Draft:Bruce F. Damer

Bruce Frederick Damer, Ph.D. (born January 31, 1962) is a Canadian-American multidisciplinary scientist, public speaker, and designer in the fields of technology and space. Damer is known for his astrobiology research at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering, where he is a research associate. Here, Damer and coworkers, such as David Deamer, are testing to find the origins of life. Damer is currently a Chief Scientist for the BIOTA Institute, also focused on life’s origin. As a designer, Damer has aided NASA in architecting spacecraft that could help bring human civilization outside of earth. For twenty plus years, Damer has collected vintage computing hardware in his DigiBarn Computer Museum. Damer is featured in multiple academic journals, and is the author of his book ''Avatars! Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet.'' Additionally, he is a public speaker and has been featured in podcasts, news outlets, and even documentaries where he explores science, space, and the philosophical and spiritual aspects to the mystery of the origin of life.

Education
As a Kamloops raised individual, Damer began his education in 1981 at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) taking a 2-year computer science program. He followed up his education at TRU by attending the University of Victoria where he obtained his BSc in Computer Science. While attending the University of Victoria, in the 1980s, Damer performed research for IBM. In 1985 Damer began graduate studies at the University of Southern California (USC), studying electrical engineering. Here, he developed architecture and simulation software for computing. Later at USC he obtained his Master of Electrical Engineering (MSEE). Damer furthered his education with his background in computers, earning his PhD at University College Dublin in Ireland, which he completed in 2011. Damer worked on his thesis which aimed to understand the mechanisms of the origin of life on Earth and enhance it via computer simulations.

Career and Research
Following his graduate education at the University of Southern California, Damer was a software developer for Elixir technologies Corporation. Beginning in the year 2000, Damer supported NASA to help develop a 3D modeling platform for simulating and designing space missions. He created a spacecraft design, a 30-year project, capable of harvesting resources from asteroids. He proposed a spacecraft called SHEPHERD which could help bring civilization to space.

Damer’s PhD research on the origin of life led him and colleagues to generate a new hypothesis for life’s origins. Contrary to the popular deep-sea vent theory which is believed to have generated the first complex organic compounds which later became the first cell, lies Damer’s theory. Damer and colleagues believe life formed in hot springs on land. Damer’s work focuses on finding an algorithm that can help explain how complex molecules derived from simple atoms. There is scientific evidence that lipid-encapsulated polymers can be created by cycles of hydration and dehydration to from protocells, supporting this hypothesis.

This origin of life theory is now undergoing scientific testing and is being examined by scientists worldwide. Alongside David Deamer in 2019, Damer published [https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2019.2045#:~:text=We%20present%20a%20testable%20hypothesis,and%20dehydration%20to%20form%20protocells. "The Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life"], a scientific article.

Startups
In the 1980’s, Damer started to collect computers, documents, and anything else related to computers. Alongside Allan Lundell on May 7, 2001, Damer co-founded the DigiBarn Computer Museum. DigiBarn is known to be the largest private collection of computers and documents. Currently, most of the DigiBarn collection has been moved to the System Source Computer Museum in Baltimore, MD to be displayed. The DigiBarn focuses on personal computers, the birth of the internet, calculators, workstations, rare company documents, and more. In addition, the DigiBarn produced an online collection of documents, stories, biographies from contributors of the digital revolution.

Damer is also the founding director of the Contact Consortium; Principal Scientist at DigitalSpace; and served as Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington.

Publications
Damer has 5 publications on Mary Ann Libert Inc.:


 * Deamer, David; Cary, Francesca; Damer, Bruce (2022). “Urability: A Property of Planetary Bodies That Can Support an Origin of Life”. Astrobiology. 22 (7): 889-900. doi:10.1089/ast.2021.0173.


 * Damer, Bruce; Deamer, David (2019). “The Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life”. Astrobiology. 20 (4): 429-452. doi:10.1089/ast.2019.2045.


 * Deamer, David; Damer, Bruce; Kompanichenko Vladmir (2019). “Hydrothermal Chemistry and the Origin of Cellular Life”. Astrobiology. 19 (12): 1523-1527. doi:10.1089/ast.2018.1979


 * Deamer, David; Damer, Bruce (2017). “Can Life Begin on Enceladus? A Perspective from Hydrothermal Chemistry”. Astrobiology. 17 (9): 834-839. doi: 10.1089/ast.2016.1610.


 * Jenniskens, Peter; Damer, Bruce; Norkus, Ryan; Pilorz, Stuart; Nott, Julian; Grigsby, Bryant; Adams, Constance; Blair, Brad R. (2015). “SHEPHERD: A Concept for Gentle Asteroid Retrieval with a Gas-Filled Enclosure”. New Space. 3 (1): 36-43. doi: 10.1089/space.2014.0024.

Damer has also published a book in 1998 called ''Avatars! Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet.''

Personal Life
While Damer is away from his life in the scientific world, he can be found collecting vintage computing equipment and documents for his DigiBarn Computer Museum. He is married to his partner Kathryn Lukas, has three cats, and a chihuahua. His house is inspired by Gandalf from Lord of the Rings which is located in the Santa Cruz redwoods.

In Damer’s teenage years, he wrote articles for local newspapers. This included a science series where he shared plans for new spacecrafts. These spacecrafts were designed to help humans inhabit space. At only 19 years of age, Damer proposed these plans to NASA in aims of getting hired. NASA wrote back to Damer, encouraging him to pursue his education and think of NASA later in the future.

Damer has performed as a storyteller at multiple events such as Burning Man, the Esalen institute, and has been featured on the Joe Rogan experience podcast. In his performances he covers topics in science, evolution, the origins of life, psychedelics, space, and much more.