The new Origins Center has been inaugurated with a two-day symposium in Groningen. The virtual platform brings together Dutch universities and research institutes to address questions about the origins of life, asked as part of the National Science Agenda.

The official kick-off was given on Thursday 31 August by NIOO-director Louise Vet and two other high-profile Dutch scientists who serve as 'figureheads' to the project: astronomer Rens Water and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ben Feringa.

NIOO is one of seventeen Dutch universities and research institutes that will work together in the new centre. Scientists from a number of disciplines will tackle not just the history of life on earth and in the universe, but also the future of evolution.

The two-day opening symposium, 'Fundamentals of Life in the Universe', will be followed by an exploratory first phase that has already received 2.5 million euros in funding from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific research (NWO).

In the longer term, the participants in the centre are aiming for scientific breakthroughs - described as 'game-changers' - in five areas:

  • Reconstructing the origins of our planet and the life on it
  • Predicting evolution
  • Building and controlling life from molecule to biosphere
  • Finding extraterrestrial life
  • Bridging temporal and spatial scales

NIOO-scientists, including Louise Vet and leading animal ecologist Marcel Visser, are actively involved in the centre's work on 'predicting the future of evolution'. For more details on NIOO's involvement, please read this article.