Post-Doctoral Associate,
JPL Origins and Habitability Lab, NASA-JPL,
Geomicrobiology Research Group, Department of Geosciences, Princeton University
Devan is a geosciences PhD candidate in the Onstott Lab at Princeton University, and she is interested in understanding the hydrogeochemical history of deep subsurface brines and how brine geochemistry can influence microbial habitability and metabolic diversity. She is currently working with Dr. TC Onstott and Dr. Scott Perl on a Strategic University Research Partnership to investigate the unique abiotic (prebiotic?) geochemical signatures of a hypersaline brine in the deep subsurface of South Africa’s Witwatersrand Basin, and how this brine environment may serve as an analog for understanding biomarker preservation, microbial mobility, and microbial metabolic strategies in brine environments on Mars and beyond.