Professor Dirk Schulze-Makuch

Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Ph.D., P.G. is Professor at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Washington State University.
 
Dirk grew up in Germany. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Geology from the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany in 1988 and 1991, respectively. After finishing his Ph.D. in Geosciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1996, he went to work for a Princeton-based research and consulting firm. There he worked as a Senior Project Hydrogeologist with his major tasks being to investigate and coordinate the remediation of hydrocarbon spills in the subsurface. In 1997, he was appointed Adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. He then joined the University of Texas at El Paso in 1998 as an Assistant Professor with research emphasis on the transport of microbes and chemicals in the groundwater environment, and the interactions of microbes with their natural environment.
 
His research interest is in eco-hydrogeology. His research includes a broad interdisciplinary approach and he deals with research areas ranging from the transport of pathogens and microbes in the subsurface and the use of reactive barriers to protect drinking water wells (he holds a patent in that area) to microbial interactions with the natural environment and the suitability of planetary environments to microbial colonization.
 
Dirk coauthored The Cosmic Zoo: Complex Life on Many Worlds, Cosmic Biology: How Life Could Evolve on Other Worlds, We Are Not Alone: Why We Have Already Found Extraterrestrial Life, and Life in the Universe: Expectations and Constraints (Advances in Astrobiology and Biogeophysics), The Human Mission to Mars. Colonizing the Red Planet, coedited A One Way Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet, and authored the novel Voids of Eternity: Alien Encounter.
 
His papers include Scale dependency of hydraulic conductivity in heterogeneous media, Biologically Enhanced Energy and Carbon Cycling on Titan?, A Possible Biogenic Origin for Hydrogen Peroxide on Mars: The Viking Results Reinterpreted, Exploration of hydrothermal targets on Mars, Scenarios for the evolution of life on Mars, The Effect of Critical pH on Virus Fate and Transport in Saturated Porous Medium, Io: Is Life Possible Between Fire and Ice?, and Field Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Surfactant Modified Zeolite and Iron-Oxide-Coated Sand for Removing Viruses and Bacteria from Ground Water.
 
Watch Why Take a One-Way Trip to Mars? and NASA planning one-way mission to Mars. Read More News of Life on Mars and Saturn’s Titan. Read his LinkedIn profile. Visit his Facebook page.