Charles Cockell is a geomicrobiologist/astrobiologist at the Open University, UK. His academic interests encompass microbe-mineral interactions and their implications for earth system processes and the habitability of extraterrestrial environments, and microbiology in the space environment. He received his first degree in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Bristol and his PhD (DPhil) from the University of Oxford in molecular biology. He then undertook a National Research Council Associateship at the NASA Ames Research Centre in California before working at the British Antarctic Survey. He sits on ESA’s Planetary Protection and Life Sciences Working Groups. He was a past president and is a co-founder of the Association of Mars Explorers. He is a Senior Editor of the journal, Astrobiology. Popular science books include ‘Impossible Extinction’ (CUP), which explores the tenacity of microbes on the Earth, and ‘Space on Earth’ (MacMillan) which looks at the synergistic links between environmentalism and space exploration. He is Chair of the Earth and Space Foundation, a non-profit organisation he established in 1994.