Dr. Claudia El Nachef and Prof. André Beauchemin have been awarded a prestigious Life Sciences-Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life (SCOL) Fellowship from the Simons Foundation to fund their study of prebiotic chemistry. They are the only researchers in Canada  to be selected for this fellowship.

“The purpose of the Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life is to advance our understanding of the processes that led to the emergence of life.

The collaboration aims to support creative, innovative research on topics including the astrophysical and planetary context of the origins of life, the development of prebiotic chemistry, the assembly of the first cells, the advent of Darwinian evolution, and the earliest signs of life on the young Earth.”