Mary Voytek

Mary Voytek is the Senior Scientist for Astrobiology in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA HQ. She is the founding Director of Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, a NASA research coordination network dedicated to the study of planetary habitability. Before NASA she was at U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, VA, where she headed the USGS Microbiology and Molecular Ecology Laboratory. She has degrees in Biochemistry, Biology and Ocean Sciences and her primary research interest is aquatic microbial ecology and biogeochemistry and has worked in several extreme environments including Antarctica, the arctic, hypersaline lakes, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and terrestrial deep-subsurface sites.