Planet-Hab Collaboration
The Planet-Hab Collaboration consists of an international group of scientists interested in the development and application of habitability models in the astrobiology field. The collaboration combines novel modeling approaches to understand and compare the suitability for life of terrestrial, planetary, and exoplanetary environments.
The Astro2020 decadal survey explicitly identifies the need for a "comprehensive multifactorial framework for habitability assessment” as part of the necessary interdisciplinary theory to answer the science question "E-Q3: How do habitable environments arise and evolve within the context of their planetary systems?” of the “Discovery Area: The Search for Life on Exoplanets”.
Press Release: Breaking Old Habits: New Models for Habitability Beyond Earth
Our session at AbSciCon 2022: Habitability Models: Constraining the potential for life within our Solar System, and Beyond

Habitability & EXOPLANETS
Selected slides from a presentation given to NASA's NExSS Special Working Group QuantHab (May 2022).
Contact
Prof. Abel Méndez, PHL @ UPR Arecibo: abel.mendez@upr.edu
Dr. Edgard G. Rivera-Valentín, LPI/USRA, rivera-valentin@lpi.usra.edu
Dr. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Technische Universität Berlin, schulze-makuch@tu-berlin.de
People
Abel Méndez, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA
Edgard G. Rivera-Valentín, Lunar and Planetary Institute, USRA, Houston, Texas, USA
Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Technische Universita ̈t Berlin, Berlin, Germany; German Research Centre for Geosciences, Section Geomicrobiology, Potsdam, Germany; Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Stechlin, Germany.
Justin Filiberto, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, USA
Ramses M. Ramírez, University of Central Florida, Department of Physics, Orlando, Florida, USA; Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Tana E. Wood, USDA Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry, San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA
Alfonso Dávila, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, USA.
Chris McKay, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, USA
Kevin N. Ortiz Ceballos, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA
Marcos Jusino-Maldonado, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA
Nicole J. Torres-Santiago, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA
Guillermo Nery, University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, USA
René Heller, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research; Institute for Astrophysics, University of Go ̈ttingen, Germany
Paul K. Byrne, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Michael J. Malaska, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Erica Nathan, Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Marta Filipa Simões, State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau SAR, China
André Antunes, State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau SAR, China
Jesús Martínez-Frías, Instituto de Geociencias (CSIC-UCM), Madrid, Spain
Ludmila Carone, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
Noam R. Izenberg, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, USA
Dimitra Atri, Center for Space Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Humberto Itic Carvajal Chitty, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela
Priscilla Nowajewski-Barra, Fundación Ciencias Planetarias, Santiago, Chile
Frances Rivera-Hernández, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Corine Brown, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Kennda Lynch, Lunar and Planetary Institute, USRA, Houston, Texas, USA
David Catling, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
Jorge I. Zuluaga, Institute of Physics / FCEN - Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia
Juan F. Salazar, GIGA, Escuela Ambiental, Facultad de Ingenier ́ıa, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia
Howard Chen, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA
Grizelle González, USDA Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry, San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA
Madhu Kashyap Jagadeesh, Jyoti Nivas College, Bengaluru, India
Jacob Haqq-Misra, Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, Seattle, Washington, USA
Julian Chela-Flores, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy
Michael Kearney, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Jut Wynne, Northern Arizona University
Publications
Méndez, A. Commentary: How to determine the right conditions for alien life. (2022) Physics Today, (15 Jun 2022), 1945-0699. DOI: 10.1063/PT.6.3.20220615a.
Méndez, A., Rivera-Valentín, E. G., Schulze-Makuch, D., Filiberto, J., Ramírez, R. M., Wood, T. E., Dávila, A., McKay, C., Ortiz Ceballos, K. N., Jusino-Maldonado, M., Torres-Santiago, N. J., Nery, G., Heller, R., Byrne, P. K., Malaska, M. J., Nathan, E., Simões, M. F., Antunes, A., Martínez-Frías, J., Carone, L., Izenberg, N. R., Atri, D., Carvajal Chitty, H. I., Nowajewski-Barra, P., Rivera-Hernández, F., Brown, C., Lynch, K., Catling, D., Zuluaga, J. I., Salazar, J. F., Chen, H., González, G., Kashyap Jagadeesh, M., Haqq-Misra, J. (2021). Habitability Models for Astrobiology. Astrobiology, 21(8), 1017-1027. DOI: 10.1089/ast.2020.2342. (arxiv.org/abs/2108.05417)
Méndez, A., Rivera-Valentín, E. G., Schulze-Makuch, D., Filiberto, J., Ramírez, R. M., Wood, T. E., Dávila, A., McKay, C., Ortiz Ceballos, K. N., Jusino-Maldonado, M., Torres-Santiago, N. J., Nery, G., Heller, R., Byrne, P. K., Malaska, M. J., Nathan, E., Simões, M. F., Antunes, A., Martínez-Frías, J., Carone, L., Izenberg, N. R., Atri, D., Carvajal Chitty, H. I., Nowajewski-Barra, P., Rivera-Hernández, F., Brown, C., Lynch, K., Catling, D., Zuluaga, J. I., Salazar, J. F., Chen, H., González, G., Kashyap Jagadeesh, M., Haqq-Misra, J., Barnes, R. ; Cockell, C. S. (2021). Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032 white paper e-id. 065; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 53, Issue 4, e-id. 065. DOI: 10.3847/25c2cfeb.20609a88. (arxiv.org/abs/2007.05491)