Thomas C. Preston awarded grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Funding to support research on atmospheric aerosol particles and the emergence of life on Earth
Professor Thomas C. Preston -- jointly appointed to the departments of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and Chemistry -- has been awarded a grant of USD$800,000 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The grant will support Professor Preston’s research on atmospheric aerosol particles, with the goal of advancing understanding of the origin of life's building blocks on early Earth.
The project, titled "Prebiotic Chemistry in Atmospheric Aerosol Particles," seeks to investigate the role that reaction acceleration in aerosol droplets played in the emergence of life from inorganic material. Through examining these reactions, with a focus on aqueous cyanide and phosphate chemistry, Professor Preston and his team aim to uncover new clues about how life began on Earth some 4 billion years ago.
“Aerosol particles on early Earth would have interacted with different geochemical environments, enabling both the transfer and transformation of chemical species across the atmosphere, oceans, and land surfaces,” said Preston. “The optical trapping experiments in our lab at McGill allow us to investigate the behaviour of these particles as microreactors and how they can transform simple reactants into complex organic molecules.”
“McGill congratulates Professor Preston on receiving this significant grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, an achievement that underscores the importance of interdisciplinary research,” said Dominique Bérubé, Vice-President of Research and Innovation at McGill University. “By bridging the fields of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and chemistry, and by working at the frontier of atmospheric particle science, this project will shed light on some of the greatest mysteries about the chemical origin of life on Earth.”
Founded in 1934, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a not-for-profit grantmaking institution that aims to strategically support outstanding scientific research in various fields, ranging from science and technology to economics.
“This project exemplifies the type of potentially high-impact research that the Sloan Foundation is committed to funding,” said Ernie Glover, program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “By uncovering the mechanisms that allow droplets to accelerate prebiotically relevant chemistry, Professor Preston's work has the potential to provide important new insights into how life arose on Earth.”
Learn more about Professor Preston’s work here. To learn more about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, click here.