An Out-of-This-World Way to Think

OFFICE HOURS: Olivia Harper Wilkins ’15, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

by Tony Moore

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Olivia Harper Wilkins ’15 earned her Ph.D. at Caltech after completing her undergrad at Dickinson. Previously a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow in the Astrochemistry Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, she is an astrochemist interested in disentangling the evolution of chemical complexity that emerges alongside star and planet formation. She is also an artist who uses different creative media to communicate science within the astrochemistry community and for the general public.

Space is overwhelmingly big, but your research shows that we don’t need a spaceship to explore the chemistry of the cosmos. What makes Dickinson an exciting place to study astrochemistry?

Not only do we not need a spaceship to explore the chemistry of the cosmos, but most of the environments I study wouldn’t even be reachable by a spaceship, even if it could travel at the speed of light. Pursuing this work at Dickinson is exciting because I’m conducting interdisciplinary research at an institution that values cross-disciplinary work while teaching chemistry, which is another passion of mine. At Dickinson, I don’t need to choose between being an educator or a researcher, because I truly am both here.

Dickinson is full of creative students who are excited to explore and bring their diverse science backgrounds into the research setting. Being able to work closely with them as collaborators is a rewarding experience, and it’s exciting to be building one of the, if not the, first astrochemistry research lab at a small liberal-arts college.

At what point did you realize, “Yep, I’m going to spend my life studying the chemistry of space”?

As an undergraduate, I became enamored by radio telescopes—large satellite-dish-looking things that explore the invisible universe through radio waves. Specifically, I was in awe of the Green Bank Telescope, a fully steerable telescope that is taller than the Statue of Liberty and has a 2.1-acre dish, at what is now the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. I was curious about what type of work was being done at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, so I decided to apply for a summer research experience in Green Bank. As a chemistry and mathematics major at Dickinson, I made a case in my application for skills in data analysis, attention to detail and mathematical logic that would equip me for success despite having no prior coursework related to astronomy. I was a summer student in Green Bank in 2013, and while there, I attended a seminar (for high school students participating in a summer camp) about “astrochemistry.” During that talk, I knew that I was going to be an astrochemist. I had found a way to combine my love of chemistry and my obsession with radio telescopes. And it really is an obsession; I studied abroad my junior year so that I could visit two remarkable telescopes in Europe.

Studying interstellar molecules and comet chemistry sounds pretty niche—but the kind of work you do has huge implications here on Earth. Why should someone who doesn’t own a telescope still care about what’s happening in the chemistry of deep space?

Deep space is where the chemistry of everything around us—our bodies, the device on which you’re reading this, the ground beneath you—originated. Every chemical on Earth, including the chemicals that constitute life as we know it, started out as simple two- and three-atom ingredients in interstellar space at temperatures of around 10 Kelvin, or -442 degrees Fahrenheit in clouds of dust and gas with densities as low as 100 molecules per cubic centimeter (which is 100 quadrillion times less dense than the air you’re breathing).

How those simple interstellar ingredients combined and rearranged to become more complex chemical species, especially under such extreme physical conditions, is one of the big questions in astrochemistry. Something I love about astrochemistry is that, whether with radio telescopes or through laboratory experiments, we can investigate some of the most fundamental chemical reactions in the universe without being contaminated by the complexity of the terrestrial world. So, I think folks should care about the chemistry of deep space because that chemistry is the start of more than 4.5 billion years of chemical heritage seeded in a stellar nursery from which our Sun was born. Whether you’re curious about the emergence of (the seeds of) life or how chemistry can advance the modern world, astrochemistry is an out-of-this-world way to think about fundamental chemical processes.

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Published March 19, 2025

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