Prof. Douglas Edward LaRowe, Ph.D.

Douglas Edward LaRowe is Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

He has been trained in Earth and planetary sciences at the Washington University in St. Louis. After his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley and his postdoc at the Utrecht University, he became research scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and then three years later at the University of Southern California, where he is assistant professor of Earth sciences since 2014. Since 2016 he is additionally adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

The goal of Douglas Edward LaRowe research is to develop quantitative tools for describing interactions between microorganisms and their geochemical environments. In addition to working towards understanding how microbes, minerals, aqueous fluids and gases interact, his work can also be used to explore the origin and early evolution of life and to aid the search for life beyond earth.

He is a Visiting Fellow in September and October 2018 in the context of the CAS Research Group "Recreating the Origin of Life" following an invitation from Prof. Dr. Dieter Braun. On 17 September 2018 he will give a lecture on "Limits to Life in the Subsurface".