“Most people, if they look at the sky, they want to know what’s out there,” said Dr. Ilsa Cooke.
In a hustling society where everyone’s attention is often glued to the ground, Cooke searches for answers in the sky, in a universe that spans billions of light years in observable distance.
Cooke is an assistant professor in UBC’s department of chemistry and studies astrochemistry — the study of space’s chemical composition.
Astrochemistry investigates the chemical processes that drive the evolution of stars, planets and galaxies. The field plays a crucial role in determining the chemical origins of life. It examines which molecules exist in space, how they’re formed and whether they could be incorporated into new solar systems.
Cooke's research focuses on the chemical origins of molecules that exist in between stars — and what role they might have played in creating life.
Launching into challenge
As fascinating as Cooke finds astrochemistry, it wasn’t always clear she would end up in this field.
“I wasn’t that into science in high school,” Cooke said in an interview with The Ubyssey. “I found it was easier to be successful in the humanities, and [it was] much harder for me to be successful in the sciences.”
“I think I am a person that likes a challenge, and I don't think I would have been happy pursuing a career that just came easily to me.”
This drove Cooke, a first generation university student in her family, to pursue a degree in chemistry.
Even in the field of astrochemistry, Cooke finds opportunities to practice her passion of humanities and arts by creating posters, presentations and written reports. Writing and creativity are tools that elevate Cooke’s skills as a scientist.
By the end of her undergrad, Cooke was confident of her academic interests, but didn’t know which career would satiate them. She liked physical chemistry and spectroscopy — the study of light and matter — particularly piqued her interest. She also liked astronomy and the problem-solving nature of research. So understanding all this, she turned to an all-knowing source to determine the next step in her career.
“I typed it into Google … and it said astrochemistry. And I was like, ‘Ok I guess this is what I’m going to do,’” Cooke joked.
“I just thought it really appealed to me as a topic because it combined my interests, but I didn't know what it would be like day-to-day until I started to do research in that area as a grad student.”
Since then, Cooke has made a name for herself in the field. After completing her PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Virginia as a Fulbright Fellow, she worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and at the Institut de Physique de Rennes at the Université de Rennes 1 in France as a Marie Curie fellow.
Cooke recalled the learning curve as a fresh PhD student responsible for designing her own experiments. At that point, she was used to completing formulaic labs in undergraduate classes with predetermined solutions. But in graduate school, Cooke had to come up with her own questions with no known outcomes.
“There’s no answer to those questions. That’s why you’re doing it,” she said.
Astrochemistry is a relatively young field. Half a century ago, astronomers didn’t think complex molecules could exist in space, believing they would be destroyed by radiation from star formations. That is, until the first interstellar molecules were discovered in 1937and confirmed three years later by Canadian astronomer and UBC alumnus Andrew McKellar. Since then, with the help of radio telescopes, over 250 molecules have been detected in space by astronomers and researchers — Cooke is one of them.
In 2024, Cooke was part of a group of researchers that discovered the largest polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) in space found using radioastronomy to date, in a distant interstellar cloud. The discovery showed that complex organic carbon compounds could survive the harsh conditions of our solar system’s formation, and offered insights into their origin.
Space is much more than a vacuum
Alongside fascinating discoveries, Cooke’s journey in astrochemistry has been far from easy — just as she expected.
In addition to the academic jump, Cooke’s graduate studies took a heartbreaking turn when her PhD advisor passed away. It was the toughest time of her career, Cooke told UBC Science in an interview, and she debated leaving the program. Fortunately, Dr. Karin Oberg from Harvard University took Cooke under her wing and provided the guidance she needed to finish her PhD.
As an assistant professor, and now a principal investigator and supervisor herself, Cooke’s work brings a new set of challenges.
“The first year [at UBC] destroyed me,” Cooke said, laughing. “But now I’m on the uphill.”
Cooke leads the UBC Astrochem Lab, where her team studies how complex organic molecules form on interstellar ice.
“Out there are some carbon molecules that potentially could make up a human or make up life,” said Cooke.
Using a vacuum replicating the cold temperatures of deep space, around minus 260ºC, Cooke’s team observes how complex molecules form in frozen conditions where they typically cannot react efficiently. The Astrochem Lab’s research explores puzzling questions about the existence of prebiotic carbon molecules — the fundamental building blocks of life — in space beyond Earth.
These days, Cooke spends less time in the lab — taking on a managerial role. She described her day-to-day life as a juggling act between building a lab, recruiting graduate students, training them and figuring out how to teach a university course — something she was never taught to do as an astrochemist.
But what the field did train her for was to stay curious. As “a bit of a dreamer,” Cooke’s passion for astrochemistry is fueled by a desire to understand the universe around her, she said in an interview with News Talk 980 CKNW. Though her research centres around molecules thousands of light years away, she also explores questions at the heart of who we are: what we’re made of, where we come from.
If extraterrestrial life is ever found, Cooke’s research could help us understand it.
“Space isn’t really a vacuum … It contains all of these building blocks of life,” said Cooke.
Share this article
First online
