Overview

Background

I am a research fellow funded since November 2020 by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust. I have a BSc in Astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Physics from the University of Southern Denmark. I did my PhD here in Exeter in the Earth System Science department where I developed Gaian models of regulation to understand how life might impact the long term habitability prospects of its planet.

Research Interests

My research focuses on building models of life-environment interactions to investigate their impact on the long term habitability of planets. My interests include:

• the Gaia hypothesis - understanding how and when life-environment feedbacks can lead to regulation
• planetary habitability - what are the key ingredients required for a planet to be habitable on both short and long timescales? 
• early biospheres - what can the history of life on Earth tell us about the possibilities for finding signs of alien life?
• biosignatures - developing models to help make predictions for possible biosignature detections on exoplanets

Links

Publications: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4785-9958

Github: https://github.com/nicholsonae

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Publications

_{Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.}

| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2018 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |

2023

• Arthur R, Nicholson A. (2023) Does Gaia Play Dice? Simple Models of Non-Darwinian Selection, Astrobiology, volume 23, no. 11, pages 1238-1244, DOI:10.1089/ast.2023.0036.
• Arthur R, Nicholson A. (2023) A Gaian habitable zone, MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, volume 521, no. 1, pages 690-707, DOI:10.1093/mnras/stad547. [PDF]
• Duzdevich D, Nicholson AE, Haywood RD. (2023) ESD Ideas: To address planetary crises, we must understand our place on Earth, volume 2023, pages 1-4, DOI:10.5194/egusphere-2023-299.
• Eager-Nash JK, Mayne NJ, Nicholson AE, Prins JE, Young OCF, Daines SJ, Sergeev DE, Lambert FH, Manners J, Boutle IA. (2023) 3D climate simulations of the Archean find that methane has a strong cooling effect at high concentrations. [PDF]

2022

• Nicholson A, Daines S, Mayne N, Eager-Nash J, Lenton T. (2022) Biosignatures independent of population dynamics, Goldschmidt2022 abstracts, DOI:10.46427/gold2022.12962.
• Nicholson AE, Daines SJ, Mayne NJ, Eager-Nash JK, Lenton TM, Kohary K. (2022) Predicting biosignatures for nutrient limited biospheres. [PDF]
• Liu Y, Ma G, Lyu Y, Wang P. (2022) Neural network-based reinforcement learning control for combined spacecraft attitude tracking maneuvers, Neurocomputing, volume 484, pages 67-78, DOI:10.1016/j.neucom.2021.07.099.
• Arthur R, Nicholson A. (2022) Selection principles for Gaia, J Theor Biol, volume 533, DOI:10.1016/j.jtbi.2021.110940. [PDF]

2021

• Buxton J, Powell T, Ambler J, Boulton C, Nicholson A, Arthur R, Lees K, Williams H, Lenton T. (2021) Community-driven tree planting greens the neighbouring landscape, DOI:10.21203/rs.3.rs-334324/v2.
• Buxton J, Powell T, Ambler J, Boulton C, Nicholson A, Arthur R, Lees K, Williams H, Lenton TM. (2021) Community-driven tree planting greens the neighbouring landscape, Sci Rep, volume 11, no. 1, DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-96973-6. [PDF]
• Buxton J, Powell T, Ambler J, Boulton C, Nicholson A, Arthur R, Lees K, Williams H, Lenton T. (2021) Community-driven tree planting greens the neighbouring landscape, DOI:10.21203/rs.3.rs-334324/v1. [PDF]

2018

• Nicholson AE, Wilkinson DM, Williams HTP, Lenton TM. (2018) Gaian bottlenecks and planetary habitability maintained by evolving model biospheres: The ExoGaia model, DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1803.08063.

2016

• Nicholson AE, Sibani P. (2016) Cultural Evolution as a Non-Stationary Stochastic Process, DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1608.04203.
• Arthur R, Nicholson A, Sibani P, Christensen M. (2016) The Tangled Nature Model for organizational ecology, Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, volume 23, no. 1, pages 1-31, DOI:10.1007/s10588-016-9214-4. [PDF]

2015

• Nicholson AE, Sibani P. (2015) Cultural evolution as a nonstationary stochastic process, Complexity, volume 21, no. 6, pages 214-223, DOI:10.1002/cplx.21681.
• Arthur R, Nicholson A, Sibani P, Christensen M. (2015) The Tangled Nature Model for Organizational Ecology, DOI:10.2139/ssrn.2623536.

2014

• Hanczyc MM, Parrilla JM, Nicholson A, Yanev K, Stoy K. (2014) Creating and Maintaining Chemical Artificial Life by Robotic Symbiosis, Artificial Life, volume 21, no. 1, pages 47-54, DOI:10.1162/artl_a_00151.
• Nicholson A, Sibani P. (2014) Cultural Evolution as a Non-Stationary Stochastic Process, DOI:10.2139/ssrn.2488494.

2013

• Nicholson A, Forgan D. (2013) Slingshot dynamics for self-replicating probes and the effect on exploration timescales, International Journal of Astrobiology, volume 12, no. 4, pages 337-344, DOI:10.1017/s1473550413000244.
• Nicholson A, Forgan D. (2013) Slingshot Dynamics for Self Replicating Probes and the Effect on Exploration Timescales, DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1307.1648.

2012

• Catterall S, Ferrante D, Nicholson A. (2012) de Sitter gravity from lattice gauge theory, The European Physical Journal Plus, volume 127, no. 9, DOI:10.1140/epjp/i2012-12101-4.

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