Instructor Spotlight: Molly Twombly

What inspired you to teach this course?

For as long as I can remember, my answer to “what do you want to be when you grow up?” has been the same: an astronaut. The real question has always been the how. That’s what led me to my PhD at Tufts. But there’s a catch. When I tell people I'm in astrobiology, their faces light up and they immediately start talking about their favorite sci-fi movie or alien theory. And I love that! But I also see how the pop culture version of space has completely taken over. That disconnect is exactly why I’m so passionate about teaching this course. I want to take all that excitement people already have for the idea of space and connect it to the reality. For me, this course is the perfect blend of my two worlds: the science of the lab and the wonder that got me here in the first place.

What is your favorite piece of sci-fi media?

My favorite piece of sci-fi media is the Jurassic Park book series and the movies.

What can sci-fi teach us about how we interact with science?

I think what’s so powerful about sci-fi is that it lets us rehearse the future. Science, at its heart, is a process: we get curious, we ask "what if?", and we try to build that answer. But pure curiosity isn't enough. We must grapple with the human consequences of what we build. And that’s where fiction becomes more than just entertainment; it becomes a vital tool. Sci-fi throws characters, and by extension, us, the audience, into these scenarios. It lets us live through the dilemmas before they happen in a lab. Sci-Fi also frames ethical questions inside a story, which is how humans have always learned best. So, it doesn’t just inspire science, it pressure-tests it. It makes us feel the cost, the risk, and the responsibility.

What’s one piece of technology that seems like it would only be possible in sci-fi, but that we can actually achieve today?

Lots of technology has been predicted by sci-fi media, including rockets, submarines, and even synthetic meat. I think that human ingenuity can create anything from sci-fi and turn it into reality.

What is something coming up in your course that you are excited about?

I’m most excited for the midterm debate that the students will be doing on the Prime Directive, in the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive is a guiding principle of Starfleet that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations (Wikipedia). Students self-selected crew member roles at the beginning of class and will have to use the skills we learned in class as well as their own moral and ethical compasses to persuade a team to either contact an alien species, or not.

Molly Twombly is a third-year graduate student in Tufts’ Kounaves Planetary Chemical Analysis & Astrobiology Lab. She is currently researching the fragmentation patterns of biomarkers under simulated Martian conditions, and has contributed to a NASA-funded grant studying Saturn’s moon Enceladus.