Kathy Campbell

Professor Kathleen Campbell (School of Environment) is the inaugural Director of Te Ao Mārama – Centre for Fundamental Inquiry, Faculty of Science, The University of Auckland. She received her Earth Sciences education at the University of California (BSc), University of Washington (MSc), and University of Southern California (PhD). This was followed by a post-doctoral position at NASA Ames Research Centre (Exobiology Branch) in California. She joined The University of Auckland in 1997, undertaking paleoecological and paleoenvironmental teaching and research in the School of Environment. Her current research is primarily focused on marine hydrocarbon seeps and terrestrial hot springs, both modern and ancient, to help understand the origin and early evolution of life on Earth and potential astrobiological targets on Mars. This topic was explored in-depth by Kathy in 2014 at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, on a LE STUDIUM Institute for Advanced Studies research fellowship. With colleagues from Australia, France, Argentina and the U.S.A., she has been awarded a 2018 Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund grant to conduct scientific drilling aiming to obtain pristine samples of the oldest life on land in ~3.5 billion year old hot spring deposits of the Pilbara region, Western Australia. Kathy participated in the third Mars landing site selection workshop, where the Columbia Hills (Gusev Crater) hot spring site that her team advocated for was chosen as a finalist for the NASA Mars 2020 mission. The aim of this endeavour is to collect and cache samples of the opaline finger-like features discovered by Spirit rover on Mars that may be fossil stromatolites in a >3 billion year old hot spring deposit on Mars. Kathy is part of an international team commissioned by NASA to evaluate potential samples and science for a possible Mars Sample Return campaign.

Kathy’s Research:
Scientists extend record of earliest life on land by millions of years
Comets could have played a crucial role in the emergence of life on Earth