Born in 1967, Emmanuelle Javaux is a biologist and a University of Liège Doctor of geology. She is also an associate lecturer and director of the ULg’s department of geology’s Paleobotanics, Paleopalynogy and Micro-Palaeontology Unit, whose presidency she has assumed since this year. After her first preliminary degree studies at Namur and graduating in zoology at Liège, she continued her educational training with a year of geology at the Dalhousie University, Halifax, in Canada, and then obtained a doctorate in Earth Sciences at the same university. She then carried out postdoctoral studies at the University of Harvard, before returning to Belgium and the AGO (Astrophysics) department. Her research areas are: the evolution of the biosphere in the pre-Cambrian eon, geo-microbiology, ultrastructural and micro-chemical approaches, paelobiology and the implications for astrobiology. An acknowledged expert worldwide, Emmanuelle Javaux is very regularly invited to participate in conferences, seminars and symposia on her research fields, to give lectures to the general public, and is a member of around fifteen science societies. She also presides over the ULg’s Royal Society for Sciences (2009) and the FNRS’s ‘Astrobiology’ contact group.

Selection of publications

Javaux, E.J., Marshall, C.P., Bekker, A., 2010. Organic-walled microfossils in 3.2-billion-year-old shallow-marine siliciclastic deposits, Nature, 463, 934-938, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature08793 (AOP)

Javaux, E. J. and Marshal, C. P. 2006. A new approach in deciphering early protist paleobiology and evolution: Combined microscopy and microchemistry of single acritarchs. Review of Paleobotany and Palynology 139 1–15

Botta O., Javaux EJ, Summons R, Rosing M, Bada J, Gomez Elvira J, and Selsis F. (editors) 2008 Strategies for life detection, ISSI Space Science serie. Springer-Verlag. 380 p.

Javaux EJ. Evolution of early eukaryotes in Precambrian oceans. In: Gargaud et al (eds). Elsevier. (sous presse)

Javaux E.J., 2006. The early eukaryote fossil record. In: Evolution of the Eukaryotic Endomembrane System and Cytoskeleton (ed. Gáspár Jékely). Landes Biosciences Publishers, Texas, USA. (Invited chapter) 19 p.

Javaux, E.J., Knoll, A.H., and Walter, M., R., 2004. TEM evidence for eukaryotic diversity in mid-Proterozoic oceans. Geobiology, 2, 121-132

Javaux, E.J., Knoll, A.H., and Walter, M. R., 2003. Recognizing and interpreting the fossils of early Eukaryotes. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, 33 (1), 75-94..

Javaux, E.J., Knoll, A.H., and Walter, M. R., 2001. Morphological and ecological complexity in early eukaryotic ecosystems. Nature 412, 66-69.