Alexandra Davatzes
Dr. Alexandra Davatzes is a newly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at Temple University. Davatzes studies Archaen meteorite deposits and has worked with the HiRise team on MRO. Her most recent paper is:- Krull-Davatzes, Alexandra E., Gary R. Byerly, and Donald R. Lowe. Evidence for a low-O2 Archean atmosphere from nickel-rich chrome spinels in 3.24 Ga impact spherules, Barberton greenstone belt, South Africa. EPSC Lett 296 (2010): 319-328.
Early on in college, I was taking a biology class and an earth history class, and in both of those classes, we discussed the problems and unknowns in studies of the origins of life. That is when I first started to become interested in Astrobiology. Then, while doing a Sophomore Keck Research Project one summer in college, led by Eric Grosfils, Linda Reinen, Martha Gilmore and Sam Kozak, I started to realize that I could have a career doing research in space science. I had a great time working with two other undergrads on studies of lava flows on Venus, and I remember all of us in the project watching with excitement as Mars Pathfinder landed successfully. We wrote up our research and I went to my first scientific conference, LPSC, and presented a poster. By then I was hooked.
I was in the last year of graduate school at Stanford when I started to work with Virginia Gulick on Education/Public Outreach (EPO) for the HiRISE camera on MRO, which at that time was on its way to Mars. I had been involved in a number of outreach projects at Stanford and the crossover between working on planetary science and EPO really fit my interests well, so when Ginny asked my advisor if he knew of anyone that might be interested, I jumped at the opportunity. Fortunately NASA Ames is very close to Stanford, so I could do that while writing up my thesis. I finished my Ph.D. right around the time that MRO started its primary science phase, and I stayed on with Ginny to do a postdoc. I was very lucky to be funded by the ORAU NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Because of my interests in Astrobiology, I wanted to study what the early Earth environment was like. By understanding how and where life was able to grab hold on Earth, maybe we can figure out if, when, and where Mars was habitable too. The Archean Earth is so different from what we know and understand about the Earth today, so like Mars it is a completely foreign environment.
I have always been interested in how people learn, and ways to get young people interested in science. I was lucky to have a wonderful, strong female science teacher in middle school that told me that I was good at science, and she is certainly the reason I am a scientist today. I want students to not be afraid of science, and to understand the process of science, even if it is not their chosen career. I really loved working on a number of the EPO programs with Ginny for HiRISE including the HiRISE Image Targeting Challenge, where students from all over the world suggest targets for HiRISE to image Mars and then write figure captions to go along with the images, as well as the coloring books and activity books posted on the site. It was so exciting to work on a project where kids in 3rd grade were actively coming up with real scientific questions and suggesting targets on Mars to answer them. Science became “real”, not just a problem in a lab book. At Temple I have been able to work with some education students and faculty on a variety of projects, largely focused on encouraging science participation in underrepresented groups.
The advice that I always give any undergraduate or graduate student that asks is: “Take more math!”. The second bit of advice that I always give is based on an article I read called “The Importance of Stupidity in Research” by Martin Schwartz in the Journal of Cell Science. I tell my grad students that it is okay to feel dumb, and as a scientist we should embrace the feeling of stupidity because if it is easy we aren’t challenging ourselves and we aren’t moving the science further. You’ll never have an “Aha!” moment if you don’t struggle with a problem for a while first!
Monday Minute: LPSC Events
Welcome back from AGU, everyone!
LPSC abstracts are due January 4, 2011, so it’s time to start thinking about your goals and schedule for that conference too. We’ll be republishing highlights from last year’s Countdown to LPSC starting in January, but for now, why not register and plan to attend the Proposal Writing Workshop and the Women in Planetary Science Networking Breakfast? Here’s the info:
- Proposal Writing Workshop: Sunday, March 6, 1-5 p.m. at The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel and Convention Center. To register, e-mail your name, affiliation, and current position to curt.niebur@nasa.gov.
- Women in Planetary Science Networking Breakfast: Tuesday, March 8, 7-8:30 a.m. at The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel and Convention Center. To register, email the WPS bloggers via susanniebur@nieburconsulting.com so we can get a headcount.
Hope to see you then!
Carol Raymond, Dawn Deputy PI
Carol Raymond is the Deputy Principal Investigator on the Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres. I’ve known Carol since 2003, when I became the Program Scientist for Dawn at NASA Headquarters, so it was good to catch up with her on a trip to JPL last summer and talk about her work on Dawn. Excerpts from our interview on 11 August 2009 follow:
Niebur: So, Carol, as we start, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your background, where you come from, what kind of projects you’ve been on before Dawn.
Raymond: I came to JPL in 1990 shortly after my Ph.D., and I came from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University where I had been studying marine geophysics, looking at plate motions on the earth, early breakup history and formation of the ocean basin between Antarctica and the surrounding continents. As an outgrowth of that kind of work, I incorporated space data which were coming into the mix at that time as kind of a new data type. I worked with Seasat data and Magsat data, which gave gravity and magnetics, which helped us to see new things–well, the gravity helped us to see the ocean floor in much more detail in terms of its topography and its fabric than we could from just the ship tracks that had been measuring things in one dimension. Then Magsat, the magnetic field satellite, gave us the synoptic view of the whole earth’s crustal magnetization, which was quite different than the perspective we had from looking at the fields that were patched together from all the observations near the surface. I tried to integrate the satellite data with the sea surface data to try to understand a little bit more about how the magnetism or the earth’s history of its magnetic field was recorded in the tape recorder of the oceanic crust.
That work led me — through some common colleagues — to the attention of Tim Dixon, who was running a group at JPL working in geophysics, and looking at what kinds of earth missions might be done within the group or supported with the group. … Then the data came back from Mars Global Surveyor showing the crustal magnetism on Mars and that was the game changer for me…. Here’s a chance to get in on something where right from the beginning, you’re learning things new, you’re trying to figure out puzzles that have very few pieces. That changed a lot for me. So then, I decided to focus on Mars, bringing along the earth lessons, and I got a proposal funded to start working on that. And I also started looking at follow on missions.
And so, it was at that point that I contacted Chris [Russell] and asked him if he wanted to go in on some input to the Science Definition Team, which was looking at the next Mars missions. And so, we started to collaborate on that and we got our input in, and eventually down the road led to a Discovery proposal, which was in the same round as Dawn. So, Chris and I were actually competing against each other. Of course, Chris was a Co-I on my proposal and he has asked me to be the Deputy PI on his proposal. My proposal was not selected. Dawn was. And so, there’s another twist and turn in the road. And I said, well, this is a really interesting mission. It’s a stretch for me, but I was also very gratified that Chris had confidence in me that even though I didn’t have a decade of experience in planetary science or even a decade of experience in missions, he thought that I would be able to do the job.
Niebur: What was the role of the Deputy PI when you started? What did you expect it to be?
Raymond: Well, Chris and I, as I said, we had some history ahead of starting the Dawn project. And we had an understanding, which still holds to this day that this wasn’t going to be a project scientist role. This wasn’t going to be, I’m the PI, you’re the project scientist, you do that work of coordinating what’s going on at JPL with science team and work kind of at a more, I want to say, planning level or implementing level than sort of the strategic level. And Chris said, that’s not what I want you to do. I want you to be the equivalent of the PI. So, whatever position the PI would take is shared between both of us. He emphasized to the project managers that I could stand in for him. And so, he basically gave me authority of the PI’s voice in my interactions. And that to him was the difference between whether I got called a Deputy PI or a project scientist…. I’m one person, I do the day-to-day interactions, I do the PI interface, I do the management interface, I do the science contracts, I’m trying to do the research.
Dawn had a difficult development due to a number of constraints, delays, and hardware failures. The team worked very hard to recover and get the spacecraft to launch. At one point in 2006, the mission went into a stand down.
Raymond: Now, getting back up from the stand down, now that was just plain weird. We were being reviewed by a diverse group of people with limited experience with missions like ours, and the charter of the review board was also somewhat subjective. It was the only time in my life that I think I ever had an anxiety attack, because I felt that the project had so little control over the outcome of the situation. Once things really got back on track, stand down’s over, we’re back in business, the team’s reconstituted, we’ve gotten over the emotional damage and we’re starting to work as a team again, and now it’s like, gosh, launch is moved out a year, but we’re still in the same situation, we’re still sprinting. We still have a ton of work to do, still have issues to solve every day. And so, we’re back in high gear again. And on and on it went until we launched. And when we launched, I felt such relief, it’s finally gone. It’s safe. And I literally spent the next year de-stressing myself, trying not to work such crazy extra hours and focusing on my family, taking care of the other important things in my life. And it literally took me a year to re-equilibrate. And in the middle of all this, I wrote another [Mars] Scout proposal. Actually, I wrote two Scout proposals.
Niebur: When did you have the time?
Raymond: I didn’t. I didn’t. And that was the other thing. I kept wanting to keep my oar in the water and this is what I had to do, and I made it work, but it just contributed to the overall stress. And so, as time went by and things got a little more normalized, I thought, this is really more like I think life should be. I don’t think it’s supposed to be that dramatic and stressful.
Niebur: Being a PI or Deputy PI is a lot of work. Do you think there were–were there things that you wish you’d known before you started this?
Raymond: Yes. I wish I had been more cognizant of the importance of some of the work that was done first like the requirements definition.
Niebur: That was huge on this project, yes.
Raymond: Yes, and we’re still fighting with some of the requirements because they can be–they’re somewhat of a double edged sword. You don’t want to make them too stringent, so you have trouble–or you spend a lot of resources to meet them, because you have to, so you back off a little. But then, the project on the other side can say, no, this is the contract, this is what we’re doing. So, don’t be telling me you need to do all that extra stuff. And you say, ooh, that’s not how we wrote them. We wrote those requirements with the understanding that this was what we have to do to call it success. But, actually the science investigations that we want to do are more than that, because this is a Discovery mission and we want to make discoveries!
There’s a lot of nuance. And, well, when you change a project manager in every phase of your mission, a lot of that continuity gets lost. And then, you’re up against somebody saying, this budget’s tiny, my staff is tiny and you want to do what? So, then you’ve got to educate the team about what’s important and about what we were we thinking when we decided we could do all this, what were the assumptions we made, – things like we’re a mapping mission, we’re not a point and shoot, we don’t react to things as we go along. These are the assumptions we make to believe that we could do this within this budget. And so, there’s a lot of education involved. And we’re just now starting to converge and sync up to become the team that’s going to fly Vesta.
Niebur: And you’ve got a different project manager now.
Raymond: Yes, a different project manager, and somebody new doing the Vesta development plan. So, Marc Rayman and myself and Chris from the original [JPL] team…. That’s what happens to most people. They perform a development job, and then at launch, they go away to the next mission. So, that’s where we are. But for me, I’m really, really happy to be here talking to you about the Dawn mission in 2009, and looking forward to fantastic discoveries at Vesta and Ceres. I’m confident that our team will be successful.
Thanks, Carol!
Dr. Raymond is being featured here as one of 51 Women in Planetary Science, a series of interviews with successful women scientists on career choices, sequencing, publishing, review panels, and other tips for success. Questions or suggestions for future interviews can be sent to us directly or to our email list, which all women in planetary science can join.
For Dr. Raymond’s advice to kids interested in science, check out her interviews posted on the Dawn mission website in 2004 and on NASA’s pages for Girl Scouts!
Blogging AGU…
Can’t make it to AGU this year?
Check out some of these science bloggers on twitter and their own sites, and follow along in real time or at your leisure! (Twitter is also a fun way to find out about happening events, super posters, and meet up with some of the other writers out here in the blogosphere. Have fun, and tell ’em @WomenPlanetSci sent you!)
Or don’t. But DO have fun!
NASA’s Proposal Writing Workshop at LPSC
First announcement:
NASA will host a proposal writing workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on Sunday, March 6, from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m., following the workshop on the Importance of Solar System Sample Return Missions to the Future of Planetary Science. The workshop is open to all interested planetary scientists at no cost. The session will focus on understanding NASA’s research programs and will include information on how to write a research proposal, where to apply for funding, and pathways for participation on missions. To register, send an e-mail with your name, affiliation, and current position to curt.niebur@nasa.gov.
Monday Minute: Fellowships
The AASWomen and WIPHYS lists were full of fantastic opportunities this week. I encourage you to join these lists and to check out the following opportunities highlighted there. This week alone, the following were listed for postdoctoral researchers, gradaute students, undergraduates, and high school students. Do you know a promising young woman who could benefit from one of these opportunities? Pass it along!
L’Oreal USA Fellowships for Women in Science
Deadline: December 13, 2010
Eligibility: five women postdoctoral researchers in the U.S. who are pursuing careers in the
life and physical/material sciences. L’Oreal USA awards each recipient up to $60,000 dollars toward postdoctoral research.
Source: WIPHYS 11/19/2010; AASWomen 12/3/10
Graduate Women in Science Fellowships from SDE and GWIS
Deadline: January 15, 2011
Eligibility: Enrolled as a graduate student or engaged in post-doctoral or early-stage junior faculty academic
research; must demonstrate financial need for continuation or completion of their research.
Source: WIPHYS 12/1/2010; AASWomen 12/3/10
NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship
Deadline: February 1, 2011
Eligibility: Individuals pursuing Master of Science or Doctoral degrees in Earth and space sciences or related disciplines. For further information contact Dolores Holland, Program Administrator for NESSF Heliophysics Research, Planetary Science Research, and Astrophysics Research, Telephone: (202) 358-0734, E-mail: hq-nessf-Space_at_nasa.gov.
Source: WIPHYS 12/1/2010; AASWomen 12/3/10
NASA Academy Summer Program
Deadline: January 18, 2011
Eligibility: Undergraduate and beginning graduate students in the sciences, math, and engineering.
Source: WIPHYS 11/19/2010; AASWomen 12/3/10
Science & Engineering Apprenticeship Program for High School Students
Deadline: January 7, 2011
Eligibility: Academically talented high school students with interest and ability in science and mathematics. This program places students as apprentices in Department of Navy laboratories for eight weeks to work with scientists and engineers who act as mentors.
Source: WIPHYS 12/1/10; AASWomen 12/3/10
NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) Program
From an announcement sent out by NASA. Please share with your graduate students!
NASA announces a call for graduate fellowship proposals to the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) program for the 2011-2012 academic year. This call for fellowship proposals solicits applications from accredited U.S. universities on behalf of individuals pursuing Master of Science (M.Sc.) or Doctoral (Ph.D.) degrees in Earth and space sciences, or related disciplines. The purpose of NESSF is to ensure continued training of a highly qualified workforce in disciplines needed to achieve NASA’s scientific goals. Awards resulting from the competitive selection will be made in the form of training grants to the respective universities.
The deadline for NEW applications is February 1, 2011, and the deadline for RENEWAL applications is March 15, 2011.
The NESSF call for proposals and submission instructions are located at the NESSF 11 solicitation index page at http://nspires.nasaprs.com/ – click on “Solicitations” then click on “Open Solicitations” then select the “NESSF 11” announcement. Also refer to “Proposal Submission Instructions” and “Program Specific Questions” listed under “Other Documents” on the NESSF 11 solicitation index page.
All proposals must be submitted in electronic format only through the NASA NSPIRES system. The advisor has an active role in the submission of the fellowship proposal. To use the NSPIRES system, the advisor, the student, and the university must all register. Extended instructions on how to submit an electronic proposal package are posted on the NESSF 11 solicitation index page listed above. You can register in NSPIRES at http://nspires.nasaprs.com/.
For further information contact Ming-Ying Wei, Program Administrator for NESSF Earth Science Research, Telephone: (202) 358-0771, E-mail: mwei@nasa.gov or Dolores Holland, Program Administrator for NESSF Heliophysics Research, Planetary Science Research, and Astrophysics Research, Telephone: (202) 358-0734, E-mail: hq-nessf-Space@nasa.gov.
Focus on Workplace Flexibility
Today I will be reporting live from the Focus on Workplace Flexibility Conference at Georgetown Law in Washington, D. C.
Follow along and ask questions – you can read position papers at http://workplaceflexibility.org and see highlights of the conference as-it-happens via my twitter feed at http://twitter.com/womenplanetsci.
These researchers, academics, and business leaders are here to make a difference. Today, I’m excited to be in their company.
Is it important? You tell me. Comment, tweet, or send me a note. Does workplace flexibility matter to you? or are you ok with working 8-5 M-F 50-51 weeks a year, with no breaks aside from lunch, regardless of physical, social, emotional, volunteer, travel, or research-related needs?
Monday Minute: Reference letters, ANSMET, and inspiring women
It’s Monday again, and time for another Monday Minute, a roundup of the latest interesting links on women in planetary science. Before you start your work today, don’t forget to check out last week’s featured women in planetary science: Carolyn van der Bogert and Faith Vilas.
We send our best wishes and a big BON VOYAGE to Ralph Harvey, Rhiannon Mayne, Inge Loes ten Kate, and the rest of the 2010 ANSMET crew headed down for this year’s expedition! Stay warm — and we hope you find some amazing meteorites this year!
What’s new around the net? A reader sent us this link to consider: Do reference letters cost women jobs? Do they? If they do, what can we do differently, as writers, readers, and/or requesters of these letters? What do you think?
Women in Aerospace Europe
Today’s feature is on Women in Aerospace Europe. From their website:
Women in Aerospace (WIA) Europe is dedicated to expanding women’s opportunities for leadership and increasing their visibility in the aerospace community, by creating a Network in Europe and across the globe.
Our membership, consisting of both women and men, share an interest in a broad spectrum of aerospace issues, including human space flight and exploration, aviation, remote sensing, satellite communications, robotic missions, commercial space, space tourism, and the policy issues surrounding these fields.
The goals of WIA Europe are to:
- Be a networking platform for women in leading positions in aerospace and other technological areas.
- Foster and promote the interests of women working in aerospace.
- Promote and improve the access of females to technical areas and the space sector.
- Advance aerospace education in schools and universities.
- Advocate the further investment in space projects in the political environment.
- Cooperate for the improvement and stabilization of the position of women in the aerospace profession.
- Be an ambassador for space in society, culture and philosophy.
Want to learn more? Read Space News’ interview with Claudia Kessler, the Chairwoman of the Board of Women in Aerospace Europe and Chief Executive of HE Space Holding BV.
Faith Vilas: Take that opportunity!
Faith Vilas is a planetary astronomer and the Director of the MMT Observatory in Arizona. Vilas has worked at Johnson Space Center, traveled to serarch for meteorites in Antarctica with ANSMET, and done a detail at NASA Headquarters, where she served as the chief scientist for the Discovery Program in the Solar System Exploration Division (Faith and I met at NASA Headquarters and have kept in touch since). Next year, she will be leaving the MMT to join the Planetary Science Institute to create and direct the Atsa Suborbital Observatory. The following interview was begun at the 2010 AAS meeting and completed via email.
A recent publication that Vilas is particularly proud of predates the discovery of water on the moon by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper and LCROSS:
Vilas, F., Jensen, E. A., Domingue, D. L., McFadden, L. A., Runyon, C. J., Mendell, W. W. (2008). A newly-identified spectral reflectance signature near the lunar South pole and the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Earth, Planets and Space, 60, 67-74.
1. How did you first become interested in space science?
When I was in Second Grade, I was given a copy of
The Golden Book of Astronomy. While we hadn’t launched any spacecraft yet (I guess that dates me), the book included discussions of the future space program as well as the planets, stars, and galaxies. Starting with that book, I was hooked on studying astronomy and working with the space program.
2. Tell us a bit about your early career path, at the University of Arizona and afterwards. Who influenced you?
Can I start with my career path before I got to the U. of A. as a grad student? In high school, I was an active member of the Astronomy Club (president my junior year), and participated in an NSF-sponsored class in the Chicago area for high school students entitled the Astro-Science Workshop every Saturday morning one year. The TA for that school, a graduate student at Northwestern U. named Harry Heckathorn, spoke of the advantages of going to a liberal arts college as an undergraduate, causing me to look at many of them. I persuaded the director of the Adler Planetarium at that time, Joe Chamberlain, to hire me one summer in high school. He gave me much advice about college and grad school and what to study. I ended up going to Wellesley College as an undergraduate because they had (and have) a strong undergraduate astronomy program. One professor there, Sally Hill, encouraged me to follow my scientific interests in planets, even though no one at the college conducted planetary astronomy research. She was seminal in the careers of many women astronomers.
Beginning in high school (to last through part of grad school), I was also a member of the Civil Air Patrol. Through them, I got my pilot’s license. I’m a third generation pilot, and still a single and multi-engine instrument pilot. My husband, Larry Smith, and I have a 1947 Navion.
I went to MIT to work with Tom McCord for a master’s degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences. I wanted to work on Mars; he persuaded me that if I targeted Mercury as the topic for my master’s thesis, he’d send me to Cerro Tololo to observe it. I jumped the Mars ship, and went to Chile twice, fell in love with Chile, decided I wanted a break from school, and went to CTIO as a research assistant for a couple of years after finishing the master’s degree. And backpacked around South America after leaving the job, and worked for Lockheed Electronics at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for a year while I applied to grad school.
THEN I went to the U. of A. Many people influenced me there, both professors, research associates, and other grad students. Chief among them would be Don Hunten, Harold Reitsema, Steve Larson, Brad Smith. The grad students who influenced me all know who they are…
3. You’ve spent time working at the University of Arizona, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, NASA Headquarters, and the MMT Observatory at Arizona. Did your location affect your research priorities? How?
I knew that I always wanted to be involved with ground-based astronomical observing, as well as working with instrumentation and image processing. I certainly have had that opportunity at the MMT, although managerial positions (program or line management) do not allow for much time to do research. My job at JSC started out for the first seven years as primarily supporting the efforts to quantify the amount of orbital debris from spacecraft in low Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit, or geotransfer orbit. It was a direct application of astronomical observing techniques to characterizing space debris, both through ground- and space-based observations. JSC’s curation efforts also influenced me, and I participated in the 1987 – 88 ANSMET field season in Antarctica.
4. What does the job of Director of the MMT Observatory entail? How do you balance that with other outside interests?
I manage the operations of the 6.5-m MMT telescope and associated instrumentation on Mt. Hopkins, conduct short-term and long-term observatory planning, and prepare and administer the annual budget. I supervise the best scientific and technical staff in the world. I also represent the observatory to outside scientific, public, and funding interests. After 5 years, I will be leaving the MMT, however, to join the Planetary Science Institute to create and direct the Atsa Suborbital Observatory with collaborator Luke Sollitt from The Citadel, and conduct my own research.
My outside interests have largely been finding the time and means to be with my husband who works in Texas still, and our efforts to restore the older house we have in Tucson (and watching HGTV in support of that). I hope that the new position with PSI that I will have beginning next year will allow us to cut down on commuter marriage (which can work but can be tough at times).
5. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
There are two very strong pieces of advice that I give to people going into any field: be tenacious and be opportunistic. Persistence will get you further than almost any other attribute. And if an indirect route to something you are pursuing opens up through a new opportunity, take that opportunity! Oh – yes – there’s also my 24-hr rule: if an e-mail makes you want to jump through the computer and strangle someone, wait 24 hr to answer.
Now that’s good advice! Thanks, Faith!
Dr. Vilas is being featured here as one of 51 Women in Planetary Science, a series of interviews with successful women scientists on career choices, sequencing, publishing, review panels, and other tips for success. Questions or suggestions for future interviews can be sent to us directly or to our email list, which all women in planetary science can join!
Carolyn van der Bogert: Be flexible and proactive.
Carolyn van der Bogert is a research scientist at the Institute for Planetology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany. She is a Science Team Associate on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. The picture at left shows her at the Cape, just before LRO’s launch on 18 June 2009.
van der Bogert’s most recent coauthored publications are:
I’ve always been interested in science and nature. Since I grew up on a small farm in the mountains of North Carolina, nature was right out the door, ripe for exploration every day. My parents, brother and I also went to lots of parks, mineral shows, caves, and museums. We even regularly panned for semiprecious gemstones at the Emerald Village in Little Switzerland, NC. Also, I’ve always been an avid reader: devouring many science fiction and fantasy books as a youngster. After reading books like Ringworld, Rama, and 2010, who wouldn’t want to explore space? But, what got me seriously interested in space science was a public talk that I went to with my Dad at Appalachian State University about the Voyager 2 mission when I was in the 8th grade. What impressed me the most were the images of Uranus’s moon Miranda. I was utterly fascinated by Verona Rupes, a massive fault scarp that is almost 3 km high! That’s quite a cliff. Miranda overall is a fascinating moon. How could it have formed? Was it really blasted apart and reassembled like some cosmic Humpty Dumpty?
When I started thinking about college, I knew that I wanted to study geology, but I was still interested in planets and moons, so I decided to study planetary geology. I applied to colleges that had undergraduate degrees in planetary science (relatively few) and ended up going to Boston University. There, I had a great professor, Bob Kerr, for an introductory planetary science class, who always had reams of information for us each lecture. He later became my advisor for my Planetary & Space Sciences major, and supervised my senior thesis about the K/T Boundary extinctions. I also had fun working with Michael Mendillo on space weather as part of my work-study job. One of his other fascinating research areas was observation of the lunar exosphere. At the same time, I worked on a double major in Geology. I wrote my term paper for my Structural Geology class about impact craters. For a senior project, I worked with a new geology faculty member, Carol Simpson, on the petrology of fault-related and impact-related pseudotachylites. She had done her master’s work on the Vredefort Structure in South Africa. She was really the first female role model that I had in the two male-dominated departments: Astronomy and Geology. It was a real pleasure to work on pseudotachylites with her.
Having studied the structural geology of impact craters, written an undergraduate thesis about the K/T Boundary, and a senior project about pseudotachylites led me to decide to study impact processes during graduate school. I contacted a couple of potential advisors and ended up at Brown University to work with Pete Schultz. I studied high strain-rate deformation during the impact process by performing a series of shear deformation experiments with John Spray at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.
2. After you finished your Ph.D. you worked in the gemstone industry for 2 years. How did you end up there?
I spent 8 years working on my masters and doctoral degrees, so I needed a little break from academia! I wanted to have a job that didn’t require constant vigilance to applying for soft money. I also needed well-defined hourly boundaries. I had had some trouble in graduate school with feeling like I ALWAYS had to work. There was always more to be done! I wanted to try something completely different for a time, recalibrate my work ethic, and reevaluate my interest in an academic career. So, as I was finishing up my dissertation, I contacted some of the research staff at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), to find out whether they had an interest in hiring additional research staff.
I worked in the NYC office of the GIA for 2 years doing both research on diamonds and gemstones and identification reports for the jewelry industry. Needless to say, investigations of gemstones and jewelry pieces require nondestructive analytical techniques! The work gave me an opportunity to learn about lots of different spectroscopic techniques including UV-Vis, IR, and Raman spectroscopy. It was also very satisfying to look at each gemstone in the microscope – to adventure into the interiors of beautiful gems and enjoy the ever-fascinating landscapes of inclusions. We could even use certain sets of inclusions identify the geologic and geographic origins of the stones!
My main research project was to characterize a rare group of hydrogen-rich colored diamonds. These diamonds, with colors ranging from gray-to-blue-to-violet, are only known to occur in the Argyle Mine, Australia. As individual diamonds of this sort came through the GIA Lab for identification, I collected a suite of spectroscopic and gemological data on them. The result was a paper: van der Bogert C. H., Smith C. P., Hainschwang T. and McClure S. F. (2009) Gray-to-blue-to-violet hydrogen-rich diamonds from Argyle Mine, Australia. Gems & Gemology 45, 20-37.
However, I began to miss the less structured world of academia (and I started to tire of long commutes), so I started thinking about returning to academia.
3. How did you end up in Germany?
The two-body problem sometimes also offers great and unexpected opportunities. With a little luck there was a research position available at the same institute where my husband was hired as a professor. Having learned how to use a transmission electron microscope during my doctoral work served as a door! Behind this new door was the opportunity to study the newly returned Stardust samples! However, that opportunity only lasted for about 2 years, because that research group was winding down with the retirement of Elmar Jessberger. Now, I have switched gears again to finally work on an on-going mission, LRO, with the camera team. It has been very exciting to see images of impact craters and related deposits as never seen before! The Moon offers a great laboratory for studying impact craters that have not been weathered, eroded, or otherwise destroyed or covered up like most of those on Earth.
My husband and I also moved to Germany for personal reasons. We seriously needed to regain some quality of life. We rather naively thought that we could both have jobs that required commuting and just live halfway between. However, what resulted was hours of commuting and little time for a home life. Germany also has much more generous support for parental leave. Moving to Germany allowed us to cut our commute to about 10 minutes, and currently, I am on parental leave for a year.
Working in Germany has been a really great experience. Nearly everyone in the Institute can speak English, so I’ve never felt isolated or pressured to learn German in order to be able to work. Being able to gradually learn German, through some language courses, talking with colleagues, and (yes!) watching television, has been very rewarding. After 4 years in Germany, I am pretty fluent. I never thought I would be fluent in another language or live in another country. Planetary science definitely opened that door for me. I highly recommend studying or working in another country. (If you’re interested in working in Germany, then consider applying for a Humboldt Fellowship!) It is fascinating to learn how other cultures and countries operate and make comparisons with the U.S. Sure, I miss some things about the U.S: how friendly Americans are, Thanksgiving, and particular foods. However, there are things about Germany that I like better than in the U.S.: for example, universal healthcare, parental leave, and overall environmental friendliness.
4. What advice do you have for students and scientists planning families?
Be flexible. Be proactive. Look for ways to develop skills and expertise that can be used for many different research areas. This is especially useful if you are one half of a two-body problem. Flexibility opens lots of doors, and you have to be nimble in changing your research topic around a common theme or set of skills. For example, learn how to use a couple of different analytical methods. Focus on a geological process, or focus on learning how to process and analyze different kinds of data. If you like working on missions, learn GIS and how to process and analyze different kinds of image data. When you have an arsenal of skills and tools at your disposal, you can work not only in planetary science, but in many other areas.
When looking for your next opportunity, do not be afraid to ask for one. I asked Pete Schultz if I could work with him for graduate school. I asked the staff at the GIA for a position they didn’t know they needed. I asked whether there was a research position at the Institute for Planetology. (In fact, all the positions I’ve ever held are ones that I asked for, not ones that I applied for on the basis of an advertisement.)
For me, it has not been a disadvantage to take time away from academia to pursue other interests or to have a family. During the two years that I worked at the GIA, the planetary science community did not radically change, so it was easy for me to reintegrate myself when I started working on Stardust. I know that taking a year of parental leave will also not greatly impact my career. Perhaps the greatest impact that family planning has had on my career is my decision that I will not try to climb ever higher and higher on the academic ladder. I have found that having a research position satisfies my desire to do science, while allowing me to still have time for other interests and for my family.
Thanks, Carolyn! We’ve been “Facebook friends” for quite a while now, and I really enjoyed learning your story!
Dr. van der Bogert is being featured here as one of 51 Women in Planetary Science, a series of interviews with successful women scientists on career choices, sequencing, publishing, review panels, and other tips for success. Questions or suggestions for future interviews can be sent to us directly or to our email list, which all women in planetary science can join!
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