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Jack O'Malley-James | Homepage

Welcome to my homepage. I began my academic life as a physicist, then became a pseudo-biologist, before finally settling into the astronomy deparment at the University of St Andrews to put the two skill sets together to the task of astrobiology. I am now in the third year of an STFC funded PhD project investigating biosignatures of diverse microbial life on extrasolar planets.

My current research interests are centred around how climate and habitability on Earth analogue planets evolve alongside the main sequence evolution of the planet's host star with the aim of determining how the planet's biosignatures change throughout the course of its habitable lifetime and at what point a planet ceases to be habitable.

Publications

O'Malley-James J.T., Raven J.A., Cockell C.S., Greaves J.S. (2012), Life and Light: Exotic Photosynthesis in Binary and Multiple Star Systems, Astrobiology 12(2): 115-124

"Exotic Photosynthesis in Binary Star Systems" - popular astronomy article for l'Astrofilo

O'Malley-James J.T., Greaves J.S., Raven J.A., Cockell C.S. (2012), Swansong Biospheres: Refuges for life and novel microbial biospheres on terrestrial planets near the end of their habitable lifetimes, International Journal of Astrobiology 12(2): 99-112.

O'Malley-James J.T. and Lutz S. (2013) From Life to Exolife: The interdependence of astrobiology and evolutionary biology. In: Evolutionary Biology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Mechanisms, ed. Pierre Pontarotti. Springer. In press.

Novoselov A.A., Serrano P., Pacheco M.L.A.F., Chaffin M.S., O'Malley-James J.T.,Moreno S.C. and Ribeiro F.B. (2013) From Cytoplasm to Environment: The Inorganic Ingredients for the Origin of Life. Astrobiology 13(3): 294-302.