After two weeks of traveling, training, and testing of equipment, we finally made the ~40 minute helicopter flight from McMurdo Station, across the frozen sea ice of the McMurdo Sound, past New Harbour into the mouth of Taylor Valley, past Commonwealth Glacier, over Lake Fryxell, and over to its north shore to the permanent Fryxell Camp (see above). The Fryxell Camp consists of six buildings: a main hut with a kitchen, heating stove, desk space for working, a communications room, and a large dining table (where I am sitting now). The hut also has patchy internet access, which allows me to update this blog!
There is also a generator shed, which houses power generation equipment and readouts. The camp is primarily run using three large solar panels, but has a backup gas-powered generator to supply the camp if the solar panels are unable to keep up with the demands of the camp, or in the case of an emergency. The last four buildings are small sheds that serve as scientific laboratories - one general purpose lab, one electronics lab, one chemistry lab, and one radiation lab. These are to fabricate and fix equipment, or to prepare samples until they can be returned to McMurdo Station for additional analyses. The panoramic image above shows the Fryxell Camp along the northern shore of beautiful Lake Fryxell. Lake Fryxell is a permanently frozen lake, although its margins thaw out every year as the weather warms in the austral summer and then refreeze every austral winter. In the background of this image are the Kukri Hills (with several mountain glaciers also visible), and behind me is the Asgard Range. On the far left of the image is Commonwealth Glacier, and on the far right is Canada Glacier, which flank the Fryxell Camp. You can also see the large polygonal fractures on the flat ground in front of me - these formed through the continual freezing and thawing of the frozen ground, which create regularly spaced cracks that fill with sand and expand over time. It's a very interesting process, and one we see across the surface of Mars where we know ground ice is present. Our first few days at the camp have been dedicated to setting up our tents (despite there being several buildings, there are none dedicated to sleep quarters, so we sleep in tents), organizing our personal and scientific gear, and getting used to "camp living." We've also taken some short trips to nearby sites of biological interest, collected some preliminary data and samples, and have learned a lot of "big picture" information that will help us in our upcoming field work. Our goal is to relate the data that we can collect from orbit to the observed microbial communities that live in the soils and streams within this valley, so any observations or information that we have to refine our techniques is extremely helpful. Following these initial observations, we managed to complete our first successful run-through of our data collection and analytical procedures yesterday, finally shaking out all of the known bugs before our field season kicks into full swing, which will be tomorrow. After one last day of preparing our equipment and refining our methods, we'll be taking a helicopter to the other side of the lake to reproduce our methods, collect data, and begin our intensive and long-lived field season. Lastly, I just wanted to thank Northern Arizona University again for supporting me and my student in our research efforts down here in the Antarctic. Thank you!
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It's been a long day, so just a quick update. We were supposed to fly out to our field camp at Lake Fryxell in Taylor Valley today, but were socked in due to bad weather. A low pressure system started moving in from the north this morning, creating rapidly deteriorating conditions throughout the day. In mid-afternoon, the winds were sustained at ~30 knots with blowing and accumulating snow, confirming the wise decision to ground all helicopter traffic throughout the region and delay our departure for 24 hours. It's currently 10:45pm, still bright as ever outside, and we now know that we're slated to head out of McMurdo at 9am tomorrow. The weather should clear by then, so it looks like we have a good shot of getting our field camp established tomorrow.
Our next post will include pictures and will be from our camp at Lake Fryxell! Well hello there! Sorry for the delay in posting to the blog - between spotty internet access and staying extremely busy with trainings and meetings, Sunday morning is the first time I am able to really get a few minutes in to update this blog. Hopefully it was worth the wait! Since our last post, we boarded a C-17 cargo plane and made the ~5.5-hour flight down to Antarctica, landing at Phoenix Airfield about 12 miles from McMurdo Station on the Ross Ice Shelf. The flight was largely uneventful, though there are always some highlights. Here are a few: We landed right around 4pm local time, boarded a large ice-capable vehicle (known as "Ivan the Terra Bus"), and made it into McMurdo for our in-brief right around 5:30pm. Afterwards, we had a quick dinner, assembled all of our gear and baggage, and called it a night.
Over the next few days, our schedules were packed with mandatory trainings (including environmental, field safety, lab safety, fire, vehicle, communications, and helicopter trainings) and meetings (including additional environmental discussions, scheduling meetings, food planning meetings, and field logistics meetings). McMurdo generally works on an 8am - 5pm schedule 6 days per week, with Sunday being the only truly quiet day around the base. Today (Sunday), we're taking it easy, but still working on some science. I'm troubleshooting some hardware issues, Schuyler is finalizing the methods for using our GPS units while in the field, and Lee and Sarah are hunting down some final lab equipment and supplies for biological sampling and processing. Later today, Lee will be heading out on a bike ride on the sea ice, while Schuyler and I are planning to climb the nearby hill that overlooks the base (known as Observation Hill, or Ob Hill). Not quite sure what Sarah is up to this afternoon, but I would recommend a hike or nap, or stopping by the station store to purchase some t-shirts or stickers or other souvenirs! Tomorrow, we have to weigh all of our gear and personal belongings that will be coming out with us on the field and provide this information to the helicopter folks so they can plan our trip into the field. We then have to bring all of our gear down to the helo pad and stage it to come into the field with us on Tuesday. Lastly, we'll receive a refresher course on how to prepare cargo loads for safe helicopter flight. Then it's a few more hours of relaxing, eating dinner, and enjoying our last night on a real bed before heading into the field on Tuesday! Greetings from the Antarctic Passenger Terminal in Christchurch, New Zealand! We're currently ~45 minutes out from boarding the buses to head to the Christchurch Airport tarmac, where we will board a US Air Force C-17 cargo jet for the ~6 hour flight down to Antarctica. The Antarctic Passenger Terminal is the one-stop-shop for all things Antarctica while in Christchurch. We spent a good portion of yesterday in the Passenger Terminal gathering gear and our cold weather clothing, repacking our bags for loading onto the plane, and making any other necessary last-minute preparations. I also had to receive a flu shot (a requirement for heading to Antarctica) and we all had to have our temperatures recorded to ensure that nobody is bringing down any infectious disease. The "Antarctic crud" is common in McMurdo Station - equivalent to a pretty significant head/chest cold - and so every effort to prevent any worse sickness is of critical importance. Here's a picture of the four of us (from left to right: Lee, Schuyler, Sarah, and me) standing in front of the US Antarctic Program and National Science Foundation flag at the Passenger Terminal: Here's a picture of Schuyler hauling all of her cold weather gear around the Passenger Terminal. After trying everything on and requesting any modifications to our standard issue gear, we left everything at the Passenger Terminal and headed back into town for one last evening of food, beverages, humidity, greenery, and natural smells! We left our hotels bright and early this morning (5:45am), arrived at the Passenger Terminal around 6:15am, changed into our extreme cold weather gear, and are now waiting to board our buses. Our flight was slightly delayed and we got swapped to a different aircraft, but we're still scheduled to take off around 11:00am Tuesday morning (that would be 3:00pm on Monday afternoon in Flagstaff). After a ~6 hour flight, we'll touch down at the Phoenix Airfield outside of McMurdo Station, where we'll board a specialized vehicle to take us from the airfield to the main base. Then, after receiving an inbrief from the NSF and receiving our boarding assignments, we'll hopefully have some time to grab dinner at the galley! While we're close to our final destination of Antarctica, there's always the risk of "boomeranging" before reaching the ice. Because the weather in Antarctica and at the airfield is unpredictable, the planes in Christchurch will take off and head towards Antarctica before having a final weather clearance. Once we are an hour or two away from landing, the air crew will receive the final weather briefing and determine whether we are cleared for landing. If so, we'll continue the trip to Antarctica, but if not, we'll turn around (or "boomerang") and head back to Christchurch to try again another day. Boomeranging is fairly common - I'd predict that it's somewhere between 25% and 50% of all flights to Antarctica are cancelled or boomerang before making it down. Let's keep our fingers crossed that we won't boomerang today!
Our next post will be from McMurdo Station after we get settled in. The internet is fairly patchy in McMurdo, so we'll do our best to keep you updated as much as possible before we head into the field ~1 week from today. Stay tuned for more updates, and thanks for reading! Packing for any trip is a delicate balance between what you absolutely need and what you may need. This is why I notoriously over-pack t-shirts, yet under-pack socks. Packing for a three month trip to Antarctica is difficult in some regards, but much simpler in other regards. It takes a certain level of pre-planning that is not typical for shorter trips. But, there are some aspects that require very little foresight at all. I'll do my best to explain my mental state when packing for Antarctica below, and I welcome other experienced Antarctic adventurers to comment on this post as well! First, the difficulties. Although ~2 full months will be spent in the deep field, with very little access to showers or laundry machines, there is quite a bit of time spent in transit on both the front and back ends of the field work. Approximately one week in McMurdo Station is common both before and after field work, where you can wash your clothes and take normal showers. A few days in New Zealand are also required as you gather your gear, repack for the Antarctic and, depending on your luck, spend a few extra days waiting around due to weather issues. During these times, you'll want the typical comforts of home, including shampoo, laundry detergent, sneakers, and jeans, among other common items and articles. This requires packing like you're going on a standard vacation or business trip. How many t-shirts do I need? How many pair of underwear before I can realistically do some laundry? You know, the standard questions. For your time in the field, there are additional difficult questions that arise. While we're in the field for two months, there may be one trip for me back to McMurdo, where I can do some laundry? There may be a few trips to a nearby camp with a shower? How often do I anticipate getting so sweaty that I'll need to change all of my clothes? Assuming ~60 days in the field, I'm sure as heck not going to buy 60 pair of underwear (assuming that I may not be able to do laundry at all), so how often do I think I'll be fully changing my clothes? There's only so much planning you can do before you just have to throw your hands up, make a quasi-educated guess, and jam things into a suitcase. Or, you can look at a trip like this in a much simpler manner. Take every pair of underwear you own. Take 60% of your t-shirts. Pack a few pairs of pants and call it a day. Take every wool sock you can find. You'll figure it out in the field. I spent a few evenings making a packing list and creating a Google Sheet to figure out where and when I should pack everything. Not included on this sheet is a separate list for toiletries, which run into their own set of troubles (e.g., How much shampoo do you bring for a 3-month trip, 2-months of which you'll have "sporadic" access to a shower?). We're allowed two checked bags when we head to New Zealand, each of which must weigh less than 50 lbs. On our flight down to Antarctica, we're allowed up to 85 lbs of gear total (no restrictions on the number of bags), but this also includes ~15 lbs of gear that is issued to us that must accompany us. So, there is a bit of nuance that needs to go into packing, although a lot of this can be reassessed in New Zealand. There are temporary storage options for us to leave gear in NZ if necessary.
In the end, I wound up with a full canvas bag of gear (solely for Antarctica) weighing ~35-40 lbs, a regular piece of checked luggage (weighing ~35 lbs), a carry-on bag full of "temporary" clothes, toiletries, etc., weighing approximately 20 lbs, and a personal bag with my laptop, books, notepads, etc. While the total weight of everything is approximately 90 lbs, I plan to do some significant reshuffling in New Zealand, where I will leave a fair amount of regular clothes and prioritize my cold weather gear. In the end, it always works out. While it's nice to bring a bunch of comfortable clothes to wear in McMurdo Station, there's really no need for a pair of sneakers, or a dozen t-shirts, or a few pair of jeans. All you really need is your cold weather gear, your toiletries, and those things that you absolutely can't live without in the field (like camp speakers, your laptop and charger, and air fresheners). While it's a bit stressful to pack for three months of your life in two suitcases, it also helps you to realize that, in reality, you don't really need that much stuff to survive and be comfortable in a hostile environment for a long stretch of time. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I hope you're all able to enjoy some downtime with friends and family. Catch you all later! This week, the 3.5 members of B-235-M will be heading down to Antarctica to conduct two months of field work in Taylor Valley, Antarctica. Stay tuned to this blog for updates as our work progresses, but I wanted to provide you all with a quick primer to our field season, our research, and our goals.
This project began in approximately 2015 when myself and colleagues Jeb Barrett (Virginia Tech) and Eric Sokol (University of Colorado Boulder at the time, currently at the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)) identified a unique and interdisciplinary research project to propose to the National Science Foundation (NSF). As a geologist with remote sensing experience, I presented my efforts of automatically identifying and mapping geologic surface units from orbit at a science workshop. I also showed that these techniques were able to detect photosynthetic microbial mat communities that live in ephemeral stream channels throughout the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. This capability caught the interest of Jeb and Eric, two formally trained microbial biologists associated with the McMurdo Long-Term Ecological Research (MCM LTER) community, and the three of us began to brainstorm about how we can refine (and eventually use) these techniques. After a few unsuccessful attempts to propose conducting field work to validate our orbital capabilities, we brought in Lee Stanish, another microbial biologist from NEON with ample Antarctic research experience. Lee must have been our good luck charm (or, more likely, the piece of our puzzle that was needed in order to make our case), because after including her on the project, we were successfully funded and selected for Antarctic field work. Our project's goals are to make simultaneous orbital and field measurements to compare the observed spectral signatures to key biological indicators, including pigment abundance, mat distribution and patchiness, photosynthetic activity, etc. We will be collecting field samples, acquiring spectral measurements in the field, and coordinating all of these efforts with the Polar Geospatial Center, who will assist in the collection of orbital data using high-resolution satellite instruments. Because we're interested in a time-series of observations, we'll need to be down in Antarctica for the majority of the "active season" (when these communities are active due to glacial melting), which runs from early December through the end of January. Our field team consists of 3.5 team members: I will serve as the Principal Investigator and lead in the coordination of all measurements and analyses. NAU grad student Schuyler Borges will be leading the acquisition of field spectra. Lee Stanish will be leading the acquisition of biological samples at precisely defined field sites. Lastly, Virginia Tech grad student Sarah Power will be joining us in the field to assist with biological sampling and other sample collection and analytical efforts. Sarah will be splitting time between our project and the MCM LTER project, which is why we have 3.5 field members, but she will certainly be a valuable and integral component to our field party as we try to make precise and high-frequency measurements this season. Our team will be arriving in Christchurch, New Zealand, later this week to collect our gear and make final preparations for heading down to Antarctica. A few days later, barring no significant weather delays, our team will board a military plane for McMurdo Station, Antarctica, where we will undergo any necessary training, gear check-out, and other final preparations for our field campaign. Then, on or around December 4th, we'll board a helo for our field site at the Fryxell Camp in Taylor Valley, along the northern shore of Lake Fryxell. This will be our home for the next two months, and where we will be basing our daily sampling and field measurement campaigns. Stay tuned for more updates as the field season progresses. We'll be trying to update the blog as frequently as possible to let you know of any and all happenings during our field season, but bear with us if our ability to do so is sporadic. I hope everyone has a wonderful, happy, and healthy Thanksgiving! I'll catch you all next time when we're en route to Antarctica! In the meantime, enjoy this photo of Wright Valley, Antarctica, from a helo the last time I was in Antarctica in 2010. You're looking at Lake Vanda in the background with the meandering Onyx River (the longest river in Antarctica) in the foreground heading towards Lake Vanda. More photos to come, I promise! My past blog entries have been about spacecraft, but I've primarily been a ground-based telescope observer throughout my career and I still do a fair amount of observing throughout the year. Being an observer can make for a very interesting work and sleep schedule sometimes!
Few things in observing are certain except that at the end of every September and March we submit observing proposals for the projects that we hope to do in the following telescope semester. Each semester is a 6 month period that (for many observatories) runs from February to July ("A") and August to January ("B"). I'll be writing a proposal for the 2019A semester on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF). I've been observing with the IRTF for several years now and it's an extremely reliable telescope. It's fantastic for asteroid observations and a large majority of the published near-infrared asteroid spectra are from this telescope. For the past several semesters, I've been proposing to observe asteroids in the 3-micron region. This region is well known to show evidence of water or hydrated silicates (silicates with H2O in the mineral structure), but we're actually looking at objects in the Main Belt that we expect to lack any sign of water at all. We do this because we've seen a weak 3-micron signature on parts of the Moon and some near-Earth asteroids that don't have water or hydrated minerals. It looks like this weak signature is instead due to the Solar wind! We're collecting a sample of Main Belt objects to see if this is also true in the Main Belt population of anhydrous objects. I'm also coordinating the submission of a number of proposals to large telescopes for additional observations of the lightcurve of the Didymos system in support of the DART mission. We've got a number of really great team members leading these proposals to obtain additional data so we can determine things like the rotational period of the system secondary ("Didymoon") and the inclination of Didymoon's orbit about Didymos A. With all the thinking ahead, I still have to consider the observing that I was awarded last proposal season. Last week, I was lucky enough to have two different observing windows on the NASA IRTF. In the very early morning hours of Tuesday and Wednesday, I went to my home work station and logged onto a computer thousands of miles away to use a telescope on the top of Mauna Kea. It never seems to impress me just how easy it is to observe from a world class facility from the comfort of my home! For these IRTF observations, there are three instrument computers that I log into each night: bigdog, guidedog, and MORIS. Bigdog is in charge of the science. On this computer, I can select the spectroscopy mode, start each set of observations, obtain the necessary calibrations, and monitor the data quality. Guidedog is a camera that helps me monitor the observations. All (or most) of the light from my asteroids should enter the spectral slit, which sends light into the spectrograph. With guidedog I can monitor the area around the slit to be sure that the asteroid hasn't moved out of the slit or stars haven't crossed the slit. MORIS is the camera that we use to control our guiding. MORIS uses the "extra" visible wavelength light that the near-infrared telescope isn't using to hold the position of my asteroid steady (and hopefully guarantee it's always in the slit!). Tuesday morning was a clear night and we obtained great 3-micron data of the Main Belt asteroid (30) Urania. Wednesday morning started strong, but the weather turned bad quickly. Clouds started forming directly over the mountain! I wasn't able to get the data I was hoping for, but there's always next time. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs in many disciplines all over the country. These are a very effective way for undergraduate students to participate in research. At NAU we have (I believe) the longest running NSF REU program in astronomy in the country. We have been running this program since 1991, which I believe was the first year that REU programs existed. The success of this long-standing program is due in very large part to Professor Emerita Kathy Eastwood, who ran this program with dedication, enthusiasm, and a lot of hard work until 2016, when I took over as the Site Director (person who runs the program). The other critical piece is a long series of very dedicated and excellent mentors, from NAU and also from Lowell Observatory and USGS. In August I submitted our renewal proposal, asking NSF to fund the next five years of our program. In writing that proposal, I worked with Kathleen Stigmon (our Program Coordinator) to learn about our historical performance. I’m happy to share some of those results here. Our most interesting and compelling results can be shown in three plots, shown below. We have 222 alumni of our program since 1991. Kathleen has worked extremely hard to follow these alumni, and we have only lost track of 4 of them. Figure 1 shows the highest degrees earned, to date, by the 218 alumni whom we are currently tracking. Some 60% have earned advanced degrees, and this doesn’t include students from the past ~5 years or so who are still finishing their undergraduate degrees, or who are in grad school but have not yet completed their advanced degrees. Figure 2 shows the kinds of jobs that our alumni are working in. An amazing 86% of our alumni are working in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). These are jobs in academia and in industry. Most of our non-STEM alumni are working in finance, banking, and so on. Finally, Figure 3 shows the female fraction in all of the employment categories shown in Figure 2 and, as the far right point, in our program overall. I am very proud of the fact that the overall female fraction in our program is around 57% -- a high value compared to physics and astronomy programs around the country. I am even more proud of the fact that the female fraction across the various employment categories is not statistically different than for the program overall. Among our alumni, the female fraction is roughly the same for every job category. In other words, our alumnae are not experiencing the “leaky pipeline” – the phenomenon of women preferentially being lost from academic or research or industry jobs at higher professional levels.
I will not claim that we have solved the leaky pipeline dilemma globally. I’m not even sure that we can take credit for the successes of our alumnae. There is no doubt that we have been able to recruit terrific female students to our program, and that they would have succeeded regardless of their next steps, and regardless of their participation in our program. On the other hand, it is clear that the professional outcomes for women in our REU program are remarkably good and remarkably different (better) from that of undergraduate women overall in physics and astronomy. A lot of this success can, I think, be attributed to Kathy Eastwood’s leadership and our mentors’ excellent work over many, many years. In our renewal proposal we described several strategies to increase minority participation in our REU program. We have certainly had many students from minority backgrounds, but only sporadically; we think that with concerted recruiting and mentoring efforts we can offer excellent research opportunities to a large number of students from minority backgrounds. Ideally, the future outcomes for these minority students will include helping them find STEM career success. The term is used more and more: Early Career Researcher/Scientist (ECR for short). You’ve no doubt heard it in more than one context I’m sure, and it never means the same thing twice. So it got me thinking, am I an Early Career Scientist? By what metrics? And most importantly, what challenges do we face at this stage in our career? So in the next few paragraphs, I’ll try to give you a glimpse into ECR struggles through the admittedly biased lens of my personal experience, with a series of common topics heard around the water cooler in the postdoc aisle.
The odds. To set the stage, let’s talk numbers. Statistics are actually hard to come by on the subject, mostly because self-reporting is the only source of data and efforts to gather it have only recently begun. My question was: what is the percentage of PhD graduates who eventually end up in a tenured faculty position in academia? I did not find the answer. There are problems in posing the question this way. Firstly, “eventually” isn’t a well-defined time period. Some get a position within 2 years of graduation. Others take over 10 years, sometimes after going back-and-forth between academia and industry. A great resource is the Survey of Earned Doctorates, a report published NSF in 2016. The first number that jumped out to me is that the number of PhD awarded in the US has gone from a little over 41,000 in 2000 to over 54,000 in 2014, with the biggest increases in STEM fields. America is producing PhDs at an accelerating rate, amd it remains unclear whether that is in response to a demand in terms of qualified jobs, or in response to the ever-increasing need for manpower in research projects. According to the same report, 29% of graduates in Physical Sciences have job commitments in academia when they graduate (40% have job commitments at all). Most of those commitments are postdoctoral positions and I can only imagine this number goes down as years pass. Whichever way you look at it, the odds are not ever in our favor. The never-ending job search. Postdoctoral appointments are the epitome of a temporary. People will tell you this is the time to write all the papers and do the research that will define you as a scientist. It is the only time in an academic career when you have no other obligations but to work on your research. And while this is true on paper, in practice you are also in a fixed-term position with typically very little chance of turning into anything resembling job security. So you need to think about the next position, often before you even set your things down in your shiny new office. As I was packing to move to NAU last year, getting ready to start my new job, I was applying for no less than 4 positions (other postdocs starting a year from then, and tenure-track positions). I routinely spend a significant portion of my time looking for job advertisements, writing letters of motivations, research and teaching statements, and in general just looking ahead instead of focusing on current projects. There is also this unspoken rule in academia that you don’t hire internally for permanent positions. Grad students don’t tend to stay as postdocs, and postdocs don’t stay as faculty. It is frowned upon. There is something to be said for expanding your horizons and learning new skills by changing research environments. But it does mean that you are always looking for the next place to call home. Gods forbid you actually like the place where you live now. Grant writing. A large part of what makes a successful academic is the ability to secure funding for yourself and your research ideas. And the postdoctoral position is the time to learn those skills. To me this is where the biggest paradox exists. Because most research universities and institutes do not let postdocs be PI (Principal Investigators). I will never understand the reasoning behind this. In most cases, postdocs are the ones actively writing proposals, even when their supervisors is the PI (either for technical reason or because it is their idea). We are the work horses of many research groups, with all our free time and lack of administrative responsibilities. And we NEED to write those proposals if we want to be successful in our careers. NAU offers the possibility to petition to be a PI or Co-I on a case-by-case basis - which is great, most places don’t – but why that is even required is beyond my comprehension. Extra paperwork, hassle and barriers for everyone involved. I pledge here and now to find out what possible reason there is for this and to place the considerable administrative might I will one day hold as a valued faculty member to advocate for all-inclusive PI status for all postdocs at whatever institution I end up. Alternative options. I believe one of my biggest criticism of my graduate program (largely gained in hindsight) is the lack of discussion of alternative career paths. Based on the numbers presented above, and the undeniable fact that the majority of PhD recipients will not find an academic position, it would just make good sense to include alternatives to academia in a graduate curriculum. Doctorates are highly-skilled workers (it says so on my VISA) and are in fact highly sought after by industry leaders. It is easy to see why such discussion doesn’t happen at a university. All the people you learn from have not had to deal with that choice. They are successful professors with brilliant careers. They usually have no idea what the alternative looks like. The same thing happens at the postdoc level. In my opinion, it should be reframed with a skill-based approach, as opposed to focusing on specific research. If you present a postdoc as a stepstool where you can put your research skills in practice, learn to write successful proposals, and develop specific skills, then its usefulness needs not be limited to becoming a professor. I strongly believe it is important to be honest with graduate students and postdocs about their options, and to rethink graduate and postgraduate positions, first as a job (yes, PhD students are in fact paid workers and should be seen as such), and also as a learning environment, with larger applications than academia in mind. I have no choice but to finish this post with a strong rebuke of the previous paragraphs, lest I appear as a bitter hypocrite. For all the struggles and difficulties that an academic career presents, and all the aforementioned topics, there is nothing I would rather do than what I am doing right now. Love of science is why we all embark on what is statistically a losing quest. I love my job, I love academia, and I love being a researcher, clearly ranking job security below work satisfaction on my personal scale. I just also happen to believe we can do a few things to improve what is by most accounts a challenging environment. Here’s hoping I will stick around to implement change for future generations. One thing that won’t ever happen for me in #GradLife: boredom. I drove down to Tucson for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) 2018 Project and Community Workshop. I had a very productive week at this meeting, balancing going to sessions, meeting with folks, and preparing for another upcoming conference: Comparative Climatology of Terrestrial Planets III (CCTP3) in Houston. Here are a few snippets from my week: Represent! -- I attended a “blending” workshop (blending is where two or more objects are superimposed) and learned that (thankfully) the science I am interested will be largely unaffected by this difficult phenomenon. However, I learned it is good to be present at this kind of event to represent your own field and its scientific interests. For example, in one session, there were probably 20 galaxy scientists, 20 cosmology researchers, but only one strong lensing (space being warped by gravity, a bit like a funhouse mirror) person and only two Solar System Science folks: Henry Hsieh and myself. Three were a handful of other solar system folks at LSST2018, but they were necessarily at other sessions advocating for our field! I never saw such a clear case where it was beneficial, and necessary, to lobby for one’s science. Analogies – I attended a media training workshop with Amanda Bauer at the conference, and gained a real appreciation for the power of analogies. There was a plenary session that defined the capacity of the LSST camera in terms of Corgis you could fit inside (240!). My favorite: it would take 375 4K TVs (or a basketball half-court) to display a single LSST image. And the tolerance was the equivalent of having an ice hockey rink with a maximum deviation in flatness of 1 mm, or 10 sheets of paper. These analogies got the message across, were sometimes funny, and always memorable! Safety – I participated in a topic I feel strongly about: Codes of Conduct. (CoC, also my initials… what are the odds? 1 in 26^3, or 17,576! Nerdy, I know… and yes, I know not all letters of the alphabet are equally represented, but close enough!) I am especially keen on inclusivity, but I was struck by the focus on workplace safety at LSST; they have something like 1/3 the national average accident rate! They have systems like “full stop” where anyone on the construction site can immediately stop all work. I suddenly wondered (out loud): “safety” is the common word in CoC and jobsite safety documents, so is there a connection between feeling comfortable enough to report e.g., sexual harassment, and reporting a potential workplace hazard? How about vice versa? I hope that if the culture encourages people to speak out in one area, positive effects propagate in others. Downtime – I didn’t get much opportunity for downtime, but on Friday the conference ended with a grab-and-go lunch, so I headed over to the nearby Catalina State Park. The ranger warned me that most wildlife would be hiding (it was mid-afternoon and over 100 degrees Fahrenheit), but, seemingly wanting to prove the ranger wrong, I got quite a show on my relatively short hike. I saw a hawk and many birds, different kinds of lizards, and even a fox! Charity – I did the American Cancer Society Climb to Conquer Cancer in Flagstaff last year, and loved it. I registered again this year, and it was awesome. So many people showed up to support this cause, hiking about 7 miles from the bottom of the mountain to the base of the Arizona Snowbowl, some 2000 feet higher. I am certainly sore today, but it just reminds me of this event. I highly recommend it! New Semester – Well, summer sure went by fast. This semester is going to be challenging: my prospectus and oral defense take place, I hope to get a major part of a research project launched, and I hope to write at least one paper as well. My tenure with the National Science Foundation as a Graduate Research Fellow begins September 1, and I’m pretty nervous about it. I am reassured by fellow fellow Daniel Sanchez, a 2017 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program awardee who works on bat DNA (amongst other things) I recently connected with. I’ll report back later this semester!
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About the Author(S)The contributors to this blog are the students, faculty, and other researchers in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Northern Arizona University. If you have any suggestions, or would like to contribute to this blog, please email mark.salvatore@nau.edu for more information. Archives
January 2019
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