Science on Screen: The Martian (2015)
Director: Ridley Scott Run Time: 141 min. Release Year: 2015
Starring: Jeff Daniels, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Matt Damon, Michael Peña
Join us for National Science on Screen Day, March 24th. A discussion will follow the film with Dr. Nick Oberlies, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at University of North Carolina at Greensboro
During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.
Nick Oberlies is the Patricia A. Sullivan Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His research group studies the chemistry of Nature in pursuit of anticancer and antibiotic drug leads, often funding by the National Institutes of Health. In particular, they study the chemistry of fungi. Recently, this has included a project funded by NASA where his team is studying the use of fungi for the creation of building materials in space.
For more information, visit – https://chem.uncg.edu/oberlies/