Caitlin McShea is Director of the Santa Fe Institute’s InterPlanetary Project, host of the Alien Crash Site podcast, editor and illustrator (along with SFI President David Krakauer) of the InterPlanetary Transmissions volumes, published by the SFI Press, and one half of the space-musing duo Atlantis. She coordinates SFI's public events, including our prestigious Community Lecture Series. She manages the James S. McDonnell Foundation-funded reasearch track on Complex Time, and the National Science Foundation-funded research track on Life's Origins with NASA.

Caitlin studied Evolutionary Biology and Philosophy at Southwestern University, and earned a Masters in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, where she serves on the alumni board. For six years before joining SFI she directed two contemporary art galleries on Canyon Road. She is enamored by creativity: its inevitability, its irrepressibility, and, most curiously, its origin. When she’s not thinking about creativity, she is employing it – usually in the kitchen – she's working through her culinary degree at the Santa Fe Community College. When she’s not cooking, she's likely to be found sitting at the copper bar of the Shed with a margarita, or curled up on the couch with her beautiful dog, Sullivan, re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Learn more about the Miller Omega Program.

Learn more about the InterPlanetary Project.

Learn more about the Community Lecture Series.

Learn more about Aging, Adaptation & The Arrow Time Research

Learn more about Origins of Life Research