Scientist of the YEAR

No question has both intrigued and baffled humanity as the question Dr. Alfonso Fernandez Davila has dedicated his professional life to answering: Are we alone in the universe?

And while our understanding of the complexities of life and the universe has expanded over the centuries – as has our appreciation of the implications that discovering evidence of life beyond our own planet would entail – we have little if any actual physical evidence to show for our efforts.

Dr. Davila is working to change that.  When evidence of extraterrestrial life is finally confirmed, it’s likely that the tools and techniques he’s developing will be responsible for that paradigm shattering achievement.

Dr. Davila is designing and testing the instruments that future missions to search for life beyond Earth will employ.  He works alongside engineers – both in the lab and out in the field – to define scientific requirements and validate prototypes.  He’s also reimagining mission concepts that will shape the way scientists capture and examine evidence for years to come.  

Born and raised in a small industrial town near Barcelona, Spain, Dr. Davila pursued both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Marine Sciences at the University of Vigo in Galicia.  He then left Spain for the University of Munich in Germany to pursue his Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Sciences. That’s when NASA came calling.  Literally.

Dr. Davila and his group at the University of Munich were researching magnetotactic bacteria, a peculiar class of microorganisms that form tiny magnetic crystals inside their cells.  NASA suspected these bacteria could be responsible for fossilized crystal formations discovered inside the Allan Hills Mars meteorite – something that would confirm that life could have existed on Mars at some point in the distant past.  So they called Dr. Davila’s faculty advisor in Munich in 2002 and invited one member of the group to come to Ames for two weeks to participate in a field study to test their theory in the field.

Dr. Davila leaped at the opportunity and hasn’t looked back since – and NASA and the American led search for extra-terrestrial life are much better for it. 

Called “a natural field scientist” by his colleagues, he has led or contributed to over 15 field expeditions to places as varied and remote as Antarctica and the Atacama Desert in Chile. In these remote and inhospitable locales, he conducts theoretical and experimental investigations in Mars analog environments, locations on Earth that have Mars-like qualities such as extreme dryness, extreme cold, or extreme levels of UV radiation.

While in these severe conditions, Dr. Davila investigates how microbial communities survive in these extreme environments as a means to better understand the limits of habitability on Mars, and how and where to search for evidence of life.

Additionally, Dr. Davila works on the design of planetary mission concepts to search for evidence of life beyond Earth. He was the Deputy Principal Investigator of two mission concepts that were proposed to different NASA programs, the ELSAH mission to Enceladus (proposed to the New Frontiers Program) and the Icebreaker mission to Mars (proposed to the Discovery Program).

In both instances he was a lead member of the mission team helping the Principal Investigator (PI) and worked on the definition of science objectives and measurement requirements. Both missions have been reviewed as Category II (selectable) in 2017 (ELSAH) and in 2020 (Icebreaker). These are the first life detection missions ever to receive Category II in NASA Programs.

Currently, Dr. Davila is the life detection science lead for a Flagship mission concept to Enceladus, which is being developed with NASA funding to support the upcoming Planetary Decadal Survey.

Somehow, he also manages to publish scientific papers on a prolific basis, with 89 co-authored, peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals to his credit, as well as 9 book chapters and numerous conference abstracts and proceedings.  

Dr. Davila is lauded not just for the hardware he’s designing or the many experiments he’s conducting, but for the way his writing and lectures challenges us to expand our understanding of life from something ordinary and parochial to something extraordinary and of cosmic dimensions.  His hope is that by changing the way we think about life we’ll be able to design more ways to detect it in the many extraordinary environments we’re now encountering across the solar system and beyond.  

He additionally remembers the environment that he came from. Since 2017, Dr. Davila has been a member of the Hispanic Advisory Committee for Employees (HACE) at NASA Ames Research Center. As member of the committee, he helps organize events that promote STEM education and NASA’s vision of exploration, including holiday celebrations, public lectures, and cultural events. He also often gives public talks in middle- and high-schools that predominantly comprise of underserved students in the Bay Area, California, which are largely populated by Hispanic students. Most notably, Dr. Davila’s community outreach extends globally. Because a significant portion of his fieldwork research occurs in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, he often finds himself in a position to promote NASA’s mission and Astrobiology research in local Chilean schools.