Samantha Pryor

Sam Pryor is a PhD student in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences. She hails from the small town of Smithsburg, MD, and attended the Florida Institute of Technology for her undergraduate education, receiving a BS in Astrobiology from their Physics & Space Sciences Department. During her time at Florida Tech, Sam was privileged to have been involved in a diverse number of research projects with several astrobiology-adjacent faculty: with Dr. Jeremy Riousset modeling the surface and crustal magnetic fields on Mars, with Dr. Andrew Palmer growing plants in Martian Regolith Simulants, and with Dr. Manasvi Lingam modeling the effects of tidal forces on the habitability of exoplanets. In her free time, Sam enjoys taking her dog, Puck, to new places, being outside, and trying lots of different hobbies (but only being good at a few of them).

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Microdroplets, or micron-sized airborne aqueous particles, have typically been overlooked as a source of chemistry for studies investigating the origins of life on Earth. However, the presence of a global ocean implies the presence of microdroplets, which can be a valuable source for some of the molecules necessary for abiogenesis. Our work seeks to better constrain microdroplet chemistry and to investigate how microdroplets can impact prebiotically relevant reactions.