CV

Stuart Bartlett is a scientist exploring how life can begin, why and how it becomes more complex, and how it might be detected beyond Earth. He graduated with an MPhys degree in Physics from the University of Bath in 2008. After an assistantship at the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) in Davos, Switzerland, he began a PhD in Complex Systems Simulation at the University of Southampton, graduating in 2014. He then took up a postdoctoral position in the Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. In 2016 he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the Earth- life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This included research visits to the California Institute of Technology, where he now continues as a staff scientist.

Stuart carries out research in several areas including astrobiology, complex systems, ar- tificial life, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics. He has carried out extensive work on the thermodynamics of convective fluid flows, starting with analyses of thermodynamic extremum principles. More recent work has shown that convective flows are capable of hysteresis, memory, and computation. He is also an expert in reaction-diffusion sys- tems. His graduate work highlighted examples of life-like behaviour in these non-living systems, including self-replication, competition and homeostasis. Recent modelling work has uncovered mechanisms by which such structures can exhibit associative learn- ing, with significant implications for the origins of life and artificial life. He is now collaborating with experimentalists to instantiate these systems in the laboratory. Stuart recently pioneered a novel approach to exoplanet analysis and biosignature de- tection using methods from complexity science. The work was funded through a NASA grant and the first phase showed not only that exoplanet complexity can be quanti- fied using remote measurements of light reflectance, but also that Earth’s measured complexity is approximately 45% higher than that of Jupiter. The eventual aim is to furnish this approach into a life detection method. Stuart has also published philosoph- ical works concerning the characterisation of life and its relationship to learning, and also pioneered a novel study of the relationships between minerals and enzymes.

Stuart is an integrated member of the artificial life, astrobiology and origins of life communities, reviewing manuscripts and assisting with conferences and workshops. He conducts peer review for several journals, with a focus on articles related to the thermodynamics of life. He has a strong interest in outreach, having given research seminars to the local city college, organised a public workshop at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, spoken at a TEDx event, supervised students of many different back- grounds from high school to graduate, and given guest lectures at various institutions. He also assists with the teaching of Caltech’s astrobiology course. Stuart’s work was highlighted in two Guardian articles (1 and 2) discussing possible Martian life and a new life definition introduced in a paper co-authored with Dr Michael Wong. This work was also discussed in a BBC Mundo article and an article in the French newspaper Libération.

EDUCATION

  • PhD Complex Systems Simulation 2009-2014 University of Southampton, UK. Thesis title: Why is Life? An Assessment of the Thermodynamic Properties of Dissipative, Pattern-forming Systems. Thesis advisor: Professor Seth Bullock (currently Chair in Data Science and Simulation, University of Bristol)
  • Degree: MPhys Physics 2004-2008, University of Bath, UK. 4-year undergraduate Masters programme with a 12-month industrial placement at the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF), Davos, Switzerland. Classification: First Class Honours

PUBLICATION INFORMATION

Total reviewed publications: 25 (1.8/yr) H-index: 9
Number of reviewed publications as first author: Since 2008: 17 (1.3/yr)
Since 2015: 13 (2.2/yr)

GRANTS

  • Caltech Center for Comparative Planetary Evolution Award 2021
  • Caltech Geological and Planetary Sciences Discovery Fund 2020
  • NASA Second Exoplanets Research, NNH18ZDA001N-2XRP
  • Caltech Geological and Planetary Sciences Discovery Fund 2018
  • Earth-Life Science Institute EON Postdoctoral Fellowship 2016-2018
  • UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council PhD Studentship

AWARDS

  • International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, ISSOL Annual Meeting, 2021: Best Poster Award
  • International Conference on Artificial Life, ALife 2016: Best Paper Award
  • European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL 2015: Best Paper Award
  • UK Student Conference on Complexity Science 2012: Best Presentation Award
  • UK Intermediate Mathematical Challenge 2001: Silver Award
  • UK Junior Mathematical Challenge 1999: Gold Award
  • UK Junior Mathematical Challenge 1998: Silver Award

EXPERIENCE

Staff Scientist, May 2021-present: Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, United States.

  • Demonstrated that simple, non-living chemical structures can exhibit associative learning (in collaboration with David Louapre of Science Étonnante, Paris, France)
  • Pioneered a new technique for exoplanet analysis and biosignature detection us- ing techniques from complexity science (in collaboration with Drs Jonathan Jiang and Vijay Natraj of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lana Sinapayen of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Nicolas Brodu of INRIA Bordeaux, and Professor Yuk Yung, Lixiang Gu and Siteng Fan of Caltech).
  • Developing techniques for the structural and chemical comparison of mineral and enzyme active site structures (in collaboration with Daniel Zhao of Harvard University, Steffen Buessecker of Stanford University, Chris Butch of Nanjing University, Shawn McGlynn and Sebastian Sanden of the Earth-Life Science Institute, and Yuk Yung of Caltech).
  • Demonstrated that logic gates based on thermal fluid flows can perform Boolean logic operations, and these gates can even be integrated to form small computing circuits (in collaboration with Andrew Gao at Peking University and Yuk Yung of Caltech).
  • Peer review and committees: Program Committee Chair for ALife 2022, the International Conference on Artificial Life, (also committee member for the annual Artificial Life conferences), and reviewer of articles for various journals including Life and Entropy. Also served on a review panel for the NASA Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research.
  • Experimental and mathematical analyses of thioester chemistry for the origins of life (in collaboration with Sebastien Sanden and Professor Shawn McGlynn of the Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo, and Dr Kuhan Chandru of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia).

Postdoctoral Researcher, May 2018-Apr 2021: Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, United States.

  • Published a novel structural comparison of mineral and enzyme active centers (in collaboration with Professor Yuk Yung of Caltech and student Daniel Zhao of Harvard).
  • Published the first works showing that thermal convection systems can store and process information including Boolean logic operations (in collaboration with Professor Yuk Yung of Caltech)
  • Published a new, universal definition of life (in collaboration with Dr Michael Wong of the University of Washington)
  • Published a proposal for the use of stochastic thermodynamics, information ther- modynamics and computational mechanics in origins studies (in collaboration with Patrick Beckett at University of California Davis).

Postdoctoral Fellow, April 2016-April 2018: ELSI Origins Network, Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, with two six month research visits to the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, United States.

  • Numerical investigations of the non-equilibrium thermodynamics properties of convecting fluids.
  • Numerical investigations of pattern-forming, thermal reaction-diffusion-advection systems.
  • Modelling of hydrothermal vents (in collaboration with Dr Donato Giovannelli of the University of Naples Federico II, and Dr Mustafa Yucel of the Middle East Technical University).
  • Experimental and mathematical assessment of thioester chemistry for the origins of life

Postdoctoral Researcher, Aug 2014-Feb 2016: CRYOS Lab, EPFL, Switzerland

  • Published several papers showing how Switzerland’s power system could become fully renewable.

Research Assistant, May 2009-Sep 2009: SLF, Davos, Switzerland

  • Published an analytical study of the mechanisms by which heat enters snowpacks due to wind-driven ventilation.

Ski rental and sales clerk, Dec 2008-Apr 2009: Top Secret Freeski and Snowboard Shop, Davos, Switzerland

  • Working in a tourism-oriented business where the main language was not English not only improved my language skills, but also my diplomatic, time-management and business skills.

Undergraduate Research Placement, Jul 2006-Sep 2007: SLF, Davos, Switzerland

  • Published three papers (one as first author) on the computational and experimental characterisation of snow crystals, experimental and theoretical analysis of snow deposition processes, and statistical assessments of snow surfaces.

Retail, sales and stock control (part-time), 1998-2014: Streets Ironmongers, Brockenhurst, UK

  • Dealing with people of all social demographics gave me invaluable inter-personal skills. Working in the hardware industry has also endowed me with life-long, widely applicable practical abilities.

TEACHING, MENTORING AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Pasadena City College

Each year, I give several guest lectures to students of Pasadena City College, a com- munity college that serves a diverse range of students including many from underrepre- sented minorities. I also volunteered as a tutor for helping students with their physics problems classes. I learnt a great deal from interacting with the great students at this school, and learning from Professor Qian, who is a master of science communication. I was also delighted by the enthusiasm that many of them had for astrobiology and the mysteries of life.

Class GE:AY159 Astrobiology

I teach the thermodynamics, information, complexity and artificial life section of the Caltech Planetary Sciences Astrobiology class. This is attended by both undergradu- ate and graduate students from a range of departments and backgrounds. In addition to the class, several students often choose to take on real research projects with us.

Student supervision

For the past two years, I have supervised high school students that join our annual summer reading class. As well as the class, several are often keen to help us with our research. This was a highly enlightening experience, since the abilities of some of these students is nothing short of astounding. These collaborations have led to various pa- pers being published and authored by the students.

Astrobiology reading group

I am the coordinator of an astrobiology reading group that includes students of all levels from high school to graduate, and researchers from Caltech and other national and international institutions. I arrange the weekly meetings and lead discussions of papers.

Teaching assistant for the EPFL 3rd year undergraduate module: Atmospheric Science (2015)

Responsibilities included writing weekly problem sets, guiding students through worked examples, setting exam questions and marking. Topics included basic thermodynamics and fluid dynamics as applied to atmospheric physics, boundary layer theory, atmo- spheric radiation and basic meteorology.

Postgraduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Southampton (2013)

I served as a tutor for the mathematical component of the artificial intelligence module: Intelligent Systems. Topics included functions, limits and series, differentiation and optimisation, vector spaces and linear algebra, partial and total derivatives, gra- dients and gradient descent. I also presented two lectures for the module: Introduc- tion to Complexity Science. In these lectures, postgraduate students were introduced to equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, dissipative structures and self- organisation.

INTERESTS AND OUTREACH

Caltech CPA: Until becoming a Staff Scientist, I was the Geological and Planetary Sciences Division representative in the Caltech Postdoctoral Association. In this role I worked to uphold the interests of division postdocs and serve as their voice and repre- sentation, if necessary. In this role, I organised a seminar concerning postdoc’s rights under Title IX and Title VII, which are sets of legislation for protecting employees from discrimination and harassment. We are now in the process of organising social events and activities for the division.

ELSI Origins I & II: During my fellowship at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo, I organised a public workshop that told the story of the emergence of struc- tures in our solar system, from the formation of planets, to the first life on Earth, complex life and eventually to artificial intelligence and new forms of consciousness. I wanted to allow a public audience to share in the inspiring work that colleagues and myself were engaged in, and I hoped to inspire future young students to become involved in the study of the workings of the universe and the origin of life. To my sur- prise, the largest group of attendees were senior members of the local community, who showed great enthusiasm and interest, avidly taking notes during presentations and asking insightful questions during the Q & A sessions. We received very positive feed- back from the attendees of the event, and it was a great deal of fun to have brought the event from conception to delivery. The following year I was asked to help organise ELSI Origins II (from a distance, since I was at Caltech at the time). I assisted in pro- ducing promotional material and gathering speakers for the event, and it was also a success.

PhD outreach: During my PhD I engaged in various public and academic events to communicate my research and science in general. One highlight was when I presented a talk: Closing the Loop: Entropy Accounting for a Sustainable World, concerning natural and human ecosystems and the thermodynamics of recycling, at the 2013 TEDx Southampton event. I also took part in several ‘Meet the Scientist’ events, in which school children are given the chance to hear from and interact with researchers, such that they get a window into the world of being an active scientist.

Charity Work: In 2008 I travelled to Indonesia as a volunteer research assistant, working for Operation Wallacea, a conservation organisation. I assisted in population monitoring of several animal species in the rainforests of Lambusango on the island of Buton. These included the Buton Macaque and various bat species. The Lambu- sango forest is under threat from illegal logging and illegal mining so I was happy to contribute to its preservation. Upon my return I gave a presentation on my expedition to a local group, which had supported me in my fundraising activities.

SKILLS

Languages: English (native), German (confident)

Programming Languages: C, MPI, Matlab, LATEX

CAD software: AutoCAD, AutoDesk Fusion 360

Machine Shop: Metal lathe, metal mill, MIG welder, TIG welder

Leave a comment