Was there life on Mars? It’s a question scientists have been speculating for decades, and an Ursinus alumnus may have discovered a piece of the puzzle. Patrick Gasda ’07 is a postdoctoral research fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and he is leading a team that recently found boron on the arid planet, which indicates habitable groundwater once flowed below the surface. Last summer, two Ursinus students helped Gasda with his research. “At Ursinus, I learned the fundamentals that helped get me interested in space science,” Gasda says.