Lynn Rothschild is a trailblazing evolutionary biologist, astrobiologist, and synthetic biologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and adjunct professor at Brown University. Rothschild’s research spans into how life evolved on Earth and how these lessons could apply to potential life beyond our planet. She founded NASA’s program in synthetic biology and explores how life could be the enabling technology for human exploration off planet. Rothschild led the first free-flyer synthetic biology payload, which flew on the DLR EuCROPIS mission. She has been a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase 1 fellow from Phase 1-3 eight times, a testament to her groundbreaking work in space exploration and synthetic biology. In 2015 she received the Horace Mann Medal by the Brown University Graduate School and the American Humanist Association’s Isaac Asimov Science Award. She is a fellow of the Linnean Society of London, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Explorer’s Club and past president of the Society of Protozoologists.