Kathy Campbell - Did life begin on land or in the sea?

Professor Kathy Campbell is a geologist, paleo-ecologist and astrobiologist. The broad theme of her research is paleoecology - the interaction of ancient organisms with their surrounding environments. She was educated at the University of California (BSc), U Washington (MSc), and U Southern California (PhD) and has been at Auckland University since 1997. Campbell has just become the director of a new Centre for Fundamental Inquiry based at the university, bringing academics from different disciplines together to answer life's enduring mysteries, including the possibility of alien life. She has also just received almost a million dollars in Marsden funding to investigate hydrothermal deposits in the earliest-known hot springs, to help solve a question that's driven her academic career: Did life begin on land or in the sea?