Vienna, Munk moved to the US in 1932. A professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography since 1954, he made numerous important contributions to the field of oceanography, among others, over the course of his career, earning him memberships in over a dozen professional societies, including the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London. Munk has been both a Guggenheim Fellow (three times) and a Fulbright Fellow, and has received numerous awards and honors.
was appointed director of clinical research and associate professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Winkelmayer received his medical degree from the University of Vienna. He was trained in general internal medicine and nephrology in Vienna, where he served as director of dialysis at the Kaiser Franz Josef-Hospital prior to coming to the Harvard School of Public Health in 1998. There he received his Master's in Public Health in health care management and a Sc.D. in health policy and management. Most recently, he has been assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research focus is comparative effectiveness research in kidney disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
was appointed full professor at ETH Zürich, Switzerland, Department of Mathematics.
Einsiedler received his Ph.D. at the University of Vienna in 1999 and habilitated in the field of algebraic dynamics in 2001. He was a Schrödinger Fellow at Pennsylvania State University and has held assistant and visiting professor positions at the University of Washington, Princeton University, and Université Lyon. After a tenured appointment at Ohio State University as associate and later as full professor, he moved to Switzerland in the summer of 2009.
has been awarded the 2010 Crafoord Prize in Geosciences for his research on ocean circulation by Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences. He will receive the 4 million kronor ($560,000) prize at a ceremony in Stockholm on May 11, 2010, in the presence of Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf, where the Crafoord award has been given annually since 1982 for scientific research in areas not covered by the Nobel Prizes.
was appointed director of clinical research and associate professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.
was appointed full professor at ETH Zürich, Switzerland, Department of Mathematics.