The Story Collider

Growing up on a cattle ranch, Amanda Stockton dreams of searching for life elsewhere in the universe. Dr. Amanda Stockton is an assistant professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry department at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her work walks the line between engineering and science to develop instrumentation capable of looking for organic molecules elsewhere in the solar system. These molecules could be the feedstock for an emergence of life or the remnants of past life now extinct on places like Europa, Enceladus, and Mars. Dr. Stockton grew up on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma, where she graduated from the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she majored in Aerospace Engineering and Chemistry – seemingly unrelated topics but perfect for her “dream job,” i.e. the one she has now. After obtaining a masters at Brown in chemistry, she earned her PhD with Dr. Richard Mathies at the University of California, Berkeley working on increasing the analytical chemi