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How I spent my time in college studying life in the world’s most extreme environments

As a child of two physicians and a grandson of a physics professor, I was “genetically” predisposed to face the existential conundrum that plagues many college freshmen: “what should I major in?” I loved my biology and astronomy classes and could tolerate physics and math, so I ultimately pursued a double major in astrophysics and molecular biology as an undergrad at CU. 

The focal point of most of my interests, however, lay at the intersection of two distinct specialties: astrobiology, the study of life on other planets, and bioastronautics, the study of the effects of spaceflight on living organisms. So in my sophomore year of college, I sought to exercise what I was learning in my classes and reached out to many professors involved in this interdisciplinary work. 

Brian Hynek is a CU Boulder professor in the Geological Sciences department and a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. He is also the founder and director of the CU Center for Astrobiology. Hynek’s main research interests are “the geologic, hydrologic, and climatic histories of the planet Mars and all things related.”

I began working with Hynek in March 2018, and I promptly started research in the laboratory to process some samples he took a year prior from the Poás Volcano in Costa Rica. The Poás Volcano is well-studied by Martian geologists, since it exhibits a lot of the similar geochemical processes that occurred on ancient Mars. It is a great place, therefore, to start to understand how life could have lived in ancient hot spring environments on Mars.

When I got involved, Dr. Hynek was in the process of publishing a manuscript in Astrobiology titled, “Lack of Microbial Diversity in an Extreme Mars Analog Setting: Poás Volcano, Costa Rica.” He and his co-authors discovered that the crater lake of the Poás Volcano, called Laguna Caliente, harbored only a single bacterial species from the genus Acidiphilium (which is Latin for “acid loving”). 

This result was meaningful for two reasons: 1) it was surprising that anything could live in a lake that exhibited a pH of ~0; and 2) it was surprising that only a single species was found — microbes seldom live and work independently. 

It was my job to extract DNA from new samples from the lake and to analyze the genetic adaptations to better explain the two surprising results in the study.

After studying (and smelling) the Poás Volcano for over a year and a half in the lab funded by the Research Opportunities Program (UROP), I finally was able to experience its strength and fervor firsthand.

While the extreme environments of volcanoes provide us with opportunities to mimic a Mars-like environment, it also presents unique challenges. At the same time that I was working in the lab, the volcano was exhibiting magmatic eruptions that prevented Laguna Caliente from reforming, so it was impossible to take any new samples. After two years of activity, the volcano finally calmed down and Laguna Caliente reformed. Within a month of the lake reforming, I was on a plane to Costa Rica. 

On November 15, 2019, I hiked into the Poás Volcano with Dr. Hynek and our collaborator Dr. Geoffroy Avard, a volcanologist at the Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica (OVSICORI). 

We drove to the crater rim and then spent an hour hiking down to Laguna Caliente. The Poás Volcano lies an hour outside of San José in the middle of the Costa Rican jungle, but once you hike below the rim it feels like you’re on another planet. Besides some trees and shrubs near the tourist observation deck, the Poás Volcano is devoid of natural life. The acidic sulfuric gasses kill anything that tries to grow within the crater and corrodes the rock, making unsteady ground when hiking down. The worst of it was the gasses that rise from the hydrochloric acid, which sting the eyes and taste more sour and bitter than I could have ever imagined.

Once we neared the floor of the crater, we had to put on gas masks to protect ourselves, and we also placed our cell phones in special bags to prevent corrosion. Surrounding us were car-sized tephra, rock fragments ejected by volcanic eruptions that occurred only months ago. We made it to the lake by walking on paths specially carved by Avard to avoid the many potholes of boiling water and mud.

Hiking into the Poás Volcano remains the most memorable experience of my time at CU Boulder. While in Costa Rica, I also sampled from two additional hot spring environments called Laguna Fumarolica and Borinquen, but they weren’t nearly as extreme as Laguna Caliente.

I was also fortunate to travel to Iceland in August 2021 with Dr. Hynek and Dr. Aileen Yingst from the Planetary Science Institute. Near Húsavík in northern Iceland, we performed field work to study how to best optimize the operations of the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. For my personal days on this research trip I took the liberty to visit the Fagradalsfjall Volcano, which was erupting at the time.

There were many reasons why I decided to stay at CU Boulder for my master’s after finishing my undergrad, but the main reason was so that I could see my astrobiology research to completion.

I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis about the Poás Volcano, which eventually led to my first academic paper, “Microbial Survival in an Extreme Martian Analog Ecosystem: Poás Volcano, Costa Rica.” It was published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences with a press release, which caught the attention of multiple media outlets including the Daily Mail, New Scientist, and CNN. For the first time, I was on the other side of the aisle and was being interviewed by journalists about my 9000-word research paper. 

I was hoping to visit Costa Rica again while a graduate student to sample from the Poás Volcano and try some new methodologies that I was studying. At the time that I was applying to do my master’s in aerospace engineering, however, the COVID-19 pandemic swooped in and made a lot of the work (and funding opportunities) that I wanted to do as a graduate student impossible.

With COVID restrictions relaxing, I received a Beverly Sears CU Graduate Student Fund award to return back to Costa Rica and perform the work I have been eager to do for so long. If all goes to plan, I will be returning to Costa Rica on May 6, 2022, one day after my graduation from the University of Colorado Boulder. This time, I’ll be visiting three volcanoes: the Turrialba Volcano, the Rincón de la Vieja Volcano, and my favorite, the Poás Volcano.

While I won’t be at CU to perform all of the follow-up research for this project, the time has finally come for me to pass the baton to two new undergrads that I have been training in the lab to continue this work.

My time at CU was defined by many things. I’ve worked with astronauts on the International Space Station, I’ve interviewed numerous faculty and students for the magazine, I’ve made life-long friends, I’ve experienced love and heartbreak, I’ve hiked across the country, I’ve guided rafts through roaring rivers and I’ve hiked into active volcanoes. 

CU Boulder has provided me with more opportunities than I could have hoped for when I started here nearly 6 years ago. I’m grateful to Dr. Hynek and all the people at CU who have provided these opportunities for me, and I will always cherish the experiences that I have had here. I could find no better way for me to conclude my career at CU Boulder than to hike into volcanoes for research once again.