WHAT: Brother Lucian Blersch Symposium — The Origin & Search for Life
WHEN: Friday, March 23, 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
WHERE: Mabee Ballroom, Robert and Pearle Ragsdale Center, St. Edward’s University

The half-day event will present lectures by Lucian Professor of Natural Sciences Allan W. Hook and guest speakers Antonio Lazcano, biology researcher and professor at the Universidad Nacional Autόnoma de México, and Jeffrey Bada, director of the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training in Exobiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.

SCHEDULE
10 a.m.             Welcome
10:15 a.m.        Antonio Lazcano, “The Origin and Early Evolution of Life”
11:15 a.m.        Jeffrey Bada, “Searching for Evidence of Life on Mars and Elsewhere in the                         Solar System”
Noon               Al Hook, “Perspectives form the Lucian Professor of Natural Sciences”
 
Organized by the School of Natural Sciences at St. Edward’s University, the event is free and open to the public. This annual symposium honors Brother Lucian Blersch, CSC, a longtime professor of engineering at St. Edward’s who died in 1986 and in whose name a professorship in the School of Natural Sciences was endowed by a gift from J.B.N. Morris, hs ’48, ’52, and his family.

Allan W. Hook is the Lucian Professor of Natural Sciences at St. Edward’s University. Hook, who organized this symposium, has taught at St. Edward’s since 1988. His research focuses on the behavior and biodiversity of solitary wasps in North, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Australia. He has authored or co-authored nearly 40 papers on these subjects. Hook holds a BS in Biology from the University of Maine, an MS in Entomology from the University of Georgia and a PhD in Zoology and Entomology from Colorado State University.

Antonio Lazcano is a biology researcher and professor at the Universidad Nacional Autόnoma de México in Mexico City. Lazcano pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies at UNAM, where he focused on the study of prebiotic evolution and the emergence of life, a subject he’s continued to study for 30 years. A professor-in-residence and visiting scientist in France, Spain, Cuba, Switzerland, Russia, and the United States, he has written several books in Spanish, including The Origin of Life, published in 1984. He has also served as a member of several advisory and review boards of scientific organizations, such as NASA, and currently serves as president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life.

Jeffrey Bada is director of the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training in Exobiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Along with advising and teaching graduate courses in geochemistry, Bada directs research on the accretion of organic material on the primitive earth and has served as lead investigator for the Mars Organic Detector. He has published more than 200 articles in scientific peer-reviewed journals, including Science and Nature, and presented papers at national and international meetings, such as the European Geophysical Society, the Geological Society of America, the American Chemical Society, and the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Bada also co-authored The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup, which was published in 2000. He holds a BS from San Diego State University and a PhD from the University of California–San Diego.