Catharine Anastasia Conley (born October 9, 1966) is an American scientist known for her research on

plants in space The growth of plants in outer space has elicited much scientific interest. In the late 20th and early 21st century, plants were often taken into space in low Earth orbit to be grown in a weightless but pressurized controlled environment, sometime ...

. She was

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

's 6th Planetary Protection Officer from 2006 through 2018.

Early life

Catharine Anastasia Conley was born on October 9, 1966 to mathematician Charles Cameron Conley and geneticist Catharine "Kit" Smith.McGehee, Richard (1988)
Charles C. Conley, 1933–1984
''Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys.'' (1988), 8*, 1-7.

Education

Conley received her bachelor's from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

, a Ph.D. in Plant Biology from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

in 1994, and obtained a postdoctoral fellow position at The

Scripps Research Institute Scripps Research is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institute has over 170 laboratories employing 2,100 scientists, tec ...

studying proteins involved in muscle contraction. Conley conducted some of her research using the nematode ''

Caenorhabditis elegans ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a Hybrid word, blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''r ...

''.

NASA career

In 1999 Conley became a research scientist with the NASA

Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

. Her research focuses on the evolution of motility, particularly animal muscle. One of her experiments was on board during the

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster On Saturday, February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia, Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disintegrated as it Atmospheric entry, re-entered the atmosphere over Texas and Louisiana, killing all seven astronauts on board. It was the second List of Spa ...

. The experiment, the fourteenth Biological Research In Canisters (BRIC-14), survived re-entry and the nematode cultures were still alive. Some scientific data was recovered. In 2006, Conley was appointed as NASA's Planetary Protection Officer (see

Planetary protection Planetary protection is a guiding principle in the design of an interplanetary mission, aiming to prevent biological contamination of both the target celestial body and the Earth in the case of sample-return missions. Planetary protection refle ...

), replacing John Rummel. A NASA re-organization opened the job for competition in 2017, and Conley was replaced by Dr. Lisa Pratt in February 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Conley, Cassie Living people 1966 births Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumni NASA people Scripps Research alumni Year of birth missing (living people) American botanists