Sukrit Ranjan

I am a theorist and modeler focused on questions related to the origin of life on Earth and the search for life on other worlds. These questions are coupled: efforts to understand the origin of life on Earth helps guide our search for it elsewhere in the cosmos, while observations of other planets help us test our theories of the prebiotic environment and of abiogenesis. To understand abiogenesis, I work to constraining the palette of environmental conditions from which life arose on Earth, to constrain and guide experimental studies of the origin of life. To search for life elsewhere, I work to determine observational tests by which life on other worlds may be remotely discriminated. In collaboration with my experimental colleagues, I work to obtain the critical measurements of fundamental physico-chemical parameters required to build robust models in support of both goals.

I completed my PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Harvard University, followed by a SCOL postdoctoral fellowship at MIT EAPS and a CIERA postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern. I completed my undergraduate work at MIT, where I majored in physics and minored in astronomy and history.