Ultraviolet Astronomy and the Quest for the Origin of Life

Ana Inés Gómez de Castro is a professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics and member of the Mathematics Faculty in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and leads the Research Group on Space Astronomy. She is also the Principal Investigator of the Spanish participation in the Russian led mission World Space Observatory-UV (WSO-UV) with intended launch date 2021. WSO-UV is a 1.7 m space telescope equipped with instrumentation for UV imaging and spectroscopy. She is the chair of the European Network for Ultraviolet Astronomy (www.nuva.eu) and has been elected as member of Division B of the International Astronomical Union. She chairs the working group on UV astronomy of the IAU that has as fundamental objective to elaborate a road map for UV astronomy at international scale, seeking for international synergies and collaboration. She has published more than 200 articles, and edited 8 books, among them the NUVA series on UV astronomy. She has been member of the Editorial board of the journal Astrophysics and Space Science from 2011 to 2014. Her principal research interests are the physics of star formation and early stellar evolution.

1. The growing case for life as a Cosmic phenomon 2. The investigation of the origin of life at ultraviolet wavelengths 3. Exploring habitability under an environment of strong superflares at a time when the ozone layer first formed on Earth 4. The interstellar environment of the Solar System 5. The next generation of UV astronomical observatories and the investigation of the origin of life