NMT Earth and Environmental Science graduate Student Zoë Havlena was recently awarded a prestigious NASA grant to fund her doctoral research in geomicrobiology. Her project is “Interpreting Acidic Gypsum Deposits as Hosts for Past and Present Microbial Life.” Havlena will be collecting and analyzing gypsum samples from four cave systems in an effort to shed light on how life could grow in harsh ecosystems, such as other planets or moons.