Jeffrey Marlow is a deep-sea explorer, published scholar, international science policy adviser, and experienced journalist. He studies the role that microorganisms play in deep-sea environments. Alongside this work, he has served on the science teams for three of NASA's robotic missions to Mars and studied extreme life forms in Mars and Ocean World analogue sites on Earth.

Marlow is Assistant Professor of Biology at Boston University, having completed an M.Phil. as a Marshall Scholar at Imperial College London, a PhD. at the California Institute of Technology, and postdoctoral work at Harvard University. He has also served as a representative of the scientific community at the United Nations, and is a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, a Fellow of the Explorers Club, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.