Heidi Hammel: Ask for help when you need it

Heidi Hammel is a senior research scientist and Co-Director of the Research Branch at the Space Science Institute.  She is an Interdisciplinary Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) scheduled for launch in 2013 and a member of the Science Working Group for the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope.  She has been honored with the DPS Carl Sagan Medal, named one of Discover Magazine’s 50 Most Important Women in Science, and she is a AAAS Fellow.

Dr. Hammel’s publication record is extensive and varied; three recent examples are:

• Hammel, H. B. et al.  Jupiter After the 2009 Impact: Hubble Space Telescope Imaging of the Impact-generated Debris and its Temporal Evolution. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 715, Issue 2, pp. L150-L154 (2010).
• Hammel, H. B.; Sromovsky, L. A.; Fry, P. M.; Rages, K.; Showalter, M.; de Pater, I.; van Dam, M. A.; Lebeau, R. P.; Deng, X. The Dark Spot in the atmosphere of Uranus in 2006: Discovery, description, and dynamical simulations. Icarus, Volume 201, Issue 1, p. 257-271.
• Luszcz-Cook, S. H.; de Pater, I.; Ádámkovics, M.; Hammel, H. B.Seeing double at Neptune’s south pole. Icarus, Volume 208, Issue 2, p. 938-944.

1. When did you first become interested in space science?

I took an elective class in college in astronomy during my sophomore year.  It was fun, so I took the follow-up course.  One thing just led to another, and I ended up with a PhD in astronomy.

2. What do you hope to learn from studying Uranus and Neptune?

I am fascinated by the delicate balance of external radiation from the Sun and the internal heat from these planets.  This balance seems metastable, particular for Uranus but also for Neptune, leading to detectable signatures in their atmospheric activity of the seasons and solar activity.  We do not fully understand the physical processes involved in the balance, and yet it is the same balance that occurs in the Earth’s atmosphere.  In other words, by studying other planets, we learn about Earth, and knowledge of Earth is incredibly important to us as a species.

3. Your work crosses the fields of both Astronomy and Planetary Science.  Does this make it more difficult to keep up with the journals, working groups, and meetings?  Do you have any tips for others working at the intersection of disciplines?

Working in interdisciplinary research is both challenging and enriching.   There are more meetings, but there are more opportunities as well.   As to how to handle the travel: be sure to hit the major meetings in your field(s), and try to be strategic about other meetings.  Some meetings are webcasting now, too, which helps.  Staying current with journals is tough.  I do read Science and Science News, and scan the tables of contents of Icarus, ApJ, and AJ.  I use ADS notifications to get alerts about papers/topics/authors that might interest me.   I encourage young people to branch out and try new ideas, new techniques, new fields. It will make them more effective scientists, and it is just plain fun.

4. What advice would you give postdoctoral fellows considering their options for a “permanent” position?

As discussed in the recent decadal survey “New Worlds, New Horizons,”  the demographics of our community have been changing faster than our institutions.  In other words, there are a lot more young people looking for a lot fewer “traditional” faculty jobs.  I’ve never held a professorship, yet I’ve managed to maintain a great astronomy career.  I encourage postdoctoral fellows to consider their options in the broad context beyond academia: decide what they really like to do and figure out a way to do that, rather than assuming a faculty job is “the goal.”

5. Many women in planetary science struggle with balancing work, life, and children.  How do you balance working groups, missions, observing, papers, and conferences with raising three children?

As a single mom of three school-age children who works full time and travels a lot for my job, I absolutely rely on my neighbors, friends, and family.   I am fortunate that my mother is sometimes available to help with childcare.   I have a housekeeper who comes once a week who’s worth every penny I pay her.   Carpools are critical, as are WebEx and teleconferences (invest in a good polycom system).  I’ve learned that on a day-to-day basis, there is no such thing as balance, so I do not try strive for it.  I plan as far ahead as I can, take each day as it comes, and just pick up the phone and call for help when I need it. That last bit is the most important.  None of us is capable of “doing it all” in isolation.  Ask for help whenever you need it, thank all your helpers on a regular basis, and try to help others whenever you can.

Dr. Hammel 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!

Anita Cochran: Build Collaborations

Anita Cochran is Assistant Director of the McDonald Observatory and a senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin.  Dr. Cochran has been a Co-I on CONTOUR, chair of the AAS Division of Planetary Sciences (DPS), a member of the current NRC Planetary Decadal Survey comets sub-group, and a member of the imaging team on CRAF.  Earlier this year, she deposited new data to the PDS on observations of Comet Tempel 1, as a follow-up to Deep Impact’s encounter in 2005 and in preparation for NASA’s return on 14 February 2011. 

Additional recent publications include:

• Cochran, A.L., J. Gy¨orgey-Ries, E. S. Barker, and M. D. Caballero Placing the Deep Impact Mission into context: Two decades of observations of 9P/Tempel 1 from McDonald Observatory. Icarus, Volume 199, Issue 1, p. 119-128 (2009).
• Manfroid, J. et al., The CN isotopic ratios in comets. Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 503, Issue 2, pp.613-624 (2009).
• Jackson, William M, Xue Liang Wang, Xiaoyu Shi, and Anita C. Cochran. The Temporal Changes in the Emission Spectrum of Comet 9p/Tempel 1 after Deep Impact. The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 698, Issue 2, pp. 1609-1619 (2009).
• Jehin, E., et al. A Multi-Wavelength Simultaneous Study of the Composition of the Halley Family Comet 8P/Tuttle, Earth, Moon, and Planets, Volume 105, Issue 2-4, pp. 343-349 (2009).

How did you first become interested in space science?

I was an undergraduate at Cornell University in the ’70s.  I was a physics major and knew nothing of astronomy but I had an advisor who suggested his students take 1 of every science.  I fit astronomy into my schedule first and fell in love.  During my junior year, I started to work for Joe Veverka.  He was very encouraging for my career.  He was also involved in lots of missions. When I went off to grad school, he stayed interested and suggested directions to pursue.  And when the Comet Rendezvous/Asteroid Flyby mission came around, he encouraged me to apply to be on the imaging team, which he led.

Tell us about McDonald Observatory.

McDonald Observatory is an arm of The University of Texas at Austin and is located in the Davis Mountains of far west Texas.  It is 450 miles from Austin, 200 miles east of El Paso.  It is absolutely beautiful and very remote and dark.

At McDonald, we have the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, a 9.2m telescope of a unique design that concentrates on spectroscopy.  It is 100% queue scheduled.  We also have the 2.7m Harlan J. Smith telescope (where I do most of my research), the 2.1m Otto Struve telescope and a 0.8m telescope – all for classically assigned telescope time.  We have a 0.9m telescope which is mostly used for public programs.

As part of our site we have a 1.2m telescope called MONET, whose twin is in South Africa.  This telescope is run by the University of Goettingen.  We have an 18 inch ROTSE telescope.  Boston University also has a telescope at the site.

In addition, we have a large visitors center and program, with several of their own telescopes.  We also have the newly dedicated Wren-Marcario Accessible Telescope – it can be used by someone in a wheelchair.  The visitors program has >60,000 visitors a year (and remember, I said the site was remote).

You’ve done many things in your career, including chair of the DPS, service on COMPLEX and other NRC committees, associate editor of M&PS, Co-Investigator on CONTOUR, and Assistant Director of McDonald Observatory.  How do you balance this significant service with your own research?

I feel that giving back to the community is important and so I have been willing to say yes when asked to serve on various committees.  I have found that I generally learn things by being on these various committees too.  So, they are enjoyable.  Some of these committees have taken large chunks of time, but in general, you can work in short bursts on most committees and spend the rest of the time on science.

The job that takes the most time away from science is the Assistant Director of McDonald Observatory.  However, my boss, David Lambert, is a great scientist and realizes it is important that his staff gets to do science.  It helps that I am no longer on soft money (I was on soft money for 22 years) so my research does not get interrupted by having to hustle for money (except this year when I am PI on one Discovery mission proposal and Co-I on another).  Also, as my career has progressed, I have built collaborations which allow me to still get science done without having to do it all myself.

I enjoy all these committees so it is worth it for me.  For some it would be a burden but I meet new and interesting people, have new challenges and get satisfaction from doing the job.  I have always worked for people who have thought this service was important, so it has never hampered my career.

4. What advice do you have for graduate students or postdoctoral fellows mapping out their career?

First piece of advice is that if you are not passionate about the science and the process, find another career.

Second piece of advice is learn to like (or at least not dislike) writing.  It is what we do for a living.

Third, don’t pick a sub-field because it is popular today.  It might not be tomorrow.  Or you might not be able to stick out.

Fourth, you can always change your mind.  It is harder to change directions when you are on soft money but even then you can do it.

Fifth, have a life outside the field too.  It makes what you do for a living a little more balanced (I bicycle, do advanced and challenge square dancing, and drink and collect wine).

One of the perks of our field is that you get to travel – sometimes to neat places.  Take advantage of this.

Is there anything else you’d particularly like to talk about?

Much of how my career has been shaped has been because I met my husband when I entered grad school.  He was a post-doc.  We have a classic two-body career.  Early on, we could make it work because there was a big planetary science block grant at Texas that I could get my nose in.  That gave me time to establish myself.  Times are harder now so I am not sure how that would work today.  If you are in a two-body situation, you have to talk to your spouse and figure out what sacrifices you are or are not willing to make to be able to continue in your (or their) career.

In our case, I did something which is not recommended – I stayed at my graduate institution after I finished.  That is not recommended because it is really hard to get people to realize you are no longer a grad student.  Eventually they figure it out.  I even became Assistant Director so you can progress.  We also both did the soft money thing (me for 22 years, Bill still is on soft money) so we “controlled” our fates.

Perseverance and hard work are more important than smarts.  If you really want to be an astronomer, you can overcome lots of obstacles. Just don’t tell the public we are being paid for our hobby!

Dr. Cochran 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!

Monday Minute: Benefits edition

Horizontal mentoring?  What’s that?  Well, it turns out that we have a LOT to teach each other, and the NSF sponsors programs like the one described in a new article by senior scientists Cindy Blaha, Amy Bug, Anne Cox, Linda Fritz, and Barbara Whitten.  Read more about how they fought imposter syndrome and learned from each other, with NSF support, in the Fall 2010 CSWP Gazette.

Working Mother magazine has released its 100 Best Companies list for 2010.  While I doubt there’s a single planetary scientist employed at any of them, their evaluation criteria caught my eye.  Working Mother measures workforce profile, benefits, women’s issues and advancement, child care, flexible work, parental leave and company culture. For this year’s 100 Best, particular weight was given to benefits, flexibility and parental leave.  Interesting.  A few facts from the news release:

All of the 100 Best Companies offer telecommuting, flextime, paid maternity leave, lactation rooms, health-insurance for part-time workers, mental health consultations and elder-care resources.  In addition:

• 99 offer a range of childcare options, including backup childcare, before and afterschool care, and summer camps; 
• 98 offer health screening and wellness programs;
• 95 offer formal mentoring programs;
• 78 offer onsite fitness centers; and
• 75 offer paternity leave. 

Nationwide,

• 49% of American companies surveyed offer flextime;
• 44% offer telecommuting;  and
• 37% offer health insurance for part-time employees. 

The full article and profiles of the various companies are online at Working Mother.

Lastly, the Canadian space blog Pars3c interviewed me recently about our work over here at Women in Planetary Science.  I talked about our sucess at getting a lactation room at LPSC, and why it matters, along with why I hope this site doesn’t exist in ten years, at Pars3c.

Diana Blaney: Play to Your Strengths

Diana Blaney is a scientist at JPL.  I interviewed Dr. Blaney at the 40th Lunar and Planetary Science conference in Houston, Texas, on March 24th, 2009 as part of the Women in Planetary Science Oral History Project.  Dr. Blaney holds a Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Hawaii and a B.S. in Engineering Physics and Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University.  She has been selected to work on a large number of NASA flight missions so far in her career – and not all of them have been the experience she expected.

Can you start by telling me a little bit about your background?  When did you first become interested in space science?

I first became interested in space science and science in general from the time I was a little kid.  I always kind of was interested in science, and … I read a book in sixth grade that the main character was a theoretical physicist.  He was an astronaut, and he was doing all these cool things. So, for the longest time, I thought I wanted to be a theoretical physicist, and that lasted actually up until about my sophomore year of college, when I was majoring in engineering physics, and I realized I was neither an engineer nor a physicist, and started looking around for neat projects where I could use my physics and math background….

I started taking earth science classes, even though I kept my major, engineering physics, and there were a lot of problems that could be solved with basic physics that you shouldn’t need a thousand people to solve.…  I did my Ph.D. doing ground-based astronomy of Mars, and I was able to combine all of the engineering I had learned on the instrumentation side from college, with the physics, with the science, with the creative process…. I didn’t actually build any instruments from scratch, but we were responsible for maintaining and bringing them to the telescope and fixing them when they did, and carrying things away and working with the instruments.  So, it was very, very hands-on.  I would take apart environment chambers and fix them and do things.  So, even though it was observational, where you basically get maybe 10 nights a year to do it and then spend most of your time looking at data, getting ready for those 10 nights, making sure everything works, got me a lot of hands-on experience…. I’m not an engineer, but I appreciate good engineers, and I know how their training differs from scientists.  So, a lot of what I do is translating back and forth between scientists and engineers….
 
I wasn’t one of these kids who took apart a lot of things.  The first time I went into the student shop and learned how to braise metal joints with a torch and use a lathe, it was kind of intimidating, but they had people there who taught you how to do it, and you just kind of rolled up your sleeve and learned it.… Even if it’s not something I do now, I have a better appreciation on how hard some of these things are to do to, like, get real good tolerances on instruments and things like that.

What was your first post-doc?

My first post-doc was at JPL, and I came there because at the time there was a mission called Mars Observer, and it had an instrument that was going to be an imaging spectrometer from the visible out to five microns going around orbiting Mars.  I got there, and within a month or so after I got there, they deselected the instrument from the mission.  And so, I’m there, and the people sponsoring my post-doc were Torrence Johnson and Dennis Matson.…  I pretty much totally switched fields.  I finished the post-doc and ended up getting lucky to get hired at JPL.  And there was another change in administration at NASA, and my post-doc money disappeared.  In retrospect, it was very, very good, because it allowed me some freedom and flexibility rather than working directly for someone and doing something [specified].  I started doing a bunch of different things.  I started working with people doing instrument development stuff.  Mars was always where my heart was, so I started trying to figure out ways to move back more and more to doing Mars research, and started working more with developing relationships with instrumentation people and just kind of doing a variety of different things.  I realized that, after a while, that there was a lot about JPL, being at the edge of the science and the engineering, that was a really good fit, and I felt I could make a contribution there.

Very cool.  So, what projects did you get involved with after that?

The first projects I got were some robotic technology, the Rocky, Fido, field tests.  My first instrument was with Lonne Lane, and we built a little visible spectrometer for a technology rover.  I then wrote a participating scientist proposal to Mars Polar Lander, which got selected, and I was part of that science team for pretty much about three to four weeks before it got canceled….  Then, the other mission I was involved in at that point in time was I was a Co-I, and I was actually in charge of building an infrared spectrometer on the Champollion mission.  It was an instrument called Circle, and Roger Yelle was the PI and I was the IR team chief, and we were going to do an AOTS spectrometer that was going to look at, as they dug the sample out of the comet, we were going to look and do IR, Imaging Spectroscopy, of it.  And again, ’98 was a bad year, because Mars Polar Lander crashed, and that money disappeared.  Champollion and the U.S. did not work out well, and so stuff that I thought was going to keep me busy for the next three or four years all of a sudden disappeared on me again.  So then, the next thing I did is I got involved on–I was a Co-I and worked on a project called, I think it was called MOX at the time, but it was basically a predecessor to URI that was on the 2001 mission, and I was a Co-I on that.  But, after the loss of the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter, that mission also disappeared. 

Did you get frustrated at this point and wonder when it was going to happen for you?

Yes, I really did.  But I had people around me who told me it was persistence, who talked about–like Dennis and Torrence talked about how it was a decade from conception of Cassini and Galileo to when it actually started, and that it’s a long, long haul. 

I’ve been fortunate since then.  I got involved as an investigation scientist on MER, which started giving me some actual hardware, flight experience.  I was a Co-I on Phoenix, and now I’m a Co-I and investigation scientist for ChemCam on MSL….

I’ve written a lot of proposals, and in some ways, I’m not always sure that’s been the wisest thing for my career.  When you write a flight proposal in a major role, those are papers you’re not getting written.  And sometimes, the balance–but at the same time, I think I got the bug early, having the first couple of things I did get through at least the selection gate.  If you don’t try, then you’re always going to wish, “Well, if I had tried and won, what would have happened differently?” 

But, again, it’s something I may have gone too far.  Like right now, I’m hoping to spend the next year really focusing on doing some scientific research, which is much, much more tangible.  I’ve got all this great Phoenix data.  I’ve now been with it from the beginning.  I want to see it through.  I want to write the papers.  I want to get that stuff out.  That’s kind of the thing I like:  I like doing things from the beginning to the very end.

Balancing that type of stuff is hard.  I’m trying now to focus on doing fewer things at a larger portion of my time.… My career goal is I want to build my own instrument.  I’m working hard.  There are a lot of things that, when I first started doing this, I didn’t realize was important.  I didn’t realize politics was important, and I learned that lesson. 

Then, having now watched flight projects from end to end, I know that budgets, reading budgets, risk reviews, understanding how your requirements are written, how do you structure a project, how do you make sure you’ve got–you know what your job, what other people’s jobs are, everyone has very clear roles and responsibilities.  And not only that, they have the authority appropriate to their roles and responsibilities.  Making sure all that’s in sync and that people are talking and there’s enough money and that you are spending your money in the right place, because there’s never really enough money to do what you need to do.  That’s as much a job as being a PI, as being a scientist is, and realizing that a lot of it is sitting through really, really, mind-numbing meetings for the 10 minutes where the make-or-break decisions happen.  You need to be able to recognize those and speak out.

How would you advise a younger Diana who would not know these kinds of things?  I mean, you’re not trained to do those things in graduate school.  That’s not part of the Ph.D. training.   This mission stuff is a whole ‘nother animal.  So, how do you get that experience?

You talk to people, and you seek out mentors.  My early mentors were Dennis and Torrence on the mission stuff.  On the instrument building, it was Lonnie Lane.  Lonnie basically pulled me in just a few years out of grad school on this technology program, which was low budget, none of the rigors of space, but it had all the elements. You had to figure out what you needed to accommodate on the thing, figure out what would fit on the rover, and [he] gave me advice.  And that’s what it is, talking to people, say, “Hey, I’m interested in doing this.  What kind of things should I be doing?” 

The key things are, early in your career you need to be useful.  You need to be the good team player.  Having you on the team needs to make the senior scientists’ lives … easier.  That may be really simple things like, “Hey, there’s this old data set that would be great in the proposal.  I’m going to slog through and get the calibration and make some great figures” [as an example].  Or talking to people.  Say, “Hey, what can I do?”  Mark Robinson and I went to grad school [together].  Mark Robinson, in his free time, for instance, he calibrated an old, obsolete data set, and basically kind of got known by people in the camera community as this is a guy who knows how to do X, Y or Z. 

So, find something that you can do to contribute, even if it’s not really the most sexy thing out there.  And if you’re given an opportunity by somebody, just kind of be the team member.  Be the team player – someone asks you to do something, and you go out and you do it, and you look for things to help to make things.  That’s what happened with Lonnie.  I basically did the stuff he didn’t have time to do, and it wasn’t very glamorous.  The same thing with Dennis and Torrence.  Hard work is important. 

Figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are, and play to your strengths.  For instance, I could never do modeling, theoretical modeling stuff.  I tried a theoretical modeling project.  It was a disaster.  But I can figure out what I need to measure and plan observations.  So, play to your strengths.

Since this interview, Dr. Blaney has published four papers in JGR and the following in Science:

• Smith, P.H., L. K. Tamppari, R. E. Arvidson, D. Bass, D. Blaney, and 31 others, H2O at the Phoenix Landing Site Science 3 July 2009: 58-61.

The Phoenix mission investigated patterned ground and weather in the northern arctic region of Mars for 5 months starting 25 May 2008 (solar longitude between 76.5° and 148°). A shallow ice table was uncovered by the robotic arm in the center and edge of a nearby polygon at depths of 5 to 18 centimeters. In late summer, snowfall and frost blanketed the surface at night; H2O ice and vapor constantly interacted with the soil. The soil was alkaline (pH = 7.7) and contained CaCO3, aqueous minerals, and salts up to several weight percent in the indurated surface soil. Their formation likely required the presence of water.

Dr. Blaney 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!

Jessica Sunshine: Tenured Full Professor

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog reading to announce that Dr. Jessica Sunshine has just accepted an offer of appointment to Full Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Maryland.  Her appointment will begin 1 July 2011.

Congratulations, Jessica!  We’re so thrilled to celebrate this news with you!

DPS Early Career Scientist Workshop

DPS EARLY CAREER SCIENTIST WORKSHOP

Sunday, October 3, 2010 9am-5pm
DPS 2010 Pasadena
Room 211

This workshop is open to all graduate students and recent post-graduates interested in learning more about advancing their career in planetary science. The full day workshop will include a networking event, a panel on career pathways, and a tutorial on proposal writing. Lunch and refreshments will be provided to participants. Pre-registration is required for this event due to space limitations. Please contact Rachel Mastrapa (Rachel.M.Mastrapa@nasa.gov) to pre-register. This event is sponsored by NASA and the DPS Committee.

Workshop event: Career Pathways Panel
The purpose of this panel is to provide advice to early career scientists regarding the challenges associated with following a career in planetary science and to introduce them to options that they may not be aware of. It will be a informal panel, focusing on questions from the workshop participants. The career pathways panel is to introduce the broad variety of careers that are unique to the field of planetary science.

Announcement contributed by Dr. Karly Pittman of PSI. Thanks, Karly!

Nominations for AGU Fellows

This is important, y’all.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  Remember when we talked at LPSC about the number of women receiving prizes and recognition for their work?  Remember when I shared the AAS statistics with you that showed that not only are women underrepresented as prize winners and Fellows of our societies, but they are also undernominated?  And that women themselves don’t nominate other scientists for prizes and as Fellows as often?  It’s time to change that.

It’s time to increase the number of women nominated for — and winning — research prizes and fellowship in our professional societies.

Too big a goal?  Perhaps.  Too audacious?  Not really.  Here’s the secret:  It all starts with a nomination.  And today, I challenge YOU to nominate a colleague you admire as an AGU Fellow.

What is an AGU Fellow? 

The Fellows program recognizes AGU members who have made exceptional contributions to Earth and space sciences as valued by their peers and vetted by a committee of Fellows. The Fellows program serves to meet the need of identifying authorities who could advise, upon request, the various government agencies and other organizations outside the Earth and space sciences….

Who is an AGU Fellow?

Here’s the list of the newest Fellows; here’s the whole list.

How do I nominate someone to be an AGU Fellow? 

The AGU Fellows program recognizes AGU members who have made exceptional contributions to Earth and space sciences as valued by their peers and vetted by section and focus group committees. Election is by a committee of Fellows. To qualify, the nominee must have attained acknowledged eminence in the Earth and space sciences. This honor may be bestowed on only 0.1% of the membership in any given year.  With the exception of elected or appointed officers, any member of the Union — whether or not a Fellow — may nominate another member for Fellow.

For complete information, please visit the AGU nomination page, read the Fellows FAQ, and then submit a nomination online by 1 October 2010.  Good luck!

Monday Minute: Women in Science blogging

Interested in finding more women in science blogging?  Here are three up-to-the-minute places to start:

– The monthly Scientae Carnival of women science bloggers;
– The Lay Scientist, Martin Robbins, hosted by The Guardian (post crowdsourced this week on twitter); and
– the Women in Planetary Science blogroll, which has a long list of science bloggers created two years ago and updated most recently two weeks ago.

And on that note, I was asked an interesting question by a reporter yesterday: what are some good examples of scientists using social media to communicate their results to the public?  I gave her several NASA E/PO links, but the question got me thinking.  What are some planetary science social media sites that you enjoy, to which you contribute, or that you just happen to know about?

Rhonda Stroud: Be visible and be involved

Rhonda Stroud was the first graduate student I met when I visited the campus of Washington University in St. Louis as a curious undergrad.  She held the prestigious Olin Fellowship, for which I was a finalist, and we were immediately introduced.  I remember having dinner with her and her advisor, the three of us physicists and physicists-to-be in a roomful of fellowship holders in social work, business, law, anthropology, literature, and the like.  I was happy that I wasn’t the only woman in science there — and I’m not sure she realizes it, but I learned a lot from her during the brief year or two we were both there in graduate school.  For instance, Rhonda encouraged the younger female students to apply for the Zonta fellowship, and she held weekly lunches for the women in physics.  That first year, I only went once, to my regret, thinking “I don’t need this.  I don’t need any special help just because I’m a woman.  I was the best in my class in undergrad, and you bet I can do it here as well.”   Yeah.  Fast forward a few years, and bam!  Here I am at Women in Planetary Science, talking to you all because I’ve learned that there are some things that are just a little harder if you happen to be the one wearing skinny jeans and flats. 

Rhonda’s latest paper:  

Bradley T. De Gregorio, Rhonda M. Stroud, Larry R. Nittler, Conel M.O’D. Alexander, A.L. David Kilcoyne, Thomas J. Zega. Isotopic anomalies in organic nanoglobules from Comet 81P/Wild 2: Comparison to Murchison nanoglobules and isotopic anomalies induced in terrestrial organics by electron irradiation. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 74 (2010) 4454–4470.

1. What first inspired you to study space science?

I’ve been interested in math and science since at least kindergarten, but I didn’t get directly involved in space science research until well after graduate school. As a teenager, I wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic, an astronaut or a physicist. Somewhere I read, maybe in a quote from Sally Ride, that at the time the odds of becoming an astronaut were higher for mission specialists, who first obtained graduate training in physical science or engineering. My thought heading to college was to study condensed matter physics, and maybe eventually become an astronaut. What I do now—electron microscopy of dust particles from stars and comets– allows me to combine all three of those original interests. I’m not working for National Geographic, but I collect digital images and I travel to conferences all over the world. I’m not an astronaut, but I get to glimpse inside supernovae by analyzing nanoparticles that formed there. I am a research physicist, and I get to learn new things every day about the cosmic recycling process that forms new stars out of the ashes of old ones. How cool is that?

The path to actually doing research on meteorites and cosmic dust was not so direct, or always so easy. I had a huge head start compared to a lot of people in that both my parents have degrees in physics, I had a lot of support from teachers early on, and in my middle school / high school there were other girls also taking advanced math and physics. Basically I didn’t know that women “didn’t do physics” until I had already chosen to be a physicist. Even so, I nearly dropped out of physics more than once. When I got to college, the numbers started to speak for themselves— I had no female math or science professors at all. There were only two other women in my physics classes. There was rarely overt discrimination, but I could see that some of the professors treated my boyfriend- now husband—differently that they did me. We could compare grades on homework and tests, and see that sometimes he’d get one more point than I did for the exact same solution to a problem, but never the other way around. I asked a TA about it once, and he actually admitted that they tried to determine who worked together and split the points appropriately. The assumption was that my boyfriend was letting me copy his work. This was a wake-up call for me. I figured previously that I’d always be evaluated on my own merits, and this showed me that discrimination still existed in subtle unintended ways. I learned an important survival skill in knowing to identify the systematic bias, so that I could move beyond it and not internalize it. Oddly enough, the only reason I ever raised the grade issue with the TA is that I had gone to TA offices looking for a female grad student who posted a flier about a lunch gathering for women in physics.

2. In graduate school, you brought a group of students together regularly for lunch, from across the department. How did this benefit participants?

When I got to graduate school, one of the first things I did was hang a flier to organize a lunch gathering for women in physics. There was no specific agenda other than to get the women in the department together for lunch. I wanted simply to make sure that we each had a chance to be in a room of women physicists, rather than be the woman in a room of physicists. I also wanted there to be physical sign in the department hallways for women undergraduates to see, as proof that women do physics beyond the undergraduate level. I hope this seems entirely unnecessary on college campuses today, but in the early ‘90’s this was radical enough that one faculty member actually complained about it and one male graduate student actually worried out loud that we might be talking about him during the lunch. In reality we talked about all sorts of things over lunch, and that one male graduate student never came up. Perhaps most importantly the lunches allowed us to share strategies for getting our advisors to send us to meetings, and for lining up the best thesis committees.

3. What are the benefits of working for a national lab?

As a graduate student, I got to spend a couple of weeks working at two different national labs, Oak Ridge and Ames Lab in Iowa. It seemed to me that the scientists at these labs had the best jobs. At academic jobs, the professors are busy with grant proposals, teaching and committee work , and rarely get to do much hands on research themselves. In contrast, the scientists at the national labs get to keep doing bench level science for most of their career, if they so choose. Since I really enjoy working in the lab, this seemed like a good choice for me. After getting my Ph.D., I took a postdoc at the Naval Research Lab (NRL) in Washington, DC. After two years, I was converted to staff, and I’ve been at NRL ever since. There are certainly trade-offs. Not having a tenure clock can really ease the pressure when trying to balance starting both a career and a family. But believe or not, the federal government doesn’t offer any maternity leave. I had to take every scrap of annual and sick leave I’d earned, and then hope some of the senior people would donate more to me, so that I could stay home for 3 months after my daughter was born. Jobs at the national labs are generally very secure; industry jobs offer higher salaries, but also greater risk of lay-off. There is more freedom to pursue basic research than in industry, but a greater need to be relevant to the agency mission than at a university. The strength of national labs compared to universities is often the collaborative nature of the work. There are nearly 1000 Ph.D. scientists at NRL, so chances are if you need experts in any given field to talk to, you can find them on site. It’s a great place to work if you enjoy being part of “big science” that just can’t be done by a lone research group at a university.

4. Besides science, what else is important to you?

Being married to someone who is also in planetary science, and with whom I collaborate, there is no sharp line in my life between research and my regular life. It’s just life. That doesn’t mean I do science 24/7, but that in order to be a mom, a scientist, a wife, a friend, etc… I just fit it all in whenever and wherever I can. A laptop and a family Google calendar are the two things I couldn’t function without. Before our daughter came along, my husband and I went out to dinner four nights a week, went to see a lot of live music, to art galleries, and planned our vacations around how much scuba diving we could do. Now we do a lot more children’s activities, and a lot less eating out and scuba diving. In the last couple of years, we’ve taken up kayaking. It’s great exercise; it’s something we can all enjoy together that gets us out in nature, and it’s not too expensive. Photography is still my biggest personal hobby. I once told my thesis advisor that after twenty years of physics, maybe it would be time for me start a second career as a photographer. Now that it’s been about twenty years since I said that, I still think maybe in twenty years, I’ll become a photographer. For now, I’m really happy spending a day analyzing tiny grains from stars, and then taking my daughter to dance class.

5. What advice do you have for students or postdocs envisioning a career in planetary science?

My biggest advice for women just starting out in planetary science is to be visible and involved. There are really great research programs for undergraduate these days. Volunteer to run the campus student telescope or join the Astronomy club. There’s no better way to find out if you are really passionate about planetary science than to do it yourself. The skills you learn and the connections you make will be invaluable later on. For graduate students and postdocs, I think it is even more important to go beyond the required coursework, and find out what projects the groups around you are working on. Sure, you need to work hard on your own project, but you can gain really valuable new insights and new skills by learning about other people’s work. That’s exactly how I got started in planetary science. I learned about presolar grains and meteorites from talking to my husband and colleagues at the Smithsonian and the Carnegie Institution, and realized that I had the right microscopy skills to address some of the questions they had. It’s really hard to guess what opportunities will be out there when you finish graduate school or a postdoc, so I would say just gather as many skills as you can, and keep your eyes and ears out for a problem that you are uniquely suited to solve. If you get a chance to review proposals and/or serve on a review panel, jump at it. This is the fastest way to learn how to write compelling proposals. Finally, I would say just hang in there. The most important thing for a successful research career is not your grades, or your score on the qualifying exam, or even how powerful your advisor is.

It is your own passion for the work that will carry you through the inevitable rejected proposal, hostile referee report, the serious illness and every other obstacle.   Invest in that passion.

Dr. Stroud 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!

Sara Seager: Exoplanets

Sara Seager is a dynamic researcher who has pioneered the detection of atmospheres around exoplanets and been instrumental in bringing new ideas to the field.  She is currently a participating scientist on the Kepler mission to detect exoplanets; a Co-Investigator on EPOXI, the new science mission for the Deep Impact spacecraft; and the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Planetary Science and Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Her ten 2010 peer-reviewed publications (to date) include:

• Beatty, Thomas G. and Seager, Sara. (2010) Transit Probabilities for Stars with Stellar Inclination Constraints. ApJ 712:1433.
• Rogers, L. A., Seager, S. (2010) Three Possible Origins for the Gas Layer on GJ 1214b.  ApJ 716(2):1208.
• Seager, S., Deming, D. (2010) Exoplanet Atmospheres.  Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, in press.

Seager frequently gives talks about exoplanets, both for technical audiences and the general public.  I caught up with her in December 2009, between her Smithsonian Institution Bahcall Lecture and a Kepler briefing at NASA Headquarters.  Excerpts from our interview, done as part of the Discovery Program Oral History Project, follow:

Niebur:  Could you just tell us a little bit about your background, about how you first got interested in space science, and what you did about it?

Seager:  I first got interested in space as a small child.  I think just seeing the moon through a telescope and seeing all the bright stars in a dark sky was just extremely amazing.  And I don’t know why, I always latched onto that as something very fascinating. Then, later I was pressured by my father to just try to do something more practical.  But I went into university aiming to study all of the sciences, whereas my father wanted me to be a doctor because he wanted me to have a job where I could support myself…. I didn’t even know you could be an astronomer for a career until I was 15 or 16.  It was more of a random thing.  Eventually, I decided how much I loved astronomy and I knew if it was a potential career I should just try it. 

Niebur:  How did you choose where you wanted to apply [for your first postdoc]? 

Seager:  …I went to visit the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton after they invited me… I couldn’t believe a place like that existed…. People really are seeking–it sounds so corny, but are seeking the truth.  It’s a kind of unique place, because you live on campus and you work there.  At the Institute, they did whatever they could to make your job easy….  One example with some of the post docs, shows the priority John [Bahcall] put in enabling his postdocs to work without problems…  There’s a daycare at the institute and they take children from the town.  But, they wouldn’t take infants because, you know, infants are really hard to deal with — you’re a mother, right?  So, for the daycare–and we weren’t talking newborns, but maybe, you know, six month or three month old babies.  Well, even that’s hard, and they wouldn’t take any.  People had lobbied and tried to get this to happen.  But, when John heard about this, he made a phone call, and then the daycare instantly took infants.  That’s the kind of power that John had and how he used it….  Even just to get a place to take an infant part-time, John appreciated that that would be a big difference…. The goal was he wanted to support his post docs.  And if it meant making the daycare take a baby, he would do that. 

He did other things.  He loved PowerPoint and he made his postdocs use it.  This was in the early days when not everyone did PowerPoint, and he’d say, “This is the last talk you’re giving without PowerPoint.”  Well, he was also very strict.  But, what John did was, when PowerPoint wasn’t that common, he purchased projectors as small as possible, which in those days were not very small, so that the post docs could take them around to their job talks.  John would just do whatever was possible. 

Niebur:  What made you believe so strongly that [the successful search for exoplanets] was going to happen, in a timeframe that would have worked with your job search, for example?

Seager:  Oh, but it didn’t, because remember I said I wasn’t planning strategically?  I plan strategically now, but at the time, actually, in grad school, I wasn’t committed to a job in astronomy and I had nothing to lose.  When my thesis advisor suggested that new planets had been discovered, it was a chance to work on something new, I thought it sounded really great….  A lot of people don’t give a student such a risky project because it might not work out and then the student doesn’t have anything to show for a job application. At that time, a few people at Harvard believed and that’s why it worked.  They knew what they were doing.  But, most astronomers–a lot of them didn’t even believe they were planets.  They thought there was some other phenomenon going on with variability in the star.

Now, I know you were on a ton of different working groups over the last decade. That’s a large number of working groups for somebody so early in their career.

Seager: Well, I’ll tell you how it happened, because it’s such an unusual time in astronomy and most people don’t have this opportunity. But, it was Margaret Geller who said if you’re going to plan strategically, you want to be in a field that matures 10 years after you get your Ph.D., because then you’re sort of growing up with the field, and then you’re the most senior person. And so, even though now at my age, I’m basically one of the most senior people in exoplanets. And that is now.  This is 10 years after my Ph.D.

Niebur: That was very wise.

Seager: But, the thing is I didn’t plan, really. That was just–it unfolded that way. I didn’t plan, “Okay, I’m going to start in exoplanets. It’s going to be big.” Maybe it would have gone nowhere. For example, if hot Jupiters were rare but easy to find — If we didn’t have the pool of exoplanets we have today, we wouldn’t be so successful because a lot of the results, all the stuff I work on, is sort of hinged on having a pool of planets that we could follow up.

Seager: There are some key people who look out for younger people, who I didn’t know at the time, like Chas Beichman. I don’t know if you know Chas. He read one of my papers, and he took me aside specifically and said, “This is a really great paper. It’s really excellent. Congratulations.” And that was before the paper had actually been recognized as so foundational– At this time when you look back, it was foundational. But, he recognized it at the time.  And I think people like Chas — it’s true I had expertise to bring, but I had so much to learn. I’m grateful for Chas and others like him for bringing me on the teams. In the first couple years on the TPF [Terrestrial Planet Finder] team, I couldn’t even help with anything. I was just sort of figuring out what the teams were. Then, later I was able to help more and more…. They needed people who really were working on exoplanet science. But, the fact that they gave opportunities to such young people, it was really great, because then I was able to contribute more effectively later.

Niebur: In 2007, Discovery put out a participating scientist call for Kepler. And clearly, this was very relevant to your field. What did you think? Did you immediately say, “Oh, that’s something I’d like to get involved in?”

Seager: Well, initially I thought I wouldn’t, because, this may sound a little on the negative side, but I saw it happening that I would just have to attend tons and tons of more meetings, and I’m already traveling constantly. Kepler has four meetings a year. I wasn’t sure what it was really going to enable me to do. Initially, I wasn’t sure that the benefit would be a big enough payoff for me. But, actually, this is one of the cases where having a mentor really pays off…. My former thesis advisor [Dimitar Sasselov] who was on the Kepler team, said, “You need to do this. I don’t care what you think.” … He said, “Look, this is a really important problem. It’s your expertise. You propose to do it and then the Kepler team can do it.” … He really encouraged me.

Seager: So, I did, and there you go. I got it. And afterwards, I was the only woman on the Participating Scientist team, and I was kind of irritated…. I was glad my advisor had pushed me. Maybe there were other women who just thought it was going to be too much effort for very little return. But, in the end–so, then I got on the team and I was pretty excited.

Niebur: That’s wonderful. And so, what was your introduction to the team?

Seager: Hmm. Well, I already knew Bill pretty well because in the early days of exoplanets, he had to go to every meeting to promote his idea. I was at every meeting because I was young and I had time. I didn’t have kids or anything at the time, and I traveled. And he’d often be just having dinner by himself, when we’d be in New York or something. So, actually I got to know him. And I knew him pretty well. I mean, everyone knew all about Kepler because he had been going to meetings for so long. He had to propose many times before Discovery selected it.

Seager: Kepler’s going to have 28 papers in January…based on the 10 days of commissioning data. Kepler is going to change exoplanets and astronomy as we know it.

Niebur: Wow.  Can you talk a little bit about the advantages or the disadvantages of being a PSP?

Seager:  Well, first I just want to say the PSP program is so great because it gives people like me an opportunity to join the team.  When Kepler was forming, I was either in high school or undergrad or–you know, I wasn’t on the playing field.  And that’s really great.  So, the advantage is that it gives people a chance to join the team who actually weren’t already on it.  Another advantage that we were already talking about was it gives Kepler extra money because there’s a separate pool of money that supports the PSP efforts…. One advantage is not having to suffer through all the stress of getting the mission launched…. I think a disadvantage is there’s still definitely a hierarchy on the team. Co-I’s, perhaps rightly so, because they’ve been there for so long…. there’s definitely a hierarchy, but I think we’re sorting through those issues on the team.  And once the data is flooding [in], I think those barriers will go away.

Niebur: Some of the people reading excerpts from this interview will be reading it from the Women in Planetary Science column, and some will be undergraduates or graduate students that maybe haven’t been exposed to [professional] women in planetary science, as sad as that is.  So, my question is, if you had an undergraduate come and talk to you and say, “I want to be on a mission.”  You know, she’s the kind that plans ahead.  She wants to be on a mission one day.  What would you say that most important things to do to prepare would be?

Seager:  Well, that’s a great question.  I think you need to prepare, to have some skills.  You have to have something to offer to the mission….  There are a lot of politics involved, but, I think having the skills to offer is key.  Being able to communicate well is important.  And, you know, being willing to do a tough or tedious job initially, I think, will count for a lot. 

Niebur:  A lot of people get on missions through instrument building experience, but that clearly wasn’t the way you did it.  Would you recommend somebody trying the PSP program, once they’re at the postdoc or, you know, junior professor level?

Seager:  I think the PSP is a great way to get involved.

Thank you, Sara!

If you’d like to be featured as one of our 51 Women in Planetary Science, send in an abstract of a recently published paper and we’ll send you some questions. If you’re a student, send in a question and we’ll forward it to successful women scientists who can answer your questions about career choices, sequencing, publishing, review panels, and other tips for success.  This feature will run every Tuesday and Friday, as often as we have submissions.

Postdoctoral Positions

Just a few that have crossed my path recently…

1) Postdoctoral Research Opportunity: Geophysical Modeling of Asteroid Interiors

http://www2.orau.gov/NASA_Catalog/Opportunity/18558

2) Postdoctoral Position in Organic Cosmochemistry at the Carnegie Institution of Washington

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/newsletter/display/2010-09-13#595  (NAI Newsletter)

Added by editor: 3) Postdoctoral position to work on MESSENGER work – see comments for details.

Monday Minute

Women in Planetary Science in the news:  Dr. Yvonne Pendleton has been appointed Director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute.  Dr. Pendleton has previously served as NASA Ames’ Deputy Associate Center Director, Chief of the Space Science and Astrobiology Division at Ames, Service and Advice for Research and Analysis (SARA) at NASA Headquarters Science Mission Directorate, and a research astrophysicist for 31 years.   – from this week’s EOS, v. 91, n. 36, 7 September 2010 

Congratulations, Dr. Pendleton!

A recent article in GSA Today caught our attention — check out The Internet as a Resource and Support Network for Diverse Geoscientists, by Anne J. Jefferson, Kimberly A. Hannula, Patricia B. Campbell, and Suzanne E. Franks.  In a world where we had enough (funded) time to write every day, this could easily take us through three or four posts of discussion — but here’s the link, and we really do recommend you read the (short) report.  (If you’d like to discuss it, GREAT! Send us a comment, article, or reflection that it inspired, and we’ll happily post it for you, either with your name or anonymously.  Does the internet increase your interaction within the scientific community?  How does social media help you?) – article appeared in GSA v. 20, iss. 9, pp. 59-61, September 2010.

An update on the National Postdoctoral Association’s ADVANCE grant work is included in the NPA Postdocket.  The report is recommended by one of our JPL readers, so go take a look if you are a postdoc, mentor a postdoc, or would like to be a postdoc someday.  ADVANCE is the program acronym for Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers, a source of funding for professional development and other ideas that is funded and administered by NSF.   ADVANCE grants are helping institutions all over the country, and the results are often very impressive. – link sent to us from a reader at JPL

On Friday, NASA held a special event commemorating the 25th anniversary of the first comet encounter (by ISEE-3) and celebrating the TWO upcoming comet encounters in the next six months!  We’re working on a full report about the event and the opportunities — come back on Wednesday to hear all about comets!