Ruth-Sophie Taubner

Since its foundation in 2001, EANA (European Astrobiology Network Association, http://www.eana-net.eu/ ) has organized annual meetings to foster and strengthen the astrobiology community within Europe. The growth of the European astrobiology community over the years is reflected not only in the growing participation at the annual EANA meeting but also in the foundation of the graduate network AbGradE (Astrobiology Graduates in Europe, https://abgrade.eu/ ) with many activities, meetings and workshops organized since 2014, including several joint events with EPEC (the EuroPlanet Early Career network), as well as the foundation of the European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) in 2019. The EANA Executive Council consists of national representatives from currently 21 European (and affiliated) countries with active astrobiology groups, networks or societies, as well as representatives of the early-career AbGradE network. The EANA network and especially the Executive Council therefore directly promote a broad and diverse representation of many career stages as well as nationalities including normally underrepresented countries. After more than two decades of a formal astrobiology network in Europe, it is time to explore and evaluate the actual obtained diversity within EANA and AbGradE with respect to nationality, gender and career status of our members based on our annual meeting participation, and to reflect on future measures to further improve the diversity and inclusiveness of our networks and events. We find that while our annual events are very diverse with respect to career stage, gender and research disciplines, a few aspects leave room for improvement, including especially a more balanced representation of different countries with astrobiology research within Europe and beyond. We discuss different equality, diversity and inclusivity measures that can be implemented for future EANA and AbGradE meetings in Europe to better represent the full astrobiology community within our networks.

The European Astrobiology Network Association (EANA) was founded in Spring 2001 during the first European workshop on Astrobiology co-organized with ESA at the ESRIN research facility in Frascati, Italy. Since then, EANA has organized annual meetings to continue fostering and strengthening the Astrobiology community within Europe, whose growth over the years is reflected not only in the growing participation at the annual EANA meeting, but also in the foundation of the graduate network AbGradE (Astrobiology Graduates in Europe) with many activities, meetings, and workshops organized since 2014, including several joint events with EPEC, the EuroPlanet Early Career network, as well as the foundation of the European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) in 2019. While the EAI brings together European research institutions with interest in Astrobiology to act as a joint consortium for research, dissemination, training, and outreach in Astrobiology, EANA instead acts as a network of networks and individuals, which is also reflected in the management of EANA. The EANA Executive Council consists of national representatives from 21 European (and affiliated) countries with active Astrobiology groups, networks, or societies. These national members are designated after consultation with institutional bodies supporting Astrobiology in the country concerned. In addition, the Council consists of elected members in a number equal to the number of active nations. These Councillors are elected by the EANA community and serve for three years. Due to this special structure of the EANA Executive Council, a broad and diverse representation of many nationalities including underrepresented countries is ensured. In addition, EANA always has focused especially on supporting the early-career community with different support structures and activities. This, together with the support of the EAI during the recent years, led to an ever-growing AbGradE network spanning by now far beyond European borders and celebrating its ten-year anniversary this year. In addition, the pandemic allowed us to explore additional virtual tools to connect our community and to grow beyond Europe. It is therefore time to explore and evaluate the diversity that the EANA and AbGradE networks have reached over the past decades with respect to nationality, gender, and career status of our members and annual meeting participants, depending also on where within Europe meetings were organized, and to reflect on future measures to improve the diversity and inclusiveness of our networks.

Introduction: Astrobiology Graduates in Europe (AbGradE, pronounced ab-grad-ee) is an association of early-career scientists working in fields relevant to astrobiological research. Conceptualized in 2013, it was initially designed as a mini-conference dedicated to early-career researchers (ECAs) in a more relaxed environment than that of traditional conferences. Our meetings act as a networking opportunity, as well as a practice round and steppingstone for ECAs entering the world of academic research.Audience & topics engaged: Our audience is mostly composed of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, but not only: undergraduates, senior scientists, and researchers from different disciplines with a strong interest in astrobiology are also welcome to attend our meetings. The topics engaged at our events, both symposia and workshops, naturally include the obvious themes related to astrobiology, and go beyond them by delving into social sciences and humanities (e.g., an online Space law and governance meeting in 2021). Specific workshops were organized on more practical issues like science communication, space mission design, networking, and navigating post-graduate research. Other issues, like mental health in a research context, are also considered for future editions.Collaborations: AbGradE has been involved in astrobiology schools, such as the EANA International hydrothermal spring school. As the spiritual daughter organization of EANA, AbGradE maintains strong ties with it while developing on its own into an organization by ECAs, for ECAs, in a similar fashion to how AbGradCon operates. Over the years, AbGradE also teamed up with other organizations, like the European Astrobiology Campus (EAC), the European Astrobiology Institute (EAI), and the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) Network.Online presence: In the spirit of the “work from home” attitude prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic, AbGradE has attempted to provide more online resources. Apart from moving meetings online, we have built a website and sent out a quarterly newsletter to keep ECAs engaged, and to encourage a sense of community during the lockdown-ridden time of the pandemic.Scope: Within the last couple of years, AbGradE became the first point of call for European, but also for an increasing number of non-European ECAs, especially with the recent development of online resources. This presentation aims to present how AbGradE has evolved over the years (in its structure and in its way of organizing events), how it has adapted with the COVID-19 pandemic, and what future developments are considered.

In 2022, the Space Research Institute in Graz (Austria) together with the Graz University of Technology and the University of Graz launches the Young Researcher Program in interdisciplinary space science and planetary research (YRP@Graz). This program aims to provide a network within which the PhD candidates will benefit from the infrastructure and the international standing of the scientific landscape of Graz. The various topics offered in the frame of this program range from the atmospheres of exoplanets via solar and heliospheric physics through to space instrumentation. The candidates have the opportunity to apply for two to five different projects. For this newly established program, one major aim is to establish an inclusive application process that is open to everybody having a fitting academic and scientific background. The initiators of the program are aware of the challenges and limits that (unconscious) biases in application processes poses for organisations (e.g., gender bias as reported in Moss-Racusin et al., 2012) leading eventually to underperforming organisation because of an over-homogeneity of their staff. One first step to improve the current situation is implementing an anonymous questionary for the first stage of the application process. This is already a common procedure in the private sector (e.g., Rinne, 2018). In the anonymous questionary, the candidates are asked to only give general information like the title of their master project or the expected date of finishing their master's degree. The only personal information given is the email address. The email address is needed for further communication with the candidates and, however, will not be forwarded to the appointments committee. All submissions are screened for personal information to remove them before handing over to the appointments committee. Besides information about the candidates' academic background, the applicants are invited to write a short statement about how their expertise would fit the chosen project(s) and a short proposal about what they would like to focus on during their PhD within the frame of the project(s). Further, we ask the candidates to reflect on their ethical behaviour in their research in order to assure research integrity. From the applications submitted via the questionary, a substantial list of candidates will be compiled. These students will proceed to stage 2 and will be invited for an interview. Only at that stage, we will ask for personal information including reference letters, diploma certificate(s), etc. We will present the questionary, statistics about and feedback from the applicants regarding the application process, and our conclusions and suggestions for improvements. With that we hope to motivate further institutions to perform open application processes to minimize biases and to raise the accessibility and inclusive atmosphere within science.   References: Young Researcher Program in interdisciplinary space science and planetary research (2022), Overview. Available at: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/iwf/research/young-researcher-program-yrpgraz (accessed: 5 May 2022). Moss-Racusin, C.A.,  Dovidio, J.F. Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., and Handelsman, J. Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students (2012). PNAS, 109 (41), 16474 —16479, doi:10.1073/pnas.1211286109 Rinne, U. Anonymous job applications and hiring discrimination (2018). IZA World of Labor, 48 doi: 10.15185/izawol.48.v2

Archaeal lipids have a high biotechnological potential, caused by their high resistance to oxidative stress, extreme pH values and temperatures, as well as their ability to withstand phospholipases. Further, methanogens, a specific group of archaea, are already well-established in the field of biotechnology because of their ability to use carbon dioxide and molecular hydrogen or organic substrates. In this study, we show the potential of the model organism Methanothermobacter marburgensis to act both as a carbon dioxide based biological methane producer and as a potential supplier of archaeal lipids. Different cultivation settings were tested to gain an insight into the optimal conditions to produce specific core lipids. The study shows that up-scaling at a constant particle number (n/n = const.) seems to be a promising approach. Further optimizations regarding the length and number of the incubation periods and the ratio of the interaction area to the total liquid volume are necessary for scaling these settings for industrial purposes.

Astrobiology Graduates in Europe (AbGradE, pronounced ab-grad-ee) is an association of early-career scientists working in fields relevant to astrobiological research. Conceptualized in 2013, it was initially designed as a mini-conference or workshop dedicated to early-career researchers, providing a friendly environment where early-career minds would be able to present their research without being intimidated by the possibility of facing a more traditional audience, composed mainly of senior scientists. Within the last couple of years, AbGradE became the first point of call for European, but also for an increasing number of non-European, early-career astrobiologists. This article aims to present how AbGradE has evolved over the years (in its structure and in its way of organizing events), how it has adapted with the COVID-19 pandemic, and what future developments are considered.

Bioprocesses converting carbon dioxide with molecular hydrogen to methane (CH₄) are currently being developed to enable a transition to a renewable energy production system. In this study, we present a comprehensive physiological and biotechnological examination of 80 methanogenic archaea (methanogens) quantifying growth and CH₄ production kinetics at hyperbaric pressures up to 50 bar with regard to media, macro-, and micro-nutrient supply, specific genomic features, and cell envelope architecture. Our analysis aimed to systematically prioritize high-pressure and high-performance methanogens. We found that the hyperthermophilic methanococci Methanotorris igneus and Methanocaldococcoccus jannaschii are high-pressure CH₄ cell factories. Furthermore, our analysis revealed that high-performance methanogens are covered with an S-layer, and that they harbour the amino acid motif Tyr^α444 Gly^α445 Tyr^α446 in the alpha subunit of the methyl-coenzyme M reductase. Thus, high-pressure biological CH₄ production in pure culture could provide a purposeful route for the transition to a carbon-neutral bioenergy sector.

The icy satellites of Jupiter and Saturn are perhaps the most promising places in the Solar System regarding habitability. However, the potential habitable environments are hidden underneath km-thick ice shells. The discovery of Enceladus’ plume by the Cassini mission has provided vital clues in our understanding of the processes occurring within the interior of exooceans. To interpret these data and to help configure instruments for future missions, controlled laboratory experiments and simulations are needed. This review aims to bring together studies and experimental designs from various scientific fields currently investigating the icy moons, including planetary sciences, chemistry, (micro-)biology, geology, glaciology, etc. This chapter provides an overview of successfulin situ,in silico, andin vitroexperiments, which explore different regions of interest on icy moons, i.e. a potential plume, surface, icy shell, water and brines, hydrothermal vents, and the rocky core.