Nora Noffke is a sedimentologist, who has established the scientific field of biofilms in clastic sedimentology. Her research is highly interdisciplinary combining geology with microbiology, geochemistry, and mineralogy. Biofilm structures in deposits occur in the modern marine envbironment, but were also detected in the fossil record with 3.48 billion year old examples constituting the oldest undisputed fossils in Earth history. Such structures may be detected in ancient rocks of similar ages on terrestrial planets such as Mars. Several of Noffke’s publications were discussed in Science and Nature. She has guest edited 6 special issues and books, and she is author of the Springer textbook ‘Microbial Mats in Sandy Deposits from the Archean to Today’. Noffke is Chair of the Subcommission on Precambrian Stratigraphy of the International Stratigraphic Commission.
