2007-03-21 | SCIENCE
2007 (SEPM) James Lee Wilson Award

Nora Noffke, assistant professor in the Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Old Dominion University in Virginia, is the recipient of the 2007 Society of Sedimentary Geologists (SEPM) James Lee Wilson Award.

SEPM grants its Wilson Award for excellence in sedimentary geology by a young scientist. Noffke, an assistant professor with the Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Old Dominion, earned her Ph.D. from the University of Oldenberg in Germany in 1997. She is receiving the Wilson Award for her research on microbially induced sedimentary structures, or microbial mats. Noffke was awarded an exobiology research grant from NASA's Astrobiology Program in 2003 to study meso-Archean-age microbially induced sedimentary structures. (The meso-Archean period ranges from about 2.9 billion to 3.3 billion years ago.) Noffke is testing different methods of detecting these structures and differentiating them from abiotic structures of similar appearance. Her aim is to produce a catalogue of reference biosignatures that other astrobiologists could use to detect past or present extraterrestrial microbial life. Noffke's award will be presented at SEPM's 2007 annual convention in April.

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