Dr Emily Mitchell is Associate Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe, NERC Independent Research Fellow, Assistant Professor and Curator of Invertebrates in the Department of Zoology and Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. Her main research interests fall under the Centre's research theme "Characterising the cradle of prebiotic chemistry and life" and include understanding how “normal” our history of life is – if we find life on an exoplanet with a similar planetary configuration as earth, and a similar age, will there be humans? To understand what evolution may look like on other planets, it is crucial to understand what the “null models” of evolution are – given a set of abiotic parameters, such as temperature or oxygen levels, how does evolution proceed, and how may it be different elsewhere?
