Betül Kaçar
2024
Anticipation Committee Chair
Pulse of Science
Betul Kacar (pron. BE-tuel KUH-charr) is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Department of Bacteriology. She received her Ph.D. in Biomolecular Chemistry from Emory University, and completed her postdoctoral studies at NASA Astrobiology Institute and Harvard University on Origins of Life and Evolutionary Biology. Her research group investigates the coevolution of cellular life and environment in lifeforms extinct and extant, using experimental and computational systems. Dr. Kaçar was selected to receive a Stanley Miller Early Career Award in 2022, a Scialog fellow for Search for Life in the Universe in 2021, and was named a NASA Early Career Fellow in 2020. She partnered with the 2020 UN Women Generation Equality Campaign to support education of girls and women globally and was named a Way Cool Scientist by the Science Club for Girls in 2017. In 2021, she was selected to direct a new NASA-funded multimillion-dollar astrobiology research center focusing on life’s early evolution with emphasis on the natural selection elements over geologic time. In 2022, she was appointed as one of the leaders of a new NASA Research Coordination Network (RCN) on Early Cellular Evolution. In 2022 she delivered a TED talk on the mainstage discussing the chemical cocktail of life in the cosmos.
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