Tony Z. Jia and his drive to grow astrobiology in Asia

ELSI Chemistry Unit lab manager and specially appointed assistant professor Tony Z. Jia is working to raise the profile of astrobiology and origins of life research across Asia.  (Nerissa Escanlar) 

For sixteen years now, the highly acclaimed Astrobiology Graduate Conference – yearly gatherings for graduate students and early career researchers interested in a career in astrobiology – have brought hundreds of young scientists together to experience the excitement and realities of the field.

The students and researchers come together to share their research into the origins of life and the search for life beyond Earth, to collaborate, and often to give some of their first talks before an audience of scientists.  

So far, the AbGradCon gatherings have always been held in North America or Europe – destinations including Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Denver, Montreal, Puerto Rico, and Tällberg, Sweden.

But in 2020, AbGradCon will convene in Asia for the first time – more specifically at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo. This is in no small measure the doing of ELSI specially appointed assistant professor and Chemistry Unit lab manager Tony Z. Jia, who is also affiliated with Blue Marble Space Institute of Science (BMSIS).

A four-time attendee of AbGradCon, he (and others) felt the conference needed to expand its reach to Asia – to attract young Asian scientists interested in the field, to showcase astrobiology work being done in Asian nations, and to increase Asian interest in the field.

Because AbGradCon is led and organized by grad students and young researchers, conference Chair Jia and ELSI colleague, research scientist and Co-chair Kristin Johnson, played a central role in advancing the idea of a transoceanic change of venue.  

The pieces all fell into place and as a result, as many as 100 young scientists are expected to convene for AbGradCon 2020 at ELSI next September 14-18, one month after the Olympics leave town and one week after the Paralympics leave town.

AbGradCon attendees at the 2019 gathering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Seventy-five graduate students, postdocs and other early career scientists interested in astrobiology presented 31 talks and 44 posters.  (Mike Toillion, NASA)

“The U.S. has a consolidated astrobiology research community, and there are new astrobiology centers over Europe. And so there’s been a lot of collaboration,” Jia said. “In Asia that has not been the case, and is not nearly as common. There’s work being done in many countries, for example in Japan, but the resources in other places are limited and it’s not so easy to travel.

“And compared to the US and Europe, the issues just don’t seem to have the same level of public interest yet.” 


Jia would like to play a role in changing that, and working with both AbGradCon and ELSI to have next year’s gathering in Tokyo is very much part of that effort – as is helping to organize various astrobiology training schools in Japan.  

He is also hopeful that an Asian Astrobiology Society – conceived with other astrobiology researchers from Asia at the 2019 AbSciCon (Astrobiology Science Conference) in Bellevue, USA – can be established as part of an effort to knit together more closely the various astrobiology science networks that do exist in Asian nations. Those national networks have produced the Australasia Astrobiology Meeting in New Zealand, the Emergence of Life Workshop in India in 2019, and the Search for Life Conference in Vietnam 2019, among others. The Australasia group also has plans for a 2020 conference in Japan just before the AbGradCon meeting.

And just recently, Jia and ELSI colleague Yamei Li won approval for a Japan-China joint symposium in biogeochemistry and astrobiology, to be held in Hainan, China in November.

“Geographical proximity plays a role in scientific networks; it has to,” he said. “And with so many national groups forming, that means a regional, Asian astrobiology society just makes sense.”For now, though, the idea is to grow existing networks and, as Jia put it, “if we find a person with no network, we’ll work to connect them.” 

Jia is a biochemist, with degrees in Chemistry (Harvard, Caltech), and also in Business, Economics, and Management (Caltech). His research focuses include self-assembly of molecular structures, membrane-free protocells, and DNA liquid crystals – all in the context of the origins of life.  (Nerissa Escanlar)

For Jia, working to bring cultures together comes naturally. Born in China, raised in Chicago, and educated at Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology, he has been in Tokyo and at ELSI since 2017.


 “I would say that Tony has consistently been the face of (AbGradCon) inclusivity and its champion for strengthening connections between its global sub-communities,” said Harrison Smith, a specialist in complex systems who has also been involved with AbGradCon for some time. 

“He travels a lot, which means he makes it to many of the big and smaller conferences in our field,” Smith said. “And at the conferences I've attended that he's present at, he's always encouraging people to travel to conferences, to come visit ELSI, and more generally to take action from their ideas.”  

Jia says the outreach is an effort to help other Asian astrobiology enthusiasts connect and collaborate, but also to help expand and deepen the field itself.  Research potentially very useful to astrobiology is being done in nations such as India, China, and South Korea, but the researchers don’t necessarily see the connection to, or relevance of, astrobiology.

As an example, Jia said that in India there are many private manufacturing corporations with technology that could contribute to astrobiology significantly. 

“But because the field hasn’t gained a strong foothold there yet – it’s growing very quickly now but still needs more time and people – these companies are reluctant to contribute. Same with many researchers in astrobiology-related fields; the research is relevant, but either they don’t know why it’s relevant, or they think astrobiology as a field isn’t important enough for them to participate in.” 

 Jia delivering a public lecture on astrobiology at Ruia College in Mumbai, India on India’s National Science Day. The lecture was facilitated by Chaitanya Giri (a former EON postdoc) and Aishwarya Paknikar of Dawon Advisory and Intelligence. (Aishwarya Paknikar)

The energy behind Jia’s drive is to bring these people into the international astrobiology community. “Inclusivity,” he said, “should be the goal of astrobiology as a field.”

And on a more practical level, he sees the expansion of astrobiology in Asia (and elsewhere) as potentially opening up new research opportunities for astrobiology teaching positions, collaborations, and funding throughout the region.

The idea of an AbGradCon in Japan had been percolating for a few years and came together in Texas at the Gordon Research Conference on the origins of life in 2018.

AbGradCon is a unique initiative, organized and planned by the students and young researchers who come to the conferences, which means its leadership is ever changing. Much of its funding has come from NASA’s astrobiology program in the past, and the conference has its origins in the much larger AbSciCon held every other year and are a premier gathering of field of astrobiology.

Generally, AbGradCon attendees have an opportunity to vote on university and research venues competing for the conference, rather like potential Olympic cities.  But in 2018 a decision was made to have a simple “yes” or “no” vote on holding the conference at ELSI. The vote was overwhelmingly “yes.”

The 2020 AbGradCon will be the first held in Asia, and only the second held outside of North America.

Just as holding and funding an AbGradCon gathering is no simple feat, neither is attending one.

Prospective participants have to submit an abstract of their work in the field of astrobiology, and attendees are selected based on their proposals. Those showing exemplary merit and novelty are granted special financial support for the conference.

Having AbGradCon in Asia has already posed a few big challenges, both bureaucratic and conceptual. 

From the organizational point of view, NASA has funded much of the conference costs over the years, and governments are leery of sending taxpayer money overseas. This isn't an Asia-specific problem; it would be a challenge anywhere outside the U.S. Another reality is that the field is growing. 

So far, financial support promised for the 2020 AbGradCon has come from NASA, as well as the Japan Astrobiology Center, Japan’s Aquaplanetology Program on Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (which has a presence at ELSI and is sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science), the ELSI-FirstLogic Astrobiology Donation Program, and other private and public donors including the journal Life. This is in addition to logistical and other support provided by Blue Marble; one of the missions of Blue Marble is global space-related outreach and education.

Jia said he expects a roughly equal proportion of the attendees to come from Japan, the United States, and from elsewhere in Asia, South America, and Europe. This would be quite a significant change from previous AbGradCons – when a large percentage of participants were from the United States – although with the help of private sponsorship, recent conferences at Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Utah have had up to 25% of the participants attending from outside of the U.S.

With the expected change in participants – along with such a different location – will no doubt come additional challenges.

“The past years have seen more people apply to U.S. AbGradCons than were able to be funded,” said Smith. “Next year, we're hoping to significantly grow participation from Asia and Oceania without significantly expanding overall conference attendance,” which could mean turning away some attendees who have participated in American AbGradCons over the past years.

“So a big challenge has been balancing the small, close, community feel of the conference while paradoxically trying to expand participation and avoid alienating the existing community.” 

But Smith has confidence in Jia and his colleagues as people effective at making change happen. After all, he played a significant role in bringing Smith to ELSI.

“Tony has a funny way of catalyzing these types of things without coming off as spearheading or trying to herd people,” said Smith, who also came to work at ELSI last year as a research scientist in complex systems. “I think it's because he's willing to listen to what other people want to do and then to help them make it a reality.

“For example, I would point to him as one of the key factors in me coming to ELSI, but it wasn't because he was pushing me to come. It was because he listened to what I wanted to do and said something like, ‘ELSI would be a great place to do that, and if you want to come visit I'll help figure out a way to do that.’”

As he did with Harrison Smith and ELSI, Jia would like to help bring opportunity to Asian astrobiology – for the benefit of both the researchers and the field.

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Marc Kaufman has written books on astrobiology and Mars, has been a longtime reporter at The Washington Post and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and writes the NASA-supported online column Many Worlds (www.manyworlds.space)  He has also had the good fortune to visit and work at ELSI numerous times and he wrote "ELSI RISING" -- the story of ELSI's origins and evolution -- in 2017.