Podcast Transcripts

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. John Crimaldi (Odor2Action; Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering)

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. John Crimaldi (Odor2Action; Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/02/2021 - 00:00

In this episode, we’ll meet Dr. John Crimaldi, a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. We’ll learn about his early fascination with sailing and how it set the course for his lifelong interest in fluid mechanics. As the Network Lead for the ambitious Odor2Action project, he also tells us about this international network working to understand how brains organize and process information from odors to guide behaviors.

Terri Fiez

Hello, I'm your host Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Welcome to Buff Innovator insights. This podcast features some of the most innovative ideas in the world and introduces you to the people behind the innovations, from how they got started, to how they are changing the future for all of us.

Today we'll meet Dr. John Crimaldi, a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. He is also the network lead for Odor2Action, an international network of scientists, engineers, educators, students, and others, working to understand how brains organize and process information from odors to guide behaviors. Dr. Crimaldi's research interests are centered around fluid mechanics, a discipline which seeks to understand the complex motion of liquids and gases. He is also especially interested in experimental techniques. Dr. Crimaldi earned his bachelor's degree from Princeton University and his master's degree and PhD from Stanford University.

During today's podcast, we'll hear about his early fascination with sailing and how it planted the seeds for his longstanding interest in work and fluid mechanics. He also shares details of his academic journey, including stops at Phillips Exeter Academy, Princeton, Stanford, and finally at CU Boulder. And we learn all about his current role as network lead for the NSF Odor2Action international collaboration, which is helping us better understand the most mysterious of our senses, the sense of smell, and pushing the boundaries of science on a variety of fronts. Let's meet Dr. John Crimaldi. Hi John, thanks for joining me here today and I'm really excited to dig in to hear more about your story and your pathway in your career.

Dr. John Crimaldi

Great to be here, Terri.

Terri Fiez

So let's just kind of start. When you were growing up, you had two really big interests, sailing and flying. How did you develop these interests?

Dr. John Crimaldi

Yeah, I was definitely into both of those things. My dad was a pilot. He had been in the Air Force and then was a commercial pilot during my whole time when I was growing up. And my whole family spent time in the summers on a sailboat. To me, in my recollection, it almost feels like we lived on the boat the summers, although it was probably only a couple of weeks at a time. So I was always fascinated with that. I spent a lot of time sailing dinghies, and really kind of obsessing over the way fluid flow moved over the sails and over the keel. And it was really only kind of later that I could look back on that and sort of see that maybe that had some connection to what I ended up doing as an adult.

Terri Fiez

Well let's just kind of go there. So you ended up studying and working in the field of fluid mechanics. So first of all, what is fluid mechanics?

Dr. John Crimaldi

Yeah, I get asked that question a lot. Fluid mechanics in the end is actually pretty simple. It's a branch of physics that concerns itself with the motion of fluids, which in my case are just liquids and gases. It's a bit of an interesting field in that it's still the very active field of study. Turbulence is considered to be still the kind of frontiers of science in terms of things that we still don't understand particularly well. And because of that, it lends itself towards other solution techniques like experiments, which I tend to be very much focused on and also numerical simulations, which I do as well.

Terri Fiez

So in hindsight now realizing what it is you do, do you think it was obvious that this would become the field that you would work in?

Dr. John Crimaldi

Yeah, no, not at all. I don't think I knew as a kid that there were people that hung out in a lab and studied fluid mechanics. The best I thought as a kid, I distinctly remember thinking that I was interested in becoming a Naval architect, and a Naval architect is someone who designs sailboats. And I think my parents convinced me that that was probably a really, really narrow field and I didn't end up going that way.

Terri Fiez

So what advice do you have for students that are thinking about what do they want to do when they grow up? How do they figure that out?

Dr. John Crimaldi

I think the thing I've come to terms with, looking at my own experience but also kind of looking at my kids, is to encourage people to focus on things that really interest them and things that they're passionate about and to maybe not worry at all about how you might turn that into a career. And that's for a whole bunch of reasons. One is that you probably aren't aware of all the different things that your interests might feed into. And boy, especially in this day and age, the world is going to be so different by the time they're actually looking for a career that the careers that they might end up doing may not really even exist now. So I really try, and especially with my kids, when they seem to be interested in something, I try and point that out to them because they may not be articulating that well to themselves.

Terri Fiez

I think that's great advice that you have there. So you had kind of a unique educational experience in high school. Can you describe what that was?

Dr. John Crimaldi

Sure. Yeah. So I was very fortunate to be able to attend the Phillips Exeter Academy, which is located in Exeter New Hampshire. I would think by just about anybody's standards, it's considered to be one of the best high schools in the world. I think much more in hindsight that I really appreciate what it is and how unique it is. But I also think a lot about it these days in terms of privilege. So Exeter was small. There were 250 students in my graduating class. And when I went to Princeton, 22 of my classmates went with me. So it's this kind of pipeline.

And then of course, once I was at Princeton, then that made it easier to go to a really good school for grad school. And coming out of a really good school for grad school, it made it that much easier to get a faculty position. So, obviously I had plenty of other things going for me in my life other than Exeter, but I guess it's convenient to look at that as sort of a single event in my life that really set things in motion. And to be honest, really gave me a step up on being able to follow through on the trajectory that I did.

Terri Fiez

That makes sense. And as you mentioned, you went to Princeton after that. What did you decide to major in at that point, because I doubt you knew what fluid mechanics was at that point?

Dr. John Crimaldi

No, I don't think I did, but I majored in mechanical and aerospace engineering. It was a combined degree. Interestingly though, I did an experimental project that involves sailing. So I brought the sailing thing back into it. I actually did a project where I instrumented a wind surfer with sensors and cameras to study the flow on the underwater appendages to try and understand a problem that was persistent in a lot of wind surfers at high speeds, where the skeg, which is this underwater lifting surface, would ventilate out to the atmosphere and lose lift. And it didn't necessarily work particularly well in the end, you had a limited amount of time to do it, but I've learned a lot from doing it. And I guess that was really my introduction to experimental science.

Terri Fiez

Sounds like a fun experiment to do as a college student. So then after graduation, where did you go?

Dr. John Crimaldi

So aerospace was booming at that point and I ended up getting recruited to Northrop in Southern California. And so I moved right after I graduated college that summer. I moved out to Los Angeles and started working at Northrop. And the project that I was working on was a top secret project. I seem to recall that at that point, I think only maybe two people in Congress knew about it for the funding portion of it. So I was working on the B2 stealth bomber and did a lot of numerical analysis on something called flutter. And I was also in the flight control room for a large number of the first flights of the airplane, which were done out at Edwards Air Force base.

It was interesting. It was an amazing thing to do as someone right out of college to be working on such an incredibly advanced piece of technology. But in the end, you really couldn't get around the fact that that airplane was designed for one thing, it was designed to bring nuclear weapons deep into Soviet airspace. And it was hard to reconcile that with what you were doing on a day-to-day basis. So that's how I ended up pivoting to the career that I have now is that I took the parts of that job that I liked, which was the fluid mechanics and experiments and things like that, but I went back to grad school to learn how to apply that to the environment and to ecosystem dynamics, which is to a large extent what I'm doing now.

Terri Fiez

So you spent about a decade between your master's, your PhD and doing postdoctoral work at Stanford. What were some of the highlights of your time there?

Dr. John Crimaldi

I did a lot of wind surfing. My advisor will be the first to attest to it. Yeah. I was living in San Francisco, which I loved. I worked in an amazing lab with Jeff Koseff and Steve Monismith who in a lot of ways really helped to found this whole interdisciplinary field of environmental fluid mechanics.

Terri Fiez

So then what drew you to Boulder because clearly you had to give up the wind surfing?

Dr. John Crimaldi

I did. I chose very proactively to come to Boulder for a couple of reasons. One was my wife was looking to go back to grad school. And so we were looking at schools that were good for her as well in her field. But for me, and honestly for both of us, I think the decision really came down to Boulder seeming like it would have the best work-life balance for us. And Boulder is just so unique in the sense that you're so close to so many things that you can do outdoors, that you can take a couple of hours off in the morning and be up in the mountains and do something and then be back in the office at nine o'clock and it's like nobody even knew anything happened.

Terri Fiez

So I just wanted to hit on a personal note here. I know after early in your time here in Boulder as a professor, you were diagnosed with MS and you've had to deal with that since that time. How was that first identified and how have you learned to live with that?

Dr. John Crimaldi

Yeah, no, I appreciate you asking about it. It's certainly been a big part of my life here. So about 15 years ago, over a fairly short period of time in about a week, I slowly but surely lost pretty much all feeling in my body from about my upper chest down and fairly quickly was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which it's a progressive neurological disease. And yeah, there was a lot of uncertainty then being diagnosed with it. And just as I was starting out in my career, I didn't even have tenure yet. I just looked this up recently. I think to this day, the statistic is that roughly 70% of people who have MS are unable to stay in the workforce after 10 years of their diagnosis and I'm at 15 years now so I guess I'm still beating the curve. And I've managed stay reasonably healthy. I'm on a hundred thousand dollars a year worth of meds, which are not necessarily all that effective in the first place. I think I've probably been doing well mostly by trying to stay very, very active from an athletic perspective and maybe some good DNA.

Terri Fiez

Has it changed your perspective in any way?

Dr. John Crimaldi

Yeah, I think it has. As anybody who's had a diagnosis of something like that or any other number of big life events, it forces you to reevaluate your priorities and kind of remind you maybe earlier than many people start thinking about it, that you are of course mortal and aren't going to live forever. And I think I've been better about trying to carve out time to do things other than just work all the time and certainly have taken much, much better care of myself.

Terri Fiez

Well, thank you for sharing that. I'd like to switch gears a little bit. We'll talk a little bit about your research career, but I also want to talk about your teaching. What classes do you teach at CU Boulder and what are your favorites?

Dr. John Crimaldi

So everything I teach involves fluid mechanics. On the undergraduate side, I teach a class called theoretical fluid mechanics, which is a required course in the civil environmental and architectural engineering department that I live in. And at the graduate level, I teach two other fluid mechanics courses and all of those involve Navier-Stokes equations and effective diffusion transport equations. So I teach a fairly narrow repertoire of courses.

Terri Fiez

You had kind of a unique opportunity to be part of what is called the National Science Foundation Ideas Lab. Can you describe what that was?

Dr. John Crimaldi

The Ideas Lab are these funding competitions that NSF does from time to time. And they might cringe if I describe it this way, but I think people who've been through will agree. It's a little bit like reality television. There's usually a large amount of money involved and they invite a small set of people to some relatively secluded location and you go there for a week and you don't know who's going. And in our case, there was $12 million in the other room somewhere. And they were going to give out that $12 million at the end of the week. And you do all these team building exercises and all these different things. But in the end, they tell you to go out and start forming teams and brainstorming and pitch ideas to panels that they have there. And at the end of the week, they can't come right out and say they're going to fund you, but you sort of get that they are. They say, "Okay, go home and write a proposal. It's due in two weeks." And then they basically fund it.

The way I got involved with that, the one that I went to was called cracking the olfactory code. And so it was about olfaction and sense smell, which was not something I knew anything about. And it was a neuroscience project and I'm not a neuroscientist. They wanted to understand how animals make use of odors to navigate towards things or to discriminate between different odor sources and so forth. And I did have a history of studying how turbulence transports different things. I hadn't looked at odors too much, but I had done some previous work on that. And I certainly knew the physics. So it occurred to me, well, hey, why pass this up?

And so I sent them, as an engineer, I sent these neuroscience folks an application for this thing saying that, Hey, if you want to understand how animals use odors, probably be really good to understand how those odors are transported in the environment. And lo and behold, they invited me to come to this thing and I got there and other people were starting to realize the same thing I had said, which is, it probably was important to understand the transport of the odors. I certainly wasn't the only person in the country who knew how to do that, but I was the only person who was invited to this thing who knew how to do that. And so all of a sudden I was in a good position to do that and became part of this team. And this was not the team that I'm leading now, but it involved a lot of the same people. And so I ended up leading that team and we worked on that for five years and that eventually led to the project that I'm working on now.

Terri Fiez

So let's talk about that. You've been awarded a proposal called Odor2Action, which is a really interesting title and concept. And it had a big mix of disciplines. Talk about what that is and who's part of it?

Dr. John Crimaldi

ure. So Odor2Action is a team of interdisciplinary and international scientists. There's 16 all together. I'm the lead. And we are first and foremost, trying to address a very fundamental question in neuroscience, which is how do animals use information from odor stimulus in their environment to guide natural behaviors. So it's first and foremost, a neuroscience project. It's funded through something called the NeuroNEXT funding initiative. And NeuroNEXT aims to advance next generation technologies in neuroscience to understand brain function. And so we are using sense of smell as a vehicle for understanding brain function. And of course, to do this, we use a range of different animal species, including the fruit fly, Drosophila, that have a neural network that has already been sequenced and understood. And so by using simple animal models, we can start with simpler systems and then work up to more complex brains.

Terri Fiez

I can think of all kinds of questions about that, thinking about dogs and cats and their sense of smell and how it's so different from ours and what they can do with that sense of smell.

Dr. John Crimaldi

Well, I'll tell you quickly. I have another project that I'm working on right now with the army where we're helping to figure out how to best train military working dogs to detect explosives that may be hidden in things like vehicles that are entering a military facility or something like that.

Terri Fiez

Very interesting. So tell us a little bit more about this grant. You talked about what some of the goals are. When you're successful and even just thinking out beyond maybe 10, 15, 20 years from now, what will this information lead to?

Dr. John Crimaldi

I think there's a couple avenues for that. The most obvious thing is it's leading to more direct understanding of how the brain works. And I think the aim is that down the road, by making advances into the mechanistic processes by which the brain functions, this can lead to any number of positive outcomes in both science and in public health. So, understanding Alzheimer's and other brain disorders will be much easier to do if we understand the mechanisms that the brain is using to function in the first place. So there's obvious kind of public health things there. There's another, from a more engineering side of things, sense of smell is actually one of the less understood of all the senses. And it's the sense that has been least replicated in autonomous systems and in industrial automation. So for example, we can build robots that can use cameras to see and microphones to listen and sensors to sense touch and so forth.

But when it comes to things involving chemical odors, chemical signatures in odors. So for example, if we are searching for explosives in a car or explosives in your luggage when you go through TSA, or if someone who's buried in an avalanche or for looking for any number of things, the best technology that we have for that today is not some autonomous robot, but animals. So we use animals to search your luggage. We use pigs to search for truffles. We use search and rescue dogs to look for people that are lost in the woods or buried in avalanches. So we hope that some of these technologies that we're developing and some of the knowledge that we're developing will lead to better ability to develop autonomous systems to do search and rescue tasks, or just search tasks in scenarios where it's dangerous or expensive or inconvenient to use animals to do that.

Terri Fiez

So you maybe alluded to this, but I'll ask it more directly. What are you most proud of in your career and what do you want your legacy to be?

Dr. John Crimaldi

Well, I guess I don't think about having a legacy that much, but I am really proud to be leading this team that I am right now, mostly because it's such an exceptional group of people. And just to be part of that and to learn from them and to help keep that team functioning and being effective. I am really proud of that. It's not something I was necessarily trained to do, and it's been fun and exciting to go in that new direction in this later part of my career. But honestly, I think the thing that I get to this day the most satisfaction out of is doing science myself. And I do science on this project as well, in addition to being the lead. And so, I don't know, I think the thing I'm probably the most proud of, or the thing I get the most satisfaction out of is doing really detailed, careful, experimental science in the laboratory and teaching my students.

Terri Fiez

Final question. What are you really optimistic about in the next couple of decades related to your field and how it's changing?

Dr. John Crimaldi

Well, specific to fluid mechanics, fluid mechanics is definitely changing a lot. If you went back into the fifties and sixties, there was people who studied fluid mechanics were studying hydraulics. A very engineering focused version of fluid mechanics. Trying to understand how fluid moves through open channels and pipes and things like that. And that was all very important, but then became very well understood and people moved on to more complex things with airplanes and rockets and so forth. But even those things became things that we had a pretty good set of tools for doing. And so by the time I was in graduate school, interdisciplinary science was becoming big.

And so what people typically meant by interdisciplinary science in those days, and to some extent now, and I did a lot of this and continue to do a lot of this, is that one person from one discipline would team up with another person from another discipline. And so I did a lot of things like that, where I would be a fluid and [inaudible] and I would team up with say an ecologist to study some physical ecological interaction problem. I think the future, and I'm saying this obviously from my perspective as being part of this large international team right now, I think the future of many fields of science and certainly for fluid mechanics is large scale team science, where now it may be a dozen people from a dozen fields that are working together on a very, very large scale project with a tremendous amount of complexity. And the challenges in doing that type of team science are the technical challenges are obvious, but that's only one part of it.

The thing that people are not necessarily trained well to do and that people are still figuring out best practices for doing this, is how do you get those dozen people with dozen different backgrounds and a dozen different ways of approaching problems, how do you get those people to work together effectively so that you can really do something transformative that will change the world? And so that's something that I've been getting more and more interested in. And I think certainly there's a tremendous number of people who are thinking about that these days. And to me, I think that's a big part of the future of science.

Terri Fiez

Well, thank you, John. This has been a really fast and in conversation. I appreciate you taking time to share your thoughts with us.

Dr. John Crimaldi

Thanks so much, Terri. I really enjoyed being here.

Terri Fiez

I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Dr. John Crimaldi, a professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering and network lead for the Odor2Action project. To learn more about the Odor2Action project, please visit odor2action.org. For more Buff Innovator Insights episodes, you can visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at CU Boulder Terri Fiez. Thanks for joining me for this episode of Buff Innovator Insights. We'll see you next time.

In this episode, we’ll learn about Dr. Crimaldi's early fascination with sailing and how it set the course for his lifelong interest in fluid mechanics. As the Network Lead for the ambitious Odor2Action project, he also tells us about this international network working to understand how brains organize and process information from odors to guide behaviors.

Off

Traditional

White

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Heather Reed & Dr. Pete Withnell (Emirates Mars Mission; Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics)

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Heather Reed & Dr. Pete Withnell (Emirates Mars Mission; Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/26/2021 - 00:00

Currently in orbit, the Emirates Mars Mission Hope spacecraft will spend two years gathering crucial science data on the planet's weather and climate systems. In this episode of Buff Innovator Insights, we’ll learn from engineering and management team members—and married dynamic duo—Heather Reed and Pete Withnell about the extraordinary international collaboration that made this mission possible and more terrestrial effects of the mission on their family.

Terri Fiez

Hello. I'm your host Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Welcome to Buff Innovator Insights. This podcast features some of the most innovative ideas in the world and introduces you to the people behind the innovations from how they got started to how they are changing the future for all of us.

Today, we'll meet Heather Reed and Pete Withnell, Engineering and Science team members for the Emirates Mars Mission project. Since 2014, Reed and Withnell have worked side by side with colleagues at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics or LASP and dozens of scientists and engineers from the United Arab Emirates on this extraordinary international collaboration. We'll hear about Heather Reed's remarkable journey from a small town in South Dakota to CU Boulder education, and eventually a career in space exploration at LASP. We'll learn about Pete Withnell's evolving interest in physics, engineering and space, which also brought him to Boulder and LASP.

Since they met and married along the way, we'll also hear how the years' long project became a part of their lives as a family. Not only did the pair work on the mission from beginning to end, we'll also hear about the family's unconventional road trips, the colleagues and friends that became so important to them personally and professionally, and how the improbable COVID pandemic made the mission's success that much more remarkable. Let's meet Heather Reed and Pete Withnell. Hi, Heather and Pete. Thank you for joining me today.

Pete Withnell

Hi, Terri. It's a pleasure to be here.

Heather Reed

Yeah. Thanks for inviting us.

Terri Fiez

So, you both had interesting paths to Boulder. Heather, you grew up in New Underwood, South Dakota, population, 514, and graduated from a high school class of 14 and notably as valedictorian. Pete, you spent your early years in Long Island and England before settling in Indiana. So, first, Heather, can you share with us what connected you to Boulder in your teens and how that eventually brought you to CU Boulder to get your bachelor's and master's in engineering?

Heather Reed

Yeah. So, my high school led by my band director, the eighth grade class, I was part of the high school band at that time, we all came to Elitch Gardens to perform at Elitch's on one Saturday. So, that was a Denver trip that encouraged us to go see a different and much bigger city. When we were at Elitch's, my friend and I met someone who was actually a freshman at the University of Colorado, and he had a Wright Scholarship from NASA, and he was working for UCAR. So, at the time, he was working on a NASA program, supporting scientists, doing engineering. That was probably the first time I came to understand, oh, someone that young could be in a space industry, and look, they're doing this inside of a school environment. So, that was pretty exciting to me. I said, "Oh, I like math. I like engineering, and maybe I should check this out."

So, he and I ended up being pen pals for the rest of my high school career. As he was getting his undergrad and grad degree, and at that time, I thought, okay, well let me just go see what engineering is. So, I did look into aerospace engineering, and CU was one place. There was a place in Florida, a couple other places that I checked out, but it was just an easy transition for me to come so close from South Dakota to Boulder. I had a few family members in the Denver area, and I really wanted to come here for aerospace engineering. So, that's how I ended up here and eventually working on NASA and other space-related programs.

Terri Fiez

Great. Pete, you clearly had an interest in aerospace having earned your private pilot license at age 18, and then your interest in how things worked attracted you to get a degree in physics at Indiana University. What brought you then to Boulder?

Pete Withnell

Yeah. So, great question. As you said, I had an interest early on, really infused by my scientifically inclined parents to pursue, at that time, scientific interests in physics seemed to be the broad based one that matched me, but when it came to then moving onto my master's degree, I became aware of this topic called aerospace. That really mixed my interests of aviation and space really perfectly, but it was still very unknown to me at that time what that really meant. Searching around the country, the University of Colorado at that time, that was back in 1990, even then had quite an outstanding reputation in the aerospace realm. I joined then the Center for Aerospace Structures, which also seemed to meld very nicely with my interests of mechanical engineering and aerospace.

Terri Fiez

You had a interesting experience where you joined another student in a class that was spacecraft design, and that really changed your path forward. Can you describe that?

Pete Withnell

Yeah. It had a profound effect on my career. I was obviously a graduate student at the time. As you said, one of my friends there was going to a class, a class about how to design spacecraft. That sounded absolutely fascinating to me. So, I joined him for a class session and was completely hooked. The course was being held by Dr. Charles Barth. The material was being taught at that time by Mike McGrath who ultimately became my boss and supervisor for many years after I ultimately joined LASP, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, mainly because of that in-class experience that I had. So, yeah, it had a fundamental change on the course of my career.

Terri Fiez

So, that's always an interesting impact that teachers have. Pete, I know the highlight for you working at LASP has been seeing the full arc of projects from conception to design, to implementation, to launch, to operations and end of life.

Pete Withnell

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I have been fortunate to be in that full arc as you described it on multiple programs and the latest one, obviously being the Emirates Mars Mission. I was, again, very lucky to be working with Mike McGrath at the time when this mission just had less than a handful of employees.

Terri Fiez

What is the Emirates Mars Mission?

Pete Withnell

So, it's important to recognize that the Emirates Mars Mission is a unique adventure from either perspectives of the UAE or the University of Colorado. So, first and foremost, the program is aimed at infusing interest and focusing effort within the UAE in their space sector. The UAE is very well aware that they have, up to this point in time, the majority of their wealth has come from their natural resources, and they have a very serious interest in becoming a knowledge-based society.

So, quite wisely, they set out a very ambitious program as a vehicle to do just that. We at LASP, we were very interested in that. That was inspirational to be that kind of partner. So, it mixed very well with who we are. Obviously, an academic institution, our very fabric is one that's built on mentorship and education. We clearly had a lot of what it took to do a deep space mission, programs like MAVEN behind us, and so that's really how the program began.

Terri Fiez

Then, also as they thought about it from their side, weren't they looking at celebrating their 50th anniversary for the country?

Pete Withnell

Yeah. So, that really, and as you said, Terri, that set a very serious and tight deadline for the overall program. The UAE is a unification of seven emirates, and that unification happened 50 years ago, 51 years ago now. So, it was very important for them symbolically to show that they had developed to a country that had the prowess, the ability to send a spacecraft to another planet and for that spacecraft or that probe to do, perform meaningful science. That's one of the most ambitious things a country can do.

Terri Fiez

What is the scientific work that you hope to get done up there that's different than maybe what others have done around the Red Planet?

Heather Reed

Right. So, the science team worked early on to set an orbit that was unique from other orbiters that have visited Mars. So, at the altitude that we are orbiting, and it's a circular orbit, we get to see the seasons change and the days go by. So, then we have this dataset that's from three different wavelengths of instruments, the ultraviolet, the visible and the infrared, and we can say what's going on with water vapor, with different constituents in the atmosphere, with what we're seeing as far as clouds forming. In some ways, it's thought of as like a weather satellite. You could say that. It's not quite on the ground type of observations, but you certainly can see clouds and dust, dust storms and clouds move across portions of the planet and with what frequency and what timescale that happens.

Terri Fiez

Heather, you also played a critical role in this project. I guess, if Pete was employee number one or two, you were employee number three on this project. What were some of the highlights for you working at LASP on this project?

Heather Reed

Yeah. So, for me, this project and the inspiration point, I think, for many people was the promise of this project, engaging with the Emiratis in this venture together. At the very, very beginning, I would say to myself, "How did we get here, and why are we doing this? What if we fail? I can't believe we decided to say yes to this," because there was unknown in front of us, but that passed. The more successes we got under our belt and the more development went successfully, the more confident I think I was, and the team started to integrate really well. We got to walk that path with them.

There were a lot of learning experiences on the LASP's side because LASP, as a group, had not designed a mission and carried out a spacecraft implementation that's interplanetary. We've done pieces of it in the past and been responsible for much of it but not sort of as this lead institution across all of the segments. So, people were in different positions they hadn't been in before. So, everyone was really learning something together. It ended up being just an amazing experience.

Terri Fiez

That's great, and in addition to being an amazing experience, I think it was very much a family affair. So, the two of you met, what, in 1995 when Pete interviewed you and then married in 2000. I know this EMM project had to be something that was table conversation at the dinner table for your family. How do you think this has impacted your kids as they've taken many trips over the last seven years to UAE with you and been part of this team and very much a family affair?

Pete Withnell

I mean, it really has been. For our two kids, it was really impossible not to be an integral part of the program. As you said, every time we traveled to the UAE, they were with us. I will always be incredibly grateful that they have that opportunity. I think they have such a greater view from a global aspect very early. The fact that our children have had the opportunity to mingle and make friends with the Emiratis have given them just a completely different impression, I hope, of what it's like to be in an Arab country.

Heather Reed

Of course, one of the questions is always, when are we going back to Dubai because we haven't been there in about two years? That was our plan. So, everybody's sort of antsy to get back to Dubai because just enjoy the atmosphere and the people in that region that we met and spent time with.

Terri Fiez

Yeah. So, clearly, a big part of this project was building the comradery among the teams that were both state side as well as in the UAE. Heather, can you share your early experience in coordinating the instruments during a trip to Berkeley?

Heather Reed

Yeah. So, one of my first activities on EMM was to go to Berkeley, where we're going to talk about the concept of the UV instrument. That was going to be the first time that I met some of the team from the UAE. So, there was sort of a ladies' contingent. Khuloud and Sarah and Nour were all there. We were there talking about the technical details in the meeting room, but at lunch, we really got to know each other, and we're sharing photos of personal activities. One of the ladies had just gotten married. Someone else had just had a new dress made for Eid. So, we're really sharing what our interests were and what our families look like and what our daily life was. That was very enjoyable and just really knew from the start that it was going to be easy to engage and share each other the common interests that we all had.

Terri Fiez

It all looks so easy now, and I think we almost forget we were in very restrictive COVID conditions during the last year and a half. I know you both talked about one of the things that you wish you could have been part of is to be at Dubai when the launch was happening, when the insertion was happening. Heather, talk about that and what that was like on their side, and what would you have liked to have been a part of there?

Heather Reed

Yeah, well, I know the excitement for launch was really high on launch day for all parties. I think that everyone was glued to their TV, watching what we could of the launch site and some other viewing opportunities we had because we just wanted to go. It did get delayed by something like, what, seven or 10 days?

Terri Fiez

Yeah.

Heather Reed

Yeah, before it actually launched, so we're also waiting with bated breath, but then during Mars orbit insertion, which was in February of this year, the Emiratis, each of the emirates took one of their monuments that was popular in the Emirates and for each of them, lit them up red. So, they had sort of an inspirational theme going on for days before this started. It was called when UAE goes red, and this was in support of the Red Planet and getting there. If everyone just became really aware, the Prime Minister was talking about it and a lot of what the leadership of this program, the project director had been saying was, "Look, Mars is a 50/50 opportunity. You might be able to get there, but you might not make your final intention, either a landing or an orbit insertion," and that's what we're in. We're in the orbit around Mars.

So, that was super successful but also palpable that there was so much that they had put into this and our team in making this a success that what would have been really cool for me is there's something ... Dubai Park is near the Burj Khalifa, and they had projections. The Burj Khalifa had different projections plus different lighting going on there. We could see the people talking there because that was also being aired and just so exciting. You just get tingly because also, you have these few minutes of what we call terror because there's such ... There was, at that point, 12 minutes delay between when something was happening on the spacecraft, which was automated and when we got the signal back, so we just really had to sit there and wait based on a lot of practice and trying, hoping that this was going to make it in. It did, and it was amazing. So, I'm clear that we all shared a tear at the same moment, but I really wish I could have shared the hug as well. That was the difference for me.

Terri Fiez

That's great. So, you're collecting all this data. We're going to learn so much about Mars. How do you see this being used in the future? Do you think we'll colonize Mars?

Pete Withnell

I think that as we gather information about Mars, any and all of it could be useful in future colonization plans. So, people smarter than me can make that link. Something that's perhaps or even closer to home however, is that there is very strong evidence that at one time. Mars's atmosphere was actually much more similar to Earth's. There's evidence of flowing water. There's evidence that it actually had a relatively thick atmosphere. So, something drastically changed, and there's processes at work that I think we're only starting to understand. So, in as much as those could be mapped to this planet, now, I think that is also a very tangible aspect of what EMM was contributing.

Terri Fiez

So, now you've both been part of this very amazing project, right, and a very unique opportunity including your kids being part of that indirectly. I'll just ask each of you, given this experience, and you still have a lot of your career ahead of you, what do you want your legacy to be?

Pete Withnell

Yeah, I'll jump in there and say this is, I think, that as fascinating as this program was technically, the fact that it's brought two countries closer together, it certainly brought two teams very much together. We have lifelong friendships across continents coming out of this program. Now, that means something that. Space has often been that vehicle for international partnerships. This program is such an example of that. So, to have been personally involved in this program that had this ambassadorship kind of aspect to it, I will be very fulfilled to think that that was part of my legacy, but there is a continued relationship that moves on into the future. That could be profound.

Heather Reed

Yeah. So, from my point of view, EMM has been this amazing experience that is ... It feels like a pinnacle, but I hope it isn't to my career and other things that I do related in this field in science and space, but I'd have to say that one thing it continued for me is something that LASP as an organization has done always and has attracted me and kept me there, is that we're always building on the workforce of the science community in that there's always someone new in the lab that's a grad student, undergrad, or in this case, an entire team, a group of people who are just ready to learn and in this case, learn in different ways or maybe specifically brand new things that they had not thought of.

So, I hope that part of my legacy is just being a facilitator and an enabler in that way, where when they were learning, they really got a lot out of it and that they enjoyed the opportunities they had in front of them and how that went with their experience with the team because that's pretty exciting for me. That's an aspect of my job I enjoy quite a bit.

Terri Fiez

That's great. Well, thank you both for joining me here today. I think this is a really fascinating conversation, and congratulations on a successful launch and insertion into the Mars orbit. We're watching, going forward, for the exciting projects that you're going to work on.

Pete Withnell

Thank you, Terri. It's been really fun. Thank you for the opportunity.

Heather Reed

Thanks, Terri. It's really enjoyable talking to you today.

Terri Fiez

I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Heather Reed and Pete Withnell of LASP, an Engineering and Science team members for the Emirates Mars Mission project. To learn more about LASP and the Emirates Mars Mission, please visit lasp.colorado.edu. For more Buff Innovator Insight episodes, you can visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at CU Boulder, Terri Fiez. Thanks for joining me for this episode of Buff Innovator Insights. We'll see you next time.

In this episode, we’ll learn from engineering and management team members—and married dynamic duo—Heather Reed and Pete Withnell about the extraordinary international collaboration that made the Emirates Mars Mission Hope spacecraft possible, and the more terrestrial effects of the mission on their family.

Off

Traditional

White

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Noah Fierer (Center for Microbial Exploration; Ecology & Evolutionary Biology; CIRES)

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Noah Fierer (Center for Microbial Exploration; Ecology & Evolutionary Biology; CIRES) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/19/2021 - 00:00

This episode of Buff Innovator Insights features Dr. Noah Fierer, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and director of the Center for Microbial Exploration at CU Boulder. We’ll learn about his natural curiosity for learning, and his unexpected and enduring passion for ... SOIL! Get a glimpse into the hidden world of microbes, the functions they serve, and how Dr. Fierer's research can help us understand and improve the health of our environment and ourselves.

Terri Fiez

Hello. I'm your host, Terri Fiez, vice chancellor for research and innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Welcome to Buff Innovator Insights. This podcast features some of the most innovative ideas in the world and introduces you to the people behind the innovations, from how they got started, to how they're changing the future for all of us. Today, we'll meet Dr. Noah Fierer, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, as well as the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Science and director of the Center of Microbial Exploration at CU Boulder. He's interested in the distribution and roles of microscopic organisms in all kinds of environments, from the dust and plumbing in your homes, to the soil beneath our feet, and he studies how microbes influence the health and function of ecosystems, plants, and animals, including humans.

As director of the Center for Microbial Exploration, Dr. Fierer brings together scientists with expertise in microbiology to collaborate on everything from gut microbes to groundwater. He studied biology at Oberlin before earning his PhD in soil ecology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. During today's podcast, we'll hear about how growing up in rural Pennsylvania cultivated his natural curiosity for learning and especially his budding interest in science. He tells us about the variety of educational and research areas he sampled before unexpectedly discovering his passion for, you won't believe this, soil. He gives us a glimpse into the hidden world of microbes, the functions they serve and how his research aims to help us understand and improve the health of our environment and ourselves. Let's meet Dr. Noah Fierer.

Well, hi, Noah. Thank you for joining me today for this interview.

Dr. Noah Fierer

No, Thank you, Terri.

Terri Fiez

So let's get started. You grew up in the country in Pennsylvania. What did a typical day look like for you as a kid?

Dr. Noah Fierer

Yeah, so correct. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania in the woods and I was one of four kids and I'm sure my parents would agree, but we were kind of a handful. So we got thrown outside a lot. "Go outside, don't come back for a while." So we spent a lot of time when we weren't in school or doing school related activities or other things, we were outside playing in the woods, doing all sorts of exploring, just doing what we wanted to do. It was great.

Terri Fiez

How would you describe your mom and dad?

Dr. Noah Fierer

Patient. I know for a fact that we were definitely a handful, four energetic kids, but yeah, incredibly patient and also really valued education, both formal education and informal education. Just getting us to learn about the world around us. That was incredibly valuable.

Terri Fiez

So not only did you live in the country, but you would go camping and do a lot of vacations that were more in the outdoors too.

Dr. Noah Fierer

Yeah. We spent a lot of time, both in the winter and the summer. In the winter we would go on these cross-country skiing adventures, and in the summer we'd do a lot of backpacking. We'd pack up the car, drive somewhere and then they'd set us out in the woods for a while, in the wilderness, and we traveled all over the U.S, usually driving places, but got to see lots of beautiful place. Looking back now, I really appreciated those experiences, just getting to see lots of beautiful natural areas.

Terri Fiez

So then when you were in school, you had to go into town for school. What do you remember about school and were you a good student?

Dr. Noah Fierer

I think it depends on how you define good student. I know I got good grades and stuff like that, but I was definitely a little bit, shall we say, hyperactive. So I wasn't necessarily the student that sits there quietly. I spent a lot of time outside the classroom looking in because I was, shall we say, disruptive. But I very much enjoyed school and enjoyed lots of different topics. Perhaps not surprisingly, I really loved science, particularly biology. I really loved history, English. I really loved writing, which is a skill that's served me well as I've moved on with my scientific career, because a lot of what we do is writing, so it helps to like writing. I wasn't the biggest fan of math. I did okay in math, but I wouldn't say it was my favorite topic. I think there's this idea that scientists must love math. If you're going to be a scientist, you have to love math. That's definitely true in some disciplines, but that wasn't necessarily true in my case. I know enough math to get by, but it wasn't necessarily my favorite topic as a kid.

Terri Fiez

So then as you graduated from high school, how did you think about college and what were your plans as you went to college?

Dr. Noah Fierer

Well, I was one of these students that I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do. I wasn't like, "I want to study specifically this topic, or I want to major in this topic." I wasn't sure. I was interested in lots of different things. So I ended up at Oberlin College in Ohio, which is a liberal arts school. One reason I wanted to go there was because it is a liberal arts school so you get exposed to and have opportunities to study a wide range of different topics. That's what I did, definitely for the first two years. I sort of dabbled around and took a lot of different courses in different areas before finally settling on a major in biology.

Terri Fiez

So you graduated with a biology degree and then spent the next four years doing a range of different jobs. Talk about what those different jobs were.

Dr. Noah Fierer

Yeah. So after undergraduate, graduated with a biology degree, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. So I spent about four years basically taking any job I could get, particularly jobs related to biology. So I spent some time in the Pacific Northwest working as a field technician, so working on other projects related to birds or surveying trees and even salamanders. I spent some time in Israel studying gerbils in the desert, which was a lot of fun, but basically just a wide range of projects where people needed help and they were willing to pay me to work on these projects.

Terri Fiez

So at some point you decided that you wanted to go back and get a PhD. What prompted you to do that, and then how did you approach it?

Dr. Noah Fierer

Well, at that point I was pretty confident that I loved science and I also knew from working sort of as a technician or essentially technical support on a wide range of projects, that I wanted to sort of move beyond just doing projects or helping out with projects that were handed to me and I wanted to have more of a role in actually designing projects. So I quickly realized that to do that, I needed to get a PhD.

Terri Fiez

Where did you apply, and then where did you end up doing your PhD?

Dr. Noah Fierer

So working on a wide range of different projects before starting my PhD, it was really valuable because it taught me not only what I found interesting, but also what I found uninteresting or projects that I didn't want to work on. So for example, I spent a large period of time working on gerbils in the desert, which was really fun and it was really interesting, but I kind of realized I was a little ... we had to trap these durables and I didn't really like that very much, to be honest. They were always trying to bite you and they were covered in fleas and I was like, "Okay, I don't really want to work on animals." I kind of settled on, I got very interested in, believe it or not, in soils, which is not something that I would have anticipated as an undergraduate, but upon doing a lot of reading, I was like, "There's a lot of knowledge gaps here. There's a lot of things we don't know about and soils are really important."

So I got interested in soils and particular soil biology. So I decided to pursue a PhD in soil ecology. So I did a PhD at University of California, Santa Barbara with Josh Shimmel, who was my PhD advisor, and it was a great place to be interested in soil and related topics. I got a lot of exposure to not just basic soil science, but also understanding carbon cycling and nitrogen cycling and the organisms that live in soil. So it was really a great place to get sort of a well-rounded introduction to the study of soil, particularly from a biological perspective.

Terri Fiez

So what was your PhD research?

Dr. Noah Fierer

So my research primarily focused on carbon and nitrogen cycling in soil. So how does carbon get into soil? What happens to that carbon once it's in soil and also nitrogen, which is, of course, the key nutrient for plants. So really focused on dynamics of these elements in soil. Then towards the end of my PhD, I kind of got more interested in, "Okay, what organisms are responsible for a lot of these processes related to carbon cycling and nitrogen cycling in soil?" So that sort of led me down the path towards the end of my PhD to get more interested in the microbes, the microorganisms that are found in soil and what they're doing in the soil environment.

Terri Fiez

So what is a microbe?

Dr. Noah Fierer

A microbe is loosely defined just as organisms that we can't see with the naked eye. Of course, there's a broad range of organisms that can be classified as microbes. So these can include viruses, which of course, in the midst of a pandemic, we're all very familiar with. Could also include bacteria, could include many fungi or molds, as well as smaller protozoa and protists, for example.

Terri Fiez

After your PhD, I know you did a couple year postdoc and then joined CU Boulder as faculty. What has your research at CU Boulder been focused on?

Dr. Noah Fierer

So broadly my research here at University of Colorado focuses on the microbial diversity found out in the environment and my group over the years has studied microorganisms found in environments ranging from soil to the atmosphere to those microbes found on plants to even those microbes found living with us inside our homes. So in addition to what microbes are out there, so what's the diversity of microbes that are out there in various environments, my group also focuses on what they're doing. So one set of projects that we've been working on for a while is exploring the microorganisms found living with us inside our homes. So these microbes can be found in the dust blowing around inside our homes, or outside our homes, of course. They can be found in the plumbing in our water system that delivers water to our homes. So we've been really looking at what microbes are found in our homes and how do those microbes found in our homes vary depending on where you live and also how they may relate to our health.

Terri Fiez

Noah, back in 2013 when Boulder had a flood, I know that you mobilized with some other researchers to look at the effects of that flood. Can you talk about that?

Dr. Noah Fierer

Yeah. So in 2013 there was a flood that affected large portions of the city of Boulder and elsewhere, and pretty soon after the flood happened, I realized that there was sort of a unique research opportunity here. I know that sounds a little bit callous, but I'm a scientist, right? We see a natural disaster and we're like, "Oh, there's some cool science that can be done with this." In particular, what we wanted to look at, and I worked with a range of researchers across campus, including Shelly Miller in engineering here at CU Boulder, to look at, "Okay, how does flooding effect those microbes found in our homes?" What we did is we sampled more than 50 homes in South Boulder, half that had been flooded and half that didn't experience any water damage during the flooding event, and sampled the air inside the homes to look at the microbes.

What we found was actually quite surprising. So the sampling was done about four months after the flood and all the homes had been fixed, right? So there was no obvious water damage. The drywall had been replaced or removed, but still in those homes that were flooded, we saw large changes in the microbes found in the air inside those homes. In particular, we see much higher concentrations of molds or fungi in those homes, even though no mold was visible and no water damage was visible. What we think was happening was that these fungi or these molds are actually growing in the walls after the flooding event and sort of persisted for a period of time, even after the flooding event had occurred and restoration had happened.

Terri Fiez

Noah, when most of us grew up, our parents said that we needed to go out and play in the dirt, be exposed to dirt in order to help our immune systems. How do microbes play a part in that?

Dr. Noah Fierer

That's a good question and it's difficult to answer, because here's the problem; some microbes we don't want to be exposed to. Right? If I'm going to the salad bar and someone's sick and coughing all over it, I don't want to be exposed to those viruses or the bacteria that that person is shedding. At the same time, we know that we shouldn't live in a sterile environment. It's impossible to live in a sterile environment and being exposed to microbes is really critical to our health, including the development of healthy immune systems. The challenge is separating between those microbes that we want to avoid and those microbes we want to be exposed to. That's very much an area of ongoing research, is I would say it's good to play in the dirt, but that's coming from someone who loves soil and soil microbes.

But there does appear to be some truth to that. Being exposed to a broad diversity of microbes can be really helpful for improving the immune system functioning. The tricky part is knowing which particular microbes do we want to be exposed to and how? I don't want to lick a subway pole, but it might be beneficial to be exposed to natural soils or just the microbes blowing around in the air in a forest. So that's the real challenge is figuring out what activities or what particular microbes are most beneficial to our health.

Terri Fiez

One of the things that you've done more recently, I think 2018, you started the Center for Microbial Exploration. What is the goal of the center?

Dr. Noah Fierer

So we're very fortunate here at the University of Colorado to have amazing scientists. In particular, we have a large number of scientists that work broadly in the field of microbiology, or at least they have interests in microbiology. All of us share an interest in microorganisms, and that could be microbes in the human gut, it could be microbes in soil, it could be microbes in deep, subsurface groundwater. The goal of the center was to really bring all these people together, because we are scattered across campus, and sort of recognize that there's this interest and all this expertise and in particular encourage collaborations and bring new training opportunities for students and postdoctoral researchers on campus.

Terri Fiez

So in addition to all this research that you do, you also teach. What are the classes that you teach and what would be your favorite?

Dr. Noah Fierer

I've taught everything ranging from a large class like general microbiology to smaller, more focused graduate seminars for graduate students, for example, focused on very particular topics, including those sort of recent breakthroughs in science and so forth. But I would say my favorite course I've taught here at the University of Colorado is my soil ecology course, which I teach for undergraduates pretty much every year. So I've taught it at least, I think, 10 times now. I love it because I love soil and I love introducing students to soil and soil biology, and also how much we still don't know about soil, despite its importance. But many of the students have gone on to have careers in soil science or related topics. So it's been really great to see students be like, "Whoa, I didn't know soil or dirt could be so interesting."

Terri Fiez

That's great. So how has your field changed over the last few years and what are you excited about for the future?

Dr. Noah Fierer

So the field of microbial ecology, or essentially understanding the microbes that are out there and the environment and what they do, for a long time, or over the past, I'd say, 20 years, we have new methods available, including DNA-based methods that give us unparalleled insight into what microbes are out there in the environment. So for example, we can now take a sample of dust from your home or some soil from your garden or some tap water from your home and tell you what microbes are living in there. Over the past few years, we've long known that these microbes are important and now I think we're getting much better at not just who's there, what microbes are out there in these environments, but what are they doing?

It's been challenging because many of the microbes that we see in an environment, we don't know what they're doing. We don't have a name for them. They're not described species. We know that they're there, but we don't know what they're doing, how they might be influencing the health of humans or plants, for example. So I think the field is now going beyond like, "Okay, let's just describe who's there," to, "What are they doing and how does that influence our health or the health of animals or the health of plants?" Or just what role they're playing in their respective ecosystems.

Terri Fiez

That's really exciting. So what kind of breakthroughs do you think that we will see as a result of this?

Dr. Noah Fierer

Well, I think there's a lot of ongoing work that's showing how we can start manipulating microbes in the environment. This could be either direct manipulation, like adding in particular bacteria or adding in specific fungi, or it could be indirect, designing conditions that favor certain microbes over another to improve human health, animal health, plant health, ecosystem health. We see that most obviously ... many listeners may be familiar with work on microorganisms that live in our gut, and the role of probiotics. The fact that you can like take a pill with certain bacteria and that may improve gut health. We're still not there yet. I mean, it's still a lot of work that needs to be done to really make these approaches successful and it's not just restricted to the human gut.

There's a lot of interest now in are there particular microbes we can add to seeds or to add to soil to make crops drought resistant, for example, or more resistant to insect pests. So basically take advantage of this incredible diversity of microbes that's out there to benefit humans and make our systems more sustainable.

Terri Fiez

That's interesting. So what are you most proud of in your career?

Dr. Noah Fierer

Well, I've been really fortunate to work with some awesome early career researchers, and this includes people that have their PhD, post-doctoral researchers. It includes graduate students, it includes undergraduates, and it's been really fun to see these scientists grow and continue to grow as scientists and be able to see that process. The science we do can't be done without all these folks. I'm not in the lab on a daily basis running samples. Sometimes I wish I was, or I wish I was out in the field collecting samples. But to be honest, most of my time is spent responding to emails and talking on the phone or having meetings or working on proposals and so forth. So it's really all of these students and other researchers that are responsible for getting the science done. So it's been really fun working with students over the years and just the great ideas they bring and just how talented they are.

Terri Fiez

So what is your prediction for the next decade or two in your field and what will change and what breakthroughs we'll be able to find?

Dr. Noah Fierer

Well, we've known for a long time that microbes are important and this holds true in many environments. We know microbes are really important in soil, right? Many plants rely on microbes to grow. This isn't true in the human gut. It's not true on our skin. It's true in the atmosphere and water. The list goes on and on. Microbes are important both as pathogens, they get much of the press, particularly the last year and a half, things that we want to avoid or microbes that may cause disease in plants, for example. We've known about these pathogens, these sort of "bad microbes" for a long time, but we're starting to understand sort of more broadly that microbes are not all bad. Many of them are really critical role in the ecosystems. So now I think there's been a lot more focus, not just on the bad ones, but also on beneficial microbes or microbes that might be beneficial, whether we're talking about human health, plant health or the fertility of soils generally.

So I think that's what's very exciting about the field is that we're not just looking at those microbes we want to avoid or we want to get rid of from a given system. We're starting to look at what microbes do we want there, how can we use microbes directly or indirectly to improve agricultural sustainability, for example, or human health, and the list goes on. I mean, that work has been going on for a long time, but we're really in an exciting place where we have the tools and the conceptual approaches to really make big advances in using microbes for good.

Terri Fiez

Well, thank you, Noah. This has been a really fascinating conversation. I'm really glad that you could join me today.

Dr. Noah Fierer

Thank you, Terri.

Terri Fiez

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Noah Fierer, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, a member of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, and director of CU Boulder's Center of Microbial Exploration. To learn more about Dr. Fierer and the Center of Microbial Exploration, you can visit cme.colorado.edu. Or for more Buff Innovator Insights episodes, you can also visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and vice chancellor for research and innovation at CU Boulder, Terri Fiez. Thanks for joining me for this episode of Buff Innovator Insights. We'll see you next time.

Dr. Fierer shares his natural curiosity for learning with us, and his unexpected and enduring passion for ... SOIL! Get a glimpse into the hidden world of microbes, the functions they serve, and how new research can help us understand and improve the health of our environment and ourselves.

Off

Traditional

White

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Qin (Christine) Lv (ASPIRE; Computer Science)

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Qin (Christine) Lv (ASPIRE; Computer Science) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/12/2021 - 00:00

In this episode of Buff Innovator Insights, meet Dr. Qin (Christine) Lv, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and CU Boulder Campus Director for “ASPIRE,” a new NSF center that is exploring transportation challenges facing our world today. Hear about Dr. Lv’s journey from China to Princeton and eventually to CU Boulder, where her interdisciplinary research intersects with domains such as Earth sciences, transportation electrification and sustainability.

Terri Fiez

Hello, and welcome to Buff Innovator Insights. I'm your host, Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. This podcast features some of the most innovative ideas in the world. It also introduces you to the people behind the innovations, from how they got started to how they are changing our world for the better.

Today, we'll meet Dr. Christine Lv, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and the CU Boulder campus director of a new National Science Foundation center called Aspire. This new center is trying to solve some of the most pressing transportation challenges facing our world today. Dr. Lv's research integrates systems, algorithms, and applications for next level data analytics in scientific discovery and computing. Before joining CU Boulder, she received her master's degree and PhD from Princeton University.

During today's podcast, we'll learn about Dr. Lv's early interest in computer science and her successful progression through the educational system in China. We'll hear about her transition to living in the US to do her postgraduate work at Princeton and what brought her to Boulder. And she tells us how her research and teaching are fulfilling her passion for supporting sustainable and equitable transportation for the future. I can't wait for you to meet Dr. Christine Lv.

Well, thank you for joining me today, Christine.

Dr. Christine Lv

Hi, Terri. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Terri Fiez

So let's just get started. You grew up in China in what would be considered a relatively small town in China, maybe not by US standards. What was that like?

Dr. Christine Lv

Right. So I grew up in Shaoyang, which is in Hunan province. So it's in southern China. So the city is small. By small, I mean we have probably 180,000 people, so it's not too small by the US standard, but it is still considered small city. So my father was a judge. My mother was a physics teacher. So growing up, I think I definitely get quite a bit of kind of logistic kind of reasoning kind of training from my parents. I also have two siblings. I have a older sister and a younger brother, so it's definitely fun to have siblings growing up.

Terri Fiez

So you were the middle child?

Dr. Christine Lv

Yes.

Terri Fiez

So the middle child is the one that helps everything come together and helps people work together generally. So what was the school like that you attended in elementary school?

Dr. Christine Lv

So the elementary school, well, I remember it's a reasonably large class. I think I was in a class of 40 or 50 students. So I enjoyed it. I think growing up, like I'm generally an outgoing person so I think I have a lot of good friends. So I just like enjoyed going to school with my friends and I did reasonably well at school, so yeah, I liked it.

Terri Fiez

So you had a unique opportunity when you were a teenager. Tell us about that.

Dr. Christine Lv

Yeah, that is actually very important point in my life. So as I was about to graduate from middle school, so back then, most of the top students would actually always just consider going to a trade school. Basically, like after that, you get like three years of training and you have a reliable job, right, then have income. So by the time I was about to graduate, there was a very unique opportunity. It's a special gifted class that was organized at the province level.

Terri Fiez

So when you say province, that would be equivalent to a state in the United States?

Dr. Christine Lv

Yes. The intention actually was to kind of like train students, right, to compete at the national level and the international level of this [inaudible]. So it is designed as the most prestigious like computer science competition for secondary school students, so basically just like middle school students. And then the focus is a lot is about kind of programming. So it's about like you need to learn how to design a program and you need to then, of course, write your program and then they were tested for correctness and efficiency. So that was really more like the foundational part of computer science and I got really interested 'cause I see like the great potential of like using computers to do a lot of things.

Terri Fiez

So prior to getting this unique opportunity, had you been exposed to computer science? Was it one of your favorite subjects?

Dr. Christine Lv

No, not at all. Like I had never seen a computer or a keyboard before I started, so that's how I say like without this opportunity, I probably wouldn't be in the computer science field.

Terri Fiez

So this school was also removed from ... you had to leave your parents home when you were relatively young and live there. How did that work and were you homesick?

Dr. Christine Lv

Right, that's a very good question. So yeah, I think I was 14, but the good thing was that because our class like had students from all over the province, so most of us are like remote, like we're remote, right? So we live away from our hometown. So we actually had our dedicated like dorms for us for the whole class, and then we had dedicated dining hall and actually, a special chef for the whole class. So it was actually nice in a way, even though I did miss my family a lot, but it is also nice just to be in this kind of small community where we're kind of together all the time.

Terri Fiez

Was this before cell phones?

Dr. Christine Lv

Yes. Yes.

Terri Fiez

So you weren't talking to your parents every day, I would guess.

Dr. Christine Lv

No. No. I think I remember like my father actually tried to visit me probably about once per month. That was about it.

Terri Fiez

So clearly, you did really well in this school. What happened next? How did you decide where to go to college?

Dr. Christine Lv

Right. So, yeah, while in middle school, so I competed at the province level in this Olympic contest, and then I did a very well. I got into the national level. Again, I did pretty well, not the top. I didn't get to go to the international level contest, but I was among the top 15 for the national level. And with that qualification, so I was actually automatically admitted by Tsinghua University whose computer science department obviously considered the best in the country. So I was one provided such opportunity to just enroll into computer science at Tsinghua University. And by then, I already decided computer science would be the major I want to enroll in.

Terri Fiez

Yeah. And I'm very familiar with Tsinghua University graduates, really, really top students because it's really like the top university in China. So I can appreciate that that had to be challenging for you to go there. So you went there to major in computer science. And when you graduated from there, then what?

Dr. Christine Lv

Right. So a lot of my classmates then were probably like thinking about like finding job when they graduate, but I already kind of decided I want to continue with the graduate study. Another thing that's also like actually was very nice environment was that like Tsinghua University had a lot of students like going abroad after their undergrad study. So I definitely like benefited a lot from that kind of environment. There was a lot of kind of support and resources for me to then figure out how to actually do it.

Terri Fiez

So tell us about where you went to do your PhD and what your PhD research was.

Dr. Christine Lv

Yeah. Right after I graduate from Tsinghua University, I went to Princeton University. So my PhD advisor, Professor Kai Li, so he was original also from China and he actually visited Tsinghua University, and we start just talking about his research work and well, I am interesting so I think that definitely helped a lot. So my initial focus was on distributed storage assistance. So the idea is that how you store a lot of data and across many, many machines, right. And then on top of that, if you are able to store lot of data, then of course, you want to be able to search for information, right. You don't just store data and then having trouble finding them.

But then like as I get to my kind of dissertation study, I was really thinking about well, we don't want to look at the data as black boxes, meaning that I don't care what they are, I just put those blocks of data here and then find them later. I really want to look into the data and see where they are. So that really kind of like pushed me more into this kind of data analytics angle. So the idea is that not only we know we're managing a lot of data, but also we will learn from the data. So we will kind of look into the data and trying to discover interesting patterns from the data, which we can then leverage in real world applications.

Terri Fiez

Yeah. And of course, data has become the word of the day with AI, machine learning and basically doing information extraction from that data. So you were really at the beginning of all of that, it sounds like.

Dr. Christine Lv

Right. Right.

Terri Fiez

So you also had a graduate advisor that helped you when you came to the United States and gave you some great advice. Talk about that.

Dr. Christine Lv

So yeah, Melissa Lawson, so she was the graduate program advisor when I started at Princeton. So I remember like when we started in the first year when we just arrived, there were actually a group of probably 10-ish Chinese students. So we came in the same year, so we were pretty close to each other, right. So we were always kind of together. We did a lot of things together and then, we were speaking Chinese together all the time.

So Melissa like came to us actually one day, really just kind of talking to us about the importance of kind of like one speaking English, because well, if we want to kind of like get better connected to the culture, to the language and really kind of become part of the community, right. We don't want to just be in our own kind of isolated group. So she really encouraged us to speak in English all the time. And also, she then also kind of spent a lot of time just working with each of us, like having us reading papers or like newspapers, or just kind of like talking to her and she would point out like accent issues or just errors, right, we were making. That helped me a lot.

Terri Fiez

Was it hard to be away from home and a continent away while you were here going to school?

Dr. Christine Lv

So Princeton was a small town. I like the small town like feelings. People there were really nice. So I really just, I feel they helped a lot just in terms of like me transitioning like from kind of brand new kind of international student, but become more connected to the community and the cultural aspect and really being able to kind of like feel I'm becoming part of the community. So that really helped.

Of course, like I miss my family a lot. I remember like back then, we had the visa restrictions like between US and China. I think I couldn't go home every year. It was probably every other year I would go back. So it was hard then. Also actually, one of the things like my father actually passed away before I finished my PhD study. So that was definitely also like one [inaudible] that like it was just too far away for me to be like back by his side.

Terri Fiez

That must've been very, very hard.

Dr. Christine Lv

Yeah.

Terri Fiez

So after you finished your PhD, you decided to stay in the United States and find a faculty position. So you started at Stony Brook University and then you came to CU Boulder. What drew you to Boulder?

Dr. Christine Lv

Right. So I mean the number one [inaudible] actually was more like the [inaudible] issue. So my husband then, like he was at CU Boulder, and I was at Stony Brook. So we knew we had to kind of, one of us had to move, right. But in terms of me moving to Boulder, I remember my first visit to Boulder, like just driving over the hill and then seeing the city at the valley of the foothills, it was so pretty. Like I was really like really impressed like for the first sight. But the second part is really people, right? So once I like arrived at Boulder, I start to interact with people like in my department in the university, but also my neighbors, just the general community. I feel this is just a very nice community because of the people we have here.

Another part, that's more about my research, right? So I started like talking to people about collaboration even before I arrived at Boulder. So I really feel that there were a lot of opportunities and the collaboration was like really encourage it, and kind of how do I say, facilitate in many ways, right. And that was very important, right, for my research work.

Terri Fiez

Well, and those research collaborations have paid off. You were recently one of the principal investigators of the new National Science Foundation engineering research center, which is called ASPIRE, Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification. What does the center aspire to achieve?

Dr. Christine Lv

Right. Yeah. That's a very good question. So ASPIRE focuses on electrified transportation, okay. So the vision of the center is that we want to support sustainable and equitable future for transportation because generally like by improving the transportation sector, we want to be able to improve the health, the prosperity, but also equity and access. 'Cause nowadays, if you look at like electrical vehicles, right, we talk about the technology side, about how you design the battery system, how you design the vehicles and the charging infrastructure, but all those need to come together so that we can support widespread electrification across different vehicle classes and also very importantly, across different adoption groups, right. We don't want like some groups to be left behind or be disadvantaged if we are not considering this as a whole.

Terri Fiez

Christine, so how are you using data to inform our ability to use the electrical infrastructure?

Dr. Christine Lv

So if you are a local community, if I say, okay, now don't you like have some kind of charging infrastructure nearby? What does it mean, right? What kind of like environmental impact it may have on my community, right? So we're looking at the data that will really quantify the environmental benefit, right, or potential health impact if certain percentage of the traffic or the vehicles are converted to electrical vehicles. So basically here, we're using data to really model the impact, right, when we go to other for different kind of community settings.

Terri Fiez

So what is your part in this research center?

Dr. Christine Lv

I serve as a campus director for University of Colorado Boulder. So Boulder is a core campus within ASPIRE. So we actually have quite a few faculty members, staff members, and students, right, participating in the center. So as a campus director, I really want to just be able to kind of oversee, right, our campus participation within ASPIRE. So that's one part of it. The other part is from the research angle is that I'm serving as the data research's thrust lead. So within ASPIRE, we have four research thrusts. So there's power, there's transportation, adoption and data. So I'm leading a team of data scientists.

Terri Fiez

Yeah, that sounds really exciting. As part of your role as a professor, you also teach classes. What classes do you teach and what's your favorite class to teach?

Dr. Christine Lv

I have taught ... Let me see. So since starting at CU Boulder, so I have created the data mining course. Another one is the big data analytics. This was a more kind of advanced topics course for graduate students. And also, I teach this more like a intro course, one is introduction to the CS PhD program, which is for first year PhD students. Another one is introduction to the CS research based master's program. So again, it's for incoming master's students who are in the research based the program.

So I think I like teaching of all, those are all very good courses. They have different purposes, but they all kind of cover different things and really help our students. But one course I particularly like is the data mining course. So this course is offered to both undergraduate students and graduate students, okay. This course particularly is interesting because one, of course, it's directly connect to my research. So I really like it, but also within this course, I have built a like not just the lectures, right, but also a core kind of course project component. And this project actually need to be designed by the students themselves. So basically, student can form their groups. They pick their own focus and their own datasets that they want to work with and then kind of work through the whole process of like mining from a lot of data.

So, every year, I'm really kind of interested to see just a lot of kind of very interesting ideas. And so that's one part I really like. I always like, like the feedback when students say that while it was hard, it wasn't an easy process, but that they really enjoyed the process of kind of working with real data and working on some projects that they are really interested in.

Terri Fiez

Sounds like a class I'd love to take. So what are you most proud of in your career and what do you hope your legacy will be?

Dr. Christine Lv

That's a very good question. So as a professor, right, I think that there are two important aspects of my work, right. So one is the research, right? So I really see the value of high impact research, meaning that I want my research work to be able to benefit the bigger society and really kind of see real world adoption. So I would be very proud if like my research work, like down the road, really have a huge impact in the society and through actually the ASPIRE center and some of my other research projects, I do feel we are pushing the boundaries and we are going to really make the world better with more advanced research work. That's one.

The other part, being a professor, right? So education is a core part. And I really feel that that's actually very important, right? It's not just about like the individual classes I go to or the particular materials I teach. What I really treasure is the growth, right? How our kind of young scholars, right, they learn the materials, but really they become like independent like experts, right, in their own field to become leaders, right, and also better thinkers, not just say the mechanics of the work, but really it's about visionary and leadership work when they go out and they grow and they become like really the experts in their own areas.

Terri Fiez

So Christine, as you look forward to the future, you can't help but think about your own triplets that you have. They're eight years old now. What is it that you're optimistic about your field and the future and the future it will create for them?

Dr. Christine Lv

Right. I think that's also one thing that when I talk about like ASPIRE being supporting sustainable and equitable transportation and more broadly, like the impact of my research, right. I do feel sustainability of equity are really important and that's something that I really strive to make it better.

So yeah, connect to my triplets, so I think they really amaze me 'cause, for example, like they know what I work on, right. They can already talk about what data mining is, they can talk about electrified transportation. So they kind of got the concepts, right? And through that process, I'm also kind of like showing them how important it is to provide like a sustainable future, right, for the environment we live in. So I really feel that it's important for us to really kind of say guide and lead the next generation. So we do our best to make it better for next generation, but this concept and this kind of continued effort, right, is important for us to carry on and for the next generation to carry on.

Terri Fiez

Well, thank you, Christine. This has been a great conversation. Thank you for joining me today.

Dr. Christine Lv

Thank you.

Terri Fiez

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Christine Lv, associate professor of computer science and the campus director for CU Boulder's new ASPIRE NSF Center. To learn more about Dr. Lv, you can visit colorado.edu/center/aspire. For this and other Buff Innovator Insights episodes, you can also visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and vice chancellor for research and innovation at CU Boulder, Terri Fiez. Thanks for listening to Buff Innovator Insights.

Meet Dr. Qin (Christine) Lv and hear about her journey from China to Princeton and eventually to CU Boulder, where her interdisciplinary research intersects with domains such as Earth sciences, transportation electrification and sustainability—the focus of a new NSF center that is exploring transportation challenges facing our world today.

Off

Traditional

White

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Iain Boyd (Center for National Security Initiatives; Hypersonics; Aerospace Engineering)

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Iain Boyd (Center for National Security Initiatives; Hypersonics; Aerospace Engineering) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/05/2021 - 00:00

In this episode of Buff Innovator Insights, meet Dr. Iain Boyd, H.T. Sears Memorial Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and Director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at CU Boulder. We’ll hear about how Dr. Boyd followed his early interest in math from Scotland to England, and then to the U.S., where he’s now regarded as pioneer in hypersonics and a key figure in deploying computation and technology to solve our most pressing challenges.

Terri Fiez

Hello, I'm your host Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Welcome to Buff Innovator Insights. This podcast features some of the most innovative ideas in the world. I'll introduce you to the people behind the innovations, from how they got started, to how they are changing the future. Today we'll meet with Dr. Iain Boyd, H.T. Sears Memorial Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, and Director of the Center for National Security Initiatives. His research focuses on hypersonic aerothermodynamics, electric propulsion, rocket plumes, and computation of non-equilibrium gas and plasma dynamics.

Before joining CU Boulder, Dr. Boyd worked at NASA Ames Research Center, held a faculty position at Cornell University, and served as a professor at the University of Michigan. During today's podcast we'll hear about the values his family placed on formal education, which he carried with him from Scotland to England, and eventually to the US. We'll also learn about how Dr. Boyd's interest in math and science guided his educational decisions, and led to opportunities at NASA and the world's leading research universities. And he explains how computation and technology can be applied to solving our most pressing problems, including national security, and improving people's lives across the globe. Let's meet Dr. Iain Boyd.

Hi Iain, thanks for joining me today for this conversation.

Dr. Iain Boyd

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, Terri.

Terri Fiez

So as our listeners may have noticed, you weren't born in the United States, you were born in Scotland and lived there until you were 13. Tell us about your early years in Scotland.

Dr. Iain Boyd

Well, they were very happy, I had a great childhood there, and I wish my Scottish accent was stronger than it is now, but there's still a little bit of it left.

Terri Fiez

And then your family moved to England when you were in your early teen years, which I know can be challenging for kids at that age. What was your experience?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Yeah, at 13 is certainly an age where there's a lot going on for a kid, and we moved because of my dad's job. And the thing I remember most about being a challenge, first of all, was people not understanding me from my accent, I guess I had a very strong Scottish accent at the time, and I would talk to people on the first few days at school and they were just look at me quizzically and really not understanding what I was saying. And so that was the beginning of the end of my real Scottish accent, and I've moved around quite a bit since then, and I'm not really sure what my accent is now.

Terri Fiez

Okay. Now you said you moved for your dad's job, you have an interesting story about your dad and his educational past, do you want to share that?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Yeah, definitely. My dad, he left high school before completing it, and he joined the Navy, the British Royal Navy, and he ended up being a mechanic on airplanes, on an aircraft carrier. Yeah, after he came out of the Navy he got into an engineering position, and over many, many years worked his way up in his career path to become a professional engineer in the end. But I think he always definitely regretted having left school early, in hindsight. And so I remember all the way through my childhood my dad going to night classes, and very slowly, really over many years, he did eventually get himself a bachelor's degree, and I think he was probably in his forties when that happened. And so he definitely emphasized to me and my sister the importance of getting your education done as quickly and as efficiently as possible, because it's really, really challenging to try and hold down a full-time job, and be supporting a family, and trying to further your education.

Terri Fiez

So I'm guessing that might have influenced some of the subjects you were interested in, but what subjects were you interested during school?

Dr. Iain Boyd

I was one of those kids that just really loved school. I went through the Scottish, and later English, educational systems, and in that system when you're about 16 you have to make a very important decision to either go in a direction of studying the sciences and math, or going the direction of the arts, like literature and history. And when I got to that point I was really torn because I really loved all the different topics that I was studying. And this is where I think my dad was an important influence that he pointed out that, "You've got a more likely path towards, and obvious career opportunities, on the science and math side." Maybe these days I might argue with that a little bit, but that influenced me, I think, to go down that particular path of math and sciences and engineering in the end.

Terri Fiez

That's interesting. So then how did you decide where to go to college and what you were going to major in?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Well, I decided first what I was going to major in, and that was math because, like I said, I found a relatively easy, so I guess I was being a little bit lazy there, but I just enjoyed it. And again, in the British system, you typically choose five universities to apply to, and you're strategic about, you've got ones that are harder to get into, and easier, and so on. And the one I liked the most was the one I went to, which was the University of Southampton, and partly it was because it had a very, very flexible program in math, that you could focus on really pure theoretical mathematics, or you could look at applied mathematics. And by the end of the time I graduated, certainly I'd studied all the core math classes, of course, but I'd also studied a wide range of things, from relativity theory, and electromagnetic theory in fluids, and astrophysics, and computer graphics. I mean, just a very broad range of things that did have overlap with math.

Terri Fiez

So what kind of activities do you like to do outside of your schooling?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Well, in Scotland and in Europe, soccer, or we call it football over there, is a very big deal. And so from a very early age I used to play soccer with my dad and my granddad, so soccer was big, and a lot of other sports, like tennis and track and running, you still do a lot of running here in Boulder, it's obviously a great environment for that. A little bit of music, so I was in band, played not a tuba, but the next lowered down in size called a euphonium, but it's a big brass instrument.

Terri Fiez

Okay. So you went to undergraduate, and then you immediately followed that with graduate school. How did that occur? Because I'm sure you had lots of job opportunities.

Dr. Iain Boyd

I came across this opportunity to do a PhD at the same university in Southampton, but in aerospace engineering, and I just really liked the sound of that better than any of the job opportunities I had, so I applied for the position and ended up getting it. And like I said, I had done a lot of really applied mathematics courses in my undergrad degree and realized that's where I was more interested, was not in the generating proofs or lemmas, and things like this that they do in theoretical math, it was in using mathematics for something useful.

Terri Fiez

And useful you have done, from finishing your PhD you landed a job with NASA in US. How did you do that?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Yeah that's, to be honest, in my field of aerospace engineering, even from the UK, to work for NASA is really the peak of what you could hope for. So as I was doing my doctoral research in England, I was interested in collaborations, and had a lot of collaborations across Europe and France and Germany, and so on, and written collaborations in the US. And so in my final year of doing my PhD I came across to US to a couple of conferences, and I talked to some people from NASA centers who were working in the same area as I had been studying for my thesis. And it took a little bit of back and forward, and it was slower in those days because I don't think I even had email at the time, but we made a connection, and so I ended up coming over to the US with my wife to NASA Ames Research Center, which is close to San Francisco.

And for us that was going to be a big adventure, that we were going to come over to the US for a couple of years, see California, I'd work at NASA, and then we'd go back to England or Europe. And of course, like a lot of people, we just never went back. It was just too much fun and too many opportunities here to look back.

Terri Fiez

So from NASA you went to Cornell, and then to Michigan. So I know in your 20 years at Michigan you had an opportunity to participate in a Department of Defense program to really learn about how it works, and how the researchers interact with that. Can you talk about that program you were involved in?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Yeah, this a program called Defense Science Study Group, and it's run by an organization called DARPA that is part of the Department of Defense, and it's a two year program that's designed specifically to introduce university faculty from across the country to the challenges of national security and homeland defense. And what they do in the program is they take you around a wide range of facilities around the country, so we went on ships, and we went in planes, and we went in tanks, and we went to CIA headquarters, and we visited hospitals and training facilities, met just a tremendous amount of people. But also the program has what they call mentors, so retired four-star generals, leadership from, again CIA and other parts of the national defense infrastructure, and it really did teach me a tremendous amount about those challenges that government leadership faces.

And sometimes it could be very humbling because as a professor of engineering, I mean, I think that everything revolves around technology, and for many of the problems that these people are dealing with, there may be a technology element to it, but it's only one aspect of information that informs decisions about these complex matters. And so I really loved that program, and one of the things they tried to do at the end of the program is place some of the participants on advisory boards, and I was fortunate to be placed on what was called the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, and so there you are interacting with the secretary of the Air Force, and with other leadership in the Department of Defense. And again, I would say I was very fortunate that I talked to my College of Engineering leadership in Michigan into doing an experiment with me where I stayed in DC for a couple more years, working on government relations as a faculty member, and again, I just really enjoyed that, and that was a perfect introduction to the role I have here now at CU.

Terri Fiez

Talk about the role that you have in the National Security Center, and what drew you to this role?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Yeah, so we have the Center for National Security Initiatives, NSI, here at CU, and I'm the director of it. And it has the overall goal of increasing our campus's engagement on national security challenges, and that involves a number of different things. It involves increasing the opportunities for our faculty to work on research challenges that come up in national security endeavors, and simultaneously it is helping to address what's called workforce development. But basically helping to train and ensure that we have the technically savvy workforce that is needed to use new technologies to help address national security challenges.

And I think that people don't always realize that the State of Colorado is the second largest aerospace and defense economy, by State, in the country. And so at CU, as a public institution, I think it's an important part of what our university should be doing, along with many other things, but with that focus already within the state in this sector, it's really important that we have the educational opportunities available to our students to pursue careers in the State of Colorado in this area, if that's what they want to do. And so these are all some of the most important aspects of our center. Ultimately I think if we're successful in those directions what will come out of it, which is another desire, is national recognition that CU is one of the leading universities in the country for national security research and workforce development.

Terri Fiez

So we've been throwing around this term national security. What kind of research problems fall under national security?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Yeah, that's a great question, and it's a terminology that can be misunderstood often in a very narrow sense, where people think of weapons and guns and bullets, and certainly that, of course, that's part of the way that wars are fought, and maybe our nation would have to be defended. But in our activities, we're taking the broadest possible interpretation of what national security means. And so some of the areas that people don't always think about are things like space, that we all use things like the GPS satellites all the time without really thinking about it for driving directions, but now those GPS satellites are so ingrained in our lives that it's estimated that the US economy would lose about a billion dollars a day if it went down. And so that's an aspect of national security, which is protecting key assets that are needed to maintain the economic health of the country.

Another example that probably is surprising to some people is climate. So climate is really a critical concern in national security. One really good example of this is in the Arctic, that there's been a lot of ice melting up there, so much that places that were previously not accessible to ships now are. The other area I'll mention for today is cybersecurity. So cybersecurity is really a challenge, outside of national security, for all kinds of things, from our banks, to safeguarding food supplies, and water supplies, power supplies, to our own personal information. And it's a real difficult challenge because hackers are smart people, I'm going to say, unfortunately, and so the nature of what they can do is always changing, never sitting still, and if you're addressing cybersecurity, you're just basically putting out one fire after another. Well, you won't be surprised, to think that cybersecurity is also a really big challenge in national security, and that's an area where we're hoping to expand some of the capabilities we have at CU through our Center for National Security Initiatives.

Terri Fiez

Thank you, that's very helpful, and I'm sure there's many more examples that you could give us, but those are very interesting ones. In addition to your role as director of the Center, you also teach classes. What kind of classes do you teach?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Yeah, so I'm a professor of aerospace engineering, and so I tend to work in fluid mechanics, so I teach classes in that area. The classes I've always enjoyed teaching the most are the fundamental ones. And so I've taught a course at the sophomore level, second year level in universities, on introduction to gas dynamics, it's called. And it's usually the first class that aerospace students take to start to understand how air flows around airplanes, and out of rocket engines, and so on. But it's really challenging to teach those fundamental courses because that's where you're trying to imprint the very, very basic ideas that apply to many, many things in the particular field you're working in, in my case aerospace engineering. And so trying to get over in an effective way to the students, at just their second year, I always found to be a challenge that I like to take on. One of the things I enjoy is really getting myself that very deep understanding of these subjects that we were teaching and researching on.

Terri Fiez

So what are you most proud of in your career, and what would you like your legacy to be?

Dr. Iain Boyd

I think at this stage what I'm most proud of is all the doctoral students that I've worked with and that have graduated with me as their mentor. It's a great thing to be able to see them having successful careers and doing well, and being promoted and leading projects. They've done it almost all themselves, but I'll be happy to take a little bit of credit for it too. I think from the point where I sit today, something we haven't talked about is that I'm leading a new NASA Institute here at CU, it's going to start in the fall, called ACCESS. So the idea of ACCESS is that future NASA missions, some of them, have incredibly high reliability requirements, and the example I like to use for this is something called the Mars sample return mission.

So on Mars sample return, just like the name implies, the idea is you'll fly, nobody, but a robotic spacecraft, will fly out to Mars, scoop up some Martian dirt, fly all the way back, enter the Earth's atmosphere, land on the ground, and people will be able to study it in detail. Well, when you come back from Mars with this soil, and you don't really know what's in it, and you're entering the Earth's atmosphere at incredibly high speed, you absolutely want to be sure that that spacecraft does not break apart and that Martian soil is distributed in our atmosphere, in case there's something we don't want in it. And so the reliability for that spacecraft coming back from Mars, it's allowed to fail one in a million times. And today we have no way of certifying a spacecraft at that level. And so this new institute, ACCESS, is supposed to take on that challenge. And if we're successful, then I think what's exciting is that it will open up many new opportunities for risky, exciting space exploration missions.

Terri Fiez

So as you think about the next decade or two, what are you optimistic about, and what's your hope for the future of the work that you do, and the breakthroughs that will be found?

Dr. Iain Boyd

Broadly speaking I'm optimistic that that technology is going to keep moving forward, and that it's going to continue to improve people's lives. Even with our recent downturn with COVID in many ways, if you look over 100, technology and science advances have greatly improved people's lives, and their health, and their access to basic resources. Yes, there's a long way to go to make the benefits that maybe we enjoy in the US and the west more broadly available, but the only way I can see to make them more broadly available is through further technology development, and I think a lot of that is going to be on the back of computers. We see that in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and things like that.

So I think this is a very exciting time for science and technology research, and I think computation is going to play a huge role in our continued progress. There's going to be ups and downs, but I think that, like I said, from my perspective, the only way, or the best way forward for us as a species, is through continuing to try to solve our problems with the aid of technology.

Terri Fiez

Thank you, Iain, this has been a fun discussion, thank you for joining me today.

Dr. Iain Boyd

Thanks again, Terri, for the opportunity.

Terri Fiez

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Iain Boyd, Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, and Director of the Center for National Security Initiatives. To learn more about Dr. Boyd, or for more Buff Innovator Insight episodes, visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at CU Boulder, Terri Fiez. Thanks for joining me for this episode of Buff Innovator Insights, we'll see you next time.

Meet Dr. Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at CU Boulder, and hear about how he followed his early interest in math from Scotland to England to the U.S., where he’s now regarded as pioneer in hypersonics and a key figure in deploying computation and technology to solve our most pressing challenges.

Off

Traditional

White

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller (Navigating the New Arctic Community Office)

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller (Navigating the New Arctic Community Office) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/29/2021 - 00:00

This episode of Buff Innovator Insights features Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and Director for the Navigating the New Arctic Community Office, both hosted at CU Boulder. We’ll hear about how his family-centered upbringing in rural Pennsylvania formed the foundations for his lifelong work exploring the relationships between the physical environment and the communities—especially indigenous communities—that dwell there.

Terri Fiez

Hello, and welcome to Buff Innovator Insights. I'm your host Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. This podcast features some of the most innovative ideas in the world. And it introduces you to the people behind the innovations, from how they got started, to how they are changing our world for the better.

Today we'll meet Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller, from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at CU Boulder. He's Director for the Navigating the New Arctic Community Office, which CU Boulder is hosting in collaboration with Alaska Pacific University, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Dr. Druckenmiller has more than 15 years of transdisciplinary research experience in arctic and subarctic regions, much of it in collaboration with Arctic communities. He also has experience participating with a host of national and international Arctic research and policy institutions.

During today's podcast, we'll learn about how growing up in a close-knit family in rural Pennsylvania spawned his research interest in the physical environment. The educational experiences and a special mentor who shifted his focus to include the relationship of the physical environment with the communities that dwell there.

And how his role as Director of Navigating the New Arctic Community Office, sponsored by the National Science Foundation is allowing him to bring Indigenous communities to the forefront of such work. Let's meet Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller.

Well, thank you Matt for joining us here today. So let's just get right into this. What part of the country did you grow up in?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

I grew up in the rural part of North Central Pennsylvania. An area of the state filled with rolling mountains, forests, a lot of farmlands and an abundance of wild trout streams. We lived about 15 miles from the nearest town. So growing up as a Pennsylvania country kid was a certain part of my identity growing up.

Terri Fiez

How do you think that shaped your future growing up in such a rural area, and removed from any cities?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Well, most of my memories as a kid were playing in the woods with my three siblings. I have a brother and two sisters. And we were surrounded by forests, and that was our backyard. We also had a family cabin, about 25 minute drive away up in the mountains, on a beautiful mountain creek.

And that was really our primary vacation place. We didn't travel much as a family. And so, so much of my childhood memories are in the forest around our home and in the cabin that my grandfather built, my great grandfather rather, just after World War II.

Terri Fiez

Sounds like a pretty idyllic upbringing. So what were some of your favorite subjects in school?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Well, I can remember early on in middle school, and going into high school that the subjects that I really enjoyed most were social science, history and geography. At a very early age, I took a great interest in maps, and I think that stems from inheriting my grandfather's National Geographic collection. So I would say social sciences was really central to my interest. But I found that I most excelled in engineering, math and science.

And as a kid, I think you're taught to, in some ways to follow what you're good at. And so at early age took that as an indication that I should probably pursue something related to math and science. And looking back on it, now, as a father, I think there's a need for a good balance between following what you're good at and following what your true passions are. Because sometimes they vary a bit. And I think the challenge in life is trying to find areas where those two things intersect.

Terri Fiez

So outside of academic topics, what kind of extracurricular activities did you participate in?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Well, I was really interested in sports. I tried most sports that I could, I played football, I wrestled, I played tennis, basketball, soccer. And I really learned that I was a very average athlete. I did not excel, I put in a lot of hard work, but I was an average athlete. I also in school, and perhaps as a result of being so average in sports was, I took an interest in environmental science.

Our school had a stewardship club, an environmental stewardship club. And in my junior year of high school, I ran to be the president of the stewardship club. And I was probably the only person running. But regardless, I became the president of our stewardship club. And during my junior year, I organized a trip with my high school chemistry teacher for a group of us, about 15 students to go down to Honduras.

Where we, for two weeks, were part of a program where we did biodiversity surveys in primary rain forests and secondary rain forests. And also did surveys of the coral reefs off of the mainland of Honduras. And so it was my first real exposure to science and to doing field work, which really just, I think set me on the course for wanting to do field work in my career.

Terri Fiez

So it sounds like you had a lot of interests outside of academic topics and within academic topics. So how did you choose where to go to college, and then also what you were going to major in?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Well, my father, he was a carpenter. And he built houses for a large part of his life. But then he went on to be a professor of carpentry at Penn College of Technology, which is an affiliate campus to Penn State University. And early on, I learned that he had a pretty substantial educational discount. And so I went to Penn State, I think it was 75% off tuition.

But it also was that Penn State had a really good engineering program, various engineering programs. And I was aware of that, and I really wanted to be useful in my career. And I think that stems to an interest I had in the environment.

I grew up at a time where acid rain was a big topic of interest in the Northeastern Pennsylvania. That really shaped my interest in wanting to pursue a career focused on environmental remediation. And so I went to Penn State, and did my undergraduate degree in environmental systems engineering, focusing on air quality.

Terri Fiez

So you get to the end of your degree, and you've got to decide what to do next, how did you decide what to do after you graduated?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Well, at that time, I did an internship with General Electric, and it gave me a taste for joining the workforce. And so I think the decision I made was to not really make a decision, to kind of stay where I was at.

My undergraduate program had a kind of a sister master's level program in geoenvironmental engineering. And for that, I decided to focus my master's research on carbon sequestration. So my research was looking at injecting carbon as a form of sequestering carbon.

Terri Fiez

Well, didn't you have an experience with a particular professor that really shaped your future?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Yes. While I was doing my master's work, I had early on read a book called Glacier Ice by Austin Post and Edward LaChapelle, which is just a fantastic book to introduce you to the subject of glaciology.

And after reading that book, I decided to take a graduate level glaciology course with Richard Alley, who's a world renowned glaciologist who studied ice stabilization glacier movement in Greenland and Antarctica. And it's just that, that course really just shaped my career.

It convinced me that glaciology was what I wanted to do. So at that time he suggested some folks here at CU Boulder to potentially work with. Some people at the University of British Columbia, and then also at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

And as I applied to these programs, and began to interact with potential future advisors, I became convinced that the best fieldwork opportunities would be in Alaska.

Terri Fiez

So what did you do after your master's then, it sounds like you went to Alaska?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Yeah. Immediately after I finished my master's at Penn State, probably a couple weeks after, I packed a single bag and flew up to Fairbanks. And I remember very vividly flying into Fairbanks, it was the summer of 2004 during one of the worst wildfire seasons that Alaska had faced in recent decades.

But despite the wildfires, I still got a beautiful view of Denali, of the big mountain, which really just convinced me that I'd made the right decision. Shortly after arriving in Fairbanks, I began to join a research team at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Doing months of glacier volume surveys using a small aircraft throughout the Alaska range. And it was to date one of the most remarkable experiences I've ever had.

Terri Fiez

So how long were you up in Alaska, and how did you end up in Boulder?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Well, I began a PhD in glaciology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. But I also upon living in the state and traveling a bit, and including into some of the rural communities. I became really interested in the intersection of research with concerns of Arctic communities.

And so I transitioned, after about a year and a half studying mountain glaciers, to focusing on coastal sea ice stability. And that allowed me to develop some research projects during my PhD. Looking at how Indigenous Inupiaq communities in Alaska utilize sea ice as their means to provide food for their community.

So my work was looking specifically at the stability of the ice that attaches along the coast. During the time when the community is out on the ice hunting for bowhead whales in the springtime. I decided that I wanted to pursue postdoctoral work in partnership with these whale biologists.

And so I came down here to CU Boulder to do a postdoc. And that postdoc focused on using a lot of the sea ice data sets that exist here at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, to examine how bowhead whale habitat is changing. And working with a biologist to translate changes in the physical environment to changes in the body condition of bowhead whales. So relating changing habitat to how whales feed and where they feed throughout the Arctic.

Terri Fiez

So you talked about doing the scientific research, but really bringing the social sciences, the communities that are served by these environments. And clearly that was an interest from the time you were very young. How did you... As you went along in your PhD, how did you incorporate that, the social science aspect?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Well, I became really interested in the knowledge of traditional, Indigenous knowledge holders in Alaska. Because spending time with some of the hunters in the communities, some of the elders, now, I really saw in many ways, my grandfather in them.

And I understood that the knowledge they acquired was over a long time of moving in the environment, observing the environment, developing a relationship with it. And I decided to have one of my graduate committees at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Both an anthropologist who could bring that longtime perspective of how researchers have worked with Indigenous peoples in the Arctic, as well as an Inupiaq elder and whaling captain from the community of Wales, Alaska, who served as a member on my committee and really guided my research on being culturally aware of the concerns of coastal Inupiaq communities.

Terri Fiez

So my experience with having non-traditional people on your committee, they tend to ask the hardest and the most insightful questions. So was that your experience?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Interestingly enough, I don't know if it was. I think some of the hardest questions came from the physical scientists on my committee. I had a snow physicist, an oceanographer and a sea ice geophysicist. And the hardest questions came from them, not because they were focusing on their own discipline, but because I was lucky enough to have these three men on my committee who really shared the same interests that I shared.

They were generally interested and learning from Inupiaq tradition on local knowledge. And so we were going through the process together. And so they asked me a lot of questions that I was always asking myself. Questions that neither of us knew the answer to, "How can you provide usable information on assessing sea ice stability to a local hunter?" And as they ask these types of questions, it was clear that they also didn't know the answer.

Terri Fiez

So you were recently funded to lead a National Science Foundation, NSF, Navigating the New Arctic Community Hub. Tell us what that is, and what is the goal that you hope to achieve?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Navigating the New Arctic, referred to as NNA, is one of NSF's big ideas. So their big ideas are meant to be very large scale, across the agency efforts to tackle complex challenges. So Navigating the New Arctic is NSF's commitment to focusing research support to addressing some of the more critical issues being faced in the Arctic.

The Arctic is changing more rapidly than almost any place on Earth. The rate of warming in the Arctic is over twice the rate of warming that we see elsewhere on the planet. Now, we've seen dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice in summer, upwards of 70% loss in total volume of Arctic sea ice. We see the form of permafrost, the shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet. We see migration patterns of key species being disrupted.

And so the Arctic system on almost all fronts, is being affected by change in global climate. And so this new office is really meant to serve as a coordinating research hub for the 140 plus individual research awards that have been granted through the NNA initiative.

And so we are supporting projects and developing collaborations across projects, focusing on interdisciplinary collaborations to address very specific challenges and to try to make research more useful to those that need it. And we're also trying to build capacity for research teams to practice more culturally appropriate education outreach activities.

We're trying to address some of the issues that have been persistent in the Arctic between researchers working with Indigenous communities and concerns around equity in research and ensuring that research partnerships are truly reciprocal. And also we are trying to encourage the community to adopt open science practices, to ensure that science is accessible to everyone.

That the process is transparent, and that the datasets that result from these huge investments in Arctic research are available to those that need it. And that there is a real focused effort on ensuring that usability in research is invested in.

Terri Fiez

Who are the partners in this work?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

The Navigating the New Arctic Community Office is a partnership between CU Boulder, which hosts the central office, and Alaska Pacific University, which is located in Anchorage. It recently became a travel university focusing on building their service enrollment of Alaska Native students and professionals. And the third partner is the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

They are really doing the bulk of the education outreach activities. We also have an Indigenous advisory board that largely represents tribal institutions that exist in Alaska and to some extent internationally.

And we are beginning to develop a host of events and mechanisms for ensuring that Arctic peoples have an input into the research that's being done through the NNA program. And have a process for bringing some of their ideas and interests in collaborative research forward to the research community.

Terri Fiez

I think when we talked, we talked about the idea of authentic collaboration. So Matt, how do you build trust with this Indigenous community?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

I think one of the primary components to building trust, in addition to simply realizing that it takes time and it takes focus, is making a deliberate effort to recognize history and to learn history from multiple points of view. And certainly, the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic have a very particular history that has been filled with trauma.

Whether it be the forced loss of language, forced into boarding schools, in many cases, forced relocation of their communities. Those are traumas that live to this day in communities. You don't have to go too far back within families to find a connection to a grandparent, or even a parent that underwent these times in history.

And so we're really living at the present, at a time of historical reconsideration of what the past looks like. And simply acknowledging that with partners, and showing that you are investing the time to recognize that history. And to look at it through their perspective, now, it's a huge step towards building trust and moving forward together in partnership.

A gathering that is planned and organized by Indigenous collaborators, really begins with showing respect to knowledge bearers. Often time giving credit to the elders that are present, and that contributed to acknowledging the gifts from the land. And it really just sets the research and the discussions that follow on a course that a researcher likely would not set the collaboration towards.

And having improved relationships, research partnerships with Indigenous communities. I think brings the research so much closer to actual application, to actually being able to address the challenges that the Arctic faces.

Terri Fiez

So what are you most proud of in your career, and what would you like your legacy to be?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Well, I would say I'm most proud of the relationships that I've formed with those who are shaking things up. Those that are leading the community, often leading from behind. And I've just been so proud that I've somehow been able to identify some of these people and to get to know them, and to develop trust. And what I want my legacy to be, and in my personal career I think, I want my legacy to be the same as I want in my personal life.

I want to be remembered as a good person, as a kind person, someone that didn't take others for granted. And someone that gave more than I took. We all take, I take. But it's important to find an approach where you can give more than you take. And that's something that I tell my children. And I think that's something that I try to bring into my professional life.

Terri Fiez

Final question. As you think about the next decade or two, what are you optimistic about, and what's your hope for the future of the work that you do and the breakthroughs that will be found?

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Well, as I mentioned, we've spent a lot of time in recent years focusing on developing equitable research partnerships with Arctic peoples. And my hope for the future is that there is another switch, which we begin to see more and more Indigenous scholars lead the Arctic research community.

I think we're on that trajectory. And I'm encouraged because I see a growing number of young leaders, many of which I get a chance to work with through this, Navigating the Arctic Community Office. And they have decided that they need to work with scientists, and to make a lasting change and through partnership.

And I think the trajectory that we're on is for their leadership to take center stage. At least in the context of addressing some of the more critical societal challenges that we see up in the north. And so I'm optimistic about that. And I'm also optimistic that the academic scientific research community is ready for that to happen.

Terri Fiez

Well, thank you, Matt. This has been a very enlightening conversation. And I just really appreciate the way that you view the world and your contributions to it. So thank you for spending this time today.

Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller

Thank you very much, Terri. It's a great pleasure to speak with you.

Terri Fiez

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Matthew Druckenmiller, from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at CU Boulder. And Director for the CU Boulder Navigating the New Arctic Community Office. To learn more about Dr. Druckenmiller, you can visit nna-co.org.

For this and other Buff Innovator Insights episodes, you can also visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at CU Boulder, Terri Fiez. Thanks for listening to Buff Innovator Insights. We'll see you next time.

In this episode, we'll learn about how Dr. Druckenmiller's family-centered upbringing in rural Pennsylvania formed the foundations for his lifelong work exploring the relationships between the physical environment and the communities—especially indigenous communities—that dwell there.

Off

Traditional

White

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Cora Randall (Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; LASP; WAVE NASA DRIVE Science Center)

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Cora Randall (Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; LASP; WAVE NASA DRIVE Science Center) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/22/2021 - 00:00

This episode of Buff Innovator Insights features Dr. Cora Randall, professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a faculty member in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). We’ll follow her journey from earning her PhD in chemistry to working on the Hubble Space Telescope and, now, to leading a new NASA DRIVE center working at the leading edge of next-generation space weather prediction.

Terri Fiez

Hello, I'm your host, Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Welcome to Buff Innovator Insights. This podcast features some of the most innovative groundbreaking ideas in the world. I'll also introduce you to the people behind the innovations, from how they started, to how they're changing the future.

Today, we'll meet Dr. Cora Randall, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and a faculty member in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP. She has recently been selected to lead a new center called Wave-induced Atmospheric Variability, or WAVE, which is part of NASA's DRIVE Science Center Initiative. Dr. Randall received a BA in Chemistry from the State University of New York at Purchase, and a Master's and PhD in Chemistry from the University of California Santa Cruz. Her main area of expertise is remote sensing of the Earth's middle atmosphere, with particular emphasis on the polar regions. During today's podcast, we'll hear about how her early interest in chemistry and spectroscopy evolved into expertise in remote sensing and atmospheric science. Her personal and professional factors aligned to bring her to CU Boulder, to work on the Hubble Space Telescope, and her current role as a lead of the NASA DRIVE Center, working at the leading edge of next generation space weather prediction. Let's meet Dr. Cora Randall.

Hi, Cora. Thanks for joining me today for this discussion.

Dr. Cora Randall

Sure, happy to.

Terri Fiez

So, you had a really unique upbringing, with a family of 13 kids. What was that like?

Dr. Cora Randall

It was great. I really liked having so many siblings. So, I have five brothers and seven sisters. There was always somebody around. So, I always had friends, companions to play with. It did get crowded sometimes. We didn't have that huge of a house. So, for instance, I actually shared the bottom bunk of a bunk bed with one of my sisters, from, I guess, when I was in kindergarten through third grade. So, it was crowded, but we're a very close family. So, we just had a lot of fun. And, I guess one of the great things is that, having people to play with all the time. One of the things that maybe is a little unusual is we used to play school. And, we had so many people in our family that we could actually do that. And some of my older brothers and sisters would act as teachers, and the rest of us would be going to school, so, we would be the students. When I got a little older, I could be the teacher. We had some desks that were left over from an elementary school that we had inherited. So, we actually even kind of set up a classroom in our basement. It was just a lot of fun.

Terri Fiez

That's great. And where were you in the mix?

Dr. Cora Randall

So, I am sixth oldest, so pretty much a middle child.

Terri Fiez

That's great. Now, what part of the country did you grow up in?

Dr. Cora Randall

So, I was born in New York, in just north of New York City. Only lived there for about a year, and then we moved to the northern part of New York. This was just because my dad, who worked at food processing plants, he got a new job. So we moved up north, and then after four years or so, he got another new job, and this was in Southern Michigan. So, we moved to a town called St. Joe. Lived there for five years, and then in the summer between third and fourth grade, I moved to Indianapolis, again, because my dad got a new job. And, I lived there until I was 18 and left for college.

Terri Fiez

What were some of your favorite subjects in school?

Dr. Cora Randall

Well, music was always a big part of my life. So, although these weren't the most academic subjects, I really liked band and orchestra. I played woodwinds, mostly clarinet and saxophone. If we're talking just strictly academic classes, I would say my favorite class was a 10th-grade algebra class. And, that was partly because we were taught logic in algebra, and I just thought it was fascinating learning logic. And then, at that time, we didn't have a lot of computer programming. But for that particular class, we actually had a unit on computer programming, and that's why he had been teaching us logic first. And then that went into the computer coding. And, I just loved learning how to code. It seemed then, and frankly, it still does, just like you're solving puzzles all day long. So, I had a lot of fun with that.

Terri Fiez

What kind of extracurricular activities did you participate in throughout school?

Dr. Cora Randall

One of the main ones, I guess, was athletics, and in particular, running. So, and that actually is still a really big part of what I do. So, I ran track in junior high and high school. I'm sure I would have run cross country, but at the time, they didn't have cross-country for girls. So, that was a big thing, was running. And, of course, my... It was probably because my dad got us into it when I was so young, and I just kept it up. I can actually remember one time, running around the track with my dad. This was in seventh grade, I think. No, it was in fifth grade, and I can just remember a man who was running around the track at the same time, and he stopped us, and he said, "I want to see you in the Olympics someday." So anyway, it was just fun. Music and running, they were probably the big extracurricular activities that I did.

Terri Fiez

Sounds like you kept pretty busy.

Dr. Cora Randall

Yes.

Terri Fiez

So then, when you started to think about college, were your parents supportive of you going to college? And how did you decide where to go?

Dr. Cora Randall

Yeah, my parents were extremely supportive. There was really never a question as to whether I would go to college. My five siblings older than I, they all went to college. So, when I was looking for colleges, I actually didn't know what I was going to major in, because I was choosing between music, and then also something like a science or math, primarily because those would be good careers. So, I applied to a few different colleges, and the one I actually ended up with was the State University of New York at Purchase, which was a small college, but it really emphasized the fine arts, music and theater. But they also said, "Yeah, but you can also combine that with other academics." And so, I just decided to go there. And my parents really thought it would be good for me to move away from home. And so, that's why I chose the college in New York.

Terri Fiez

So they kick the little bird out of the nest.

Dr. Cora Randall

They kicked me out of the nest, yes. It was really hard, actually. I didn't enjoy college, I have to say, for the most part, just because I was so homesick with it. Except for the one year where I had a boyfriend, and then it was just fine.

Terri Fiez

Okay. So when you got to college, how did you choose your major?

Dr. Cora Randall

So, that's an interesting story. I wanted to graduate in three years, instead of four, which some of my siblings had already done that or were on their way to doing that. And so, when I met with my advisor, I said, "How can I get out of here in three years?" And this advisor, it was just by chance. He was a chemistry professor. And he said, "Oh. Well, I can work out a schedule for you to get out in three years, if you major in Chemistry." And I said, "Oh, well, okay." I didn't know if I wanted to do science or math or music, but chemistry sounded fine. So, he mapped out a schedule where I could graduate in three years. I actually did not graduate in three years, because I had to do a senior project. So, I ended up not graduating in three years. But in fact, that last year, I was able to do a lot of research, which actually gave me a head start, then, on graduate school, which at the time, I didn't know I was going to go to, but it actually worked out well in the end.

Terri Fiez

Yeah. You had a unique situation with your advisor, where you followed him during a sabbatical to do research. Talk about that, in your senior year.

Dr. Cora Randall

Right. So, this professor who was this advisor who I met with on the very first day, he decided to go on sabbatical for my senior year and asked me if I would like to go with him, so that I could do my senior project. And he was going on sabbatical at the University of California Santa Cruz. And I had never been west of Indianapolis before, so I said, "Yeah, that would be wonderful to spend my senior year in California." So, when we went to Santa Cruz, we were in a particular research group. And that research group used to, every year, would run a race called Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. It's an eight- mile running race. And, one year, we were running that, and this advisor had his wife's brother in town. And his wife's brother is now my husband.

Terri Fiez

So, you're forever tied to your advisor that you met your freshman year in college.

Dr. Cora Randall

Absolutely, forever tied. And it's great. So, he is now my brother-in-law, and it's wonderful.

Terri Fiez

Oh, you went to do a research at UC Santa Cruz, and then got sucked in to doing a Master's and a doctorate degree. Do you want to talk about that?

Dr. Cora Randall

Sure. Yeah. So, I really did not know what I was going to do with my life after college. I knew that, okay, I'm majoring in chemistry, so this is presumably setting me up for a good career. But then, during my senior year, the professor who led the research group, he just came up to me one day, and he said, "If you'd like to come to graduate school here, we'll give you a research assistantship and a teaching assistantship, so twice the pay, at the same time, and you don't even have to take the GREs or apply to graduate school. We'll just admit you." And, I listened to that, and I said, "Wow, that sounds like a really great opportunity." So I said, "Sure, I'll come to graduate school." And, I was enjoying it. So, I just continued and got my PhD. And so, I just kind of fell into it. And, I'm very glad I did.

Terri Fiez

And what was your research on?

Dr. Cora Randall

So, the research at that point was, it was really biophysics. So, we was in the chemistry department, but what I was doing for my PhD research was studying, essentially, protein folding with laser spectroscopy. So, we would use lasers to probe biological molecules to see how they moved. One of the molecules was rhodopsin, which is a molecule in your eye. It's responsible for your night vision. And so, we would be trying to look at what happens to that molecule when light first hits your eye, what are the very first things, really, in nanoseconds, after light hits your eye.

Terri Fiez

So then, how did you finally end up in Boulder?

Dr. Cora Randall

So, I told the story about how I met my husband-to-be at a running race in San Francisco. Okay. So he was visiting his sister, who was my advisor's wife at the time. But he was visiting from Colorado. Okay. Well, after we decided to get married, I decided to look for a job in Colorado, in Boulder, in particular, because that's where Glenn, my husband, lived at the time, and we still do. He is a wilderness landscape photographer, and he emphasizes Colorado. So, I just looked for jobs in Boulder, and there was an ad in Science magazine for somebody to work at the university at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, which I'm affiliated with now, to work on the Hubble Space Telescope. It was on the particular instrument called the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph. They needed somebody who knew something about spectroscopy. And it was also to work on studies of comets. Okay. I didn't know anything about comets. I knew very, very little about astronomy, but I knew something about spectroscopy. So, I went ahead and applied for the position, and fortunately, was selected. So, I became a research associate at LASP, at that point.

Terri Fiez

And then, you had an experiment that you were a part of on the Hubble Space Telescope. Tell us about that. And then, what happens when that's done?

Dr. Cora Randall

So, the Hubble Space Telescope, the way it works, it has a number of different instruments in it. And, when I came to Boulder, actually, the Hubble Space Telescope hadn't even been launched yet, but it was close to being launched. After it was launched, the instrument that I was working on, this Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph, or GHRS, it worked for about four years. And then, they decided to take it out of the telescope, and replace it with a newer instrument. And that's pretty much how the Hubble Space Telescope works. It has a set of instruments. And then after a few years, one or more of the instruments are taken out, and then replaced. It's one of the few satellites that the astronauts could actually go and work on.

But, just as fortune would have it, there was another team of scientists who needed somebody with my expertise in spectroscopy, or in other words, in looking at how light interacts with matter. They needed somebody with that expertise on their team. And this was a team of scientists who were working on an Earth-orbiting satellite that looked at the Earth's atmosphere. So, they asked me to join them. One of the scientists was at the University of Colorado. The instrument itself, that was being run out of the Naval Research Lab. But, in any case, they asked me to join that team. And I've basically been working on Earth atmospheric science ever since then.

Terri Fiez

Yeah. And then another transition... You transitioned, I think, in 2006, to a faculty role, where previously, you were a full-time researcher. When you transitioned and you started teaching, what are some of your favorite classes to teach?

Dr. Cora Randall

Yeah. I mean, I've taught classes in atmospheric chemistry, weather, climate controversies. I really liked actually the climate controversy class. It is a 4,000-level class, so senior level class. But my favorite class is a class that I now teach every year. It's a first year seminar, so it's part of the university's first year seminar program. I call it Stratospheric Explorations. So, the idea of this class, it's, again, it's for freshmen, and it's not necessarily for science majors. It's a way that freshmen students can explore what their interests might be. The general topic of the class is stratospheric science, so basically, it's, looking at the ozone hole.

Ozone depletion is very tied up with climate change. It's definitely not the same thing, and I always have to make sure the students realize, they are not the same thing. But there are relations between them. So in terms of the topic, it's stratospheric, atmospheric science. But at the same time, this is a class where I'm trying to also show students a bit of what's it like to be a college student. What are the expectations for college? I try to help them with writing. I try to help them with some of the skills, like teaching them a little bit of computer coding. And, it's a small class, so I do get some one-on-one interactions with students, which I really love.

Terri Fiez

So you went from playing school to being a real professor teacher. That's great.

Dr. Cora Randall

That's right. Yes. I guess I don't usually put the two together, but that's exactly it. Yes.

Terri Fiez

So you were recently funded to lead a NASA-funded program. I think you call it WAVE. Can you tell us about this research, and where you are in it, and what you hope to achieve?

Dr. Cora Randall

Sure. This is a new program that NASA has just started in the last year. It's a program where they are starting some interdisciplinary science centers. So, WAVE is one of the science centers. And the idea of this program is to bring together diverse teams of interdisciplinary scientists, in order to solve really grand challenge problems. So, the problem that my center is working on is trying to understand how waves in the atmosphere transfer momentum and energy throughout the atmosphere and the ionosphere. What I mean by that is, the part of the atmosphere that... It's charged, so it has ions in it, and that's why it's called the ionosphere. So, how this transfer of momentum and energy actually affects how the atmosphere and ionosphere respond to space weather. So, if I could just give you an example, wind flowing over the Rocky Mountains. That produces waves. In fact, you can actually see the clouds that are formed because of these waves. They're called wave clouds or lenticular clouds.

When the wind flows over the mountains, they generate these waves. And then the waves travel up through the atmosphere. And they can then cause disturbances, as they pass through the atmosphere. And then as they break, they'll deposit their momentum and energy that they're carrying, and that will cause more disturbances. And you have a whole cascade of effects that happen when these waves move through the atmosphere. And they can change things like the density of the atmosphere, or the composition of the atmosphere, or the temperature of the atmosphere. And as you change things like that in the atmosphere, that then can affect the way things like signals from satellites that maybe are global positioning satellites, GPS. If the atmosphere changes, particularly the ionosphere, if that changes, then that can change the way signals are transmitted. And, that of course then can disrupt communications and cause all sorts of problems for society.

Terri Fiez

So, through this research that you're doing, how will it ultimately help with the fidelity of GPS signals and other forms of communication like that?

Dr. Cora Randall

Yeah. So, in order to design the proper technology, you really need to know, how is the atmosphere, how is the ionosphere going to change? What are the variations in it that might affect your signals? And so, you have to know how to predict how the atmosphere and ionosphere are going to change. Right now, we are not good at predicting that, because we have not put the effects of these waves properly into the models.

Terri Fiez

Great. So, thinking about your overall career, what are you most proud of, and what would you like your legacy to be?

Dr. Cora Randall

Yeah, that's a big question. Okay. So, I've been mostly involved in three areas of research in atmospheric science: the depletion of stratosphere [ozone], so meaning the ozone hall, the effects of energetic electrons and protons from the sun and magnetosphere on the Earth's atmosphere, and also polar mesospheric clouds, which are clouds that are 50 miles above the Earth's surface. So, overall, I'm hoping that I'm making contributions that are leading to a deeper understanding in all of those specific areas. But maybe in the larger picture, what I really hope is that I'm making an impact on how we, the scientists, but also the society at large, understand our atmosphere as a single connected system.

So this is why the WAVE program essentially brings everything together. Something that changes one part of the atmosphere, whether it's something like a thunderstorm, a hurricane, waves over the mountains, or an anthropogenic human-caused effect, something that changes one part of the atmosphere can also impact parts of the atmosphere that are far away. I'm hoping that that really can have an impact on how we understand all of those connections. I've also spent a lot of time in my career on service, [Active-Es]. As an educator, I guess what I hope is that I'm serving as an inspiring role model for students, regardless of their major area of study. That's, I think, why I'm so excited about teaching this first year seminar.

Terri Fiez

Well, I'm inspired. Does that count?

Dr. Cora Randall

Thank you.

Terri Fiez

So final question, as you think about the next decade or two, what are you optimistic about? And what is your hope for the future of the work that you do and the breakthroughs that will be found?

Dr. Cora Randall

Right. So, maybe starting at the more narrow part of that, which I think is just the hope for my own fields of work. The real hope I think is that, we will become better and better at informing decision-makers and the general population, just about how natural forces and anthropogenic or human-caused activities can have global impacts on both weather and climate, both at the surface, which is where, of course, most of us experience it directly, but also at the edge of space, which is where this, say, communication with satellites comes more into it, and everything in between. The Earth, it really is, we have only one atmosphere. So, anything that we do, at one point, is going to be communicated to other places in the atmosphere. I'm hoping that that area of research will take off more and more in the next decade, and really come to the point where we can much better inform decision-makers about different policies that need to be made.

And also, the general public about things that we think they should be supporting. But in terms of, maybe more generally, I think the thing that I'm most optimistic about right now is increasing diversity in science. It's really important that we have a wide range of people doing science, asking the questions, lending their perspectives, to how to answer those questions. I am hopeful and very optimistic that we are going to be bringing in a much more diverse population of students into the fields of study, and then going on up through the professional ranks, so that we have a very much more diverse population looking at some of these problems.

Terri Fiez

Well, thank you, Cora, for this very enlightening conversation. It's been a real treat to talk to you today.

Dr. Cora Randall

Well, thanks for inviting me. This has been fun.

Terri Fiez

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Cora Randall, professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and a faculty member in LASP. To learn more about Dr. Randall, or for more Buff Innovator Insights episodes, visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at CU Boulder, Terri Fiez. Thanks for listening to this episode of Buff Innovator Insights.

Follow Dr. Randall's journey from earning her PhD in chemistry to working on the Hubble Space Telescope and, now, to leading a new NASA DRIVE center working at the leading edge of next-generation space weather prediction.

Off

Traditional

White

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Reiland Rabaka (Ethnic Studies; Center for African and African American Studies)

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Reiland Rabaka (Ethnic Studies; Center for African and African American Studies) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/15/2021 - 00:00

In this episode of Buff Innovator Insights, we meet Dr. Reiland Rabaka, Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies, and inaugural Director of the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS). Dr. Rabaka describes the mix of church, poverty, family and jazz that shaped his early years; the combination of mentors and educational opportunities led him to CU Boulder; and his vision for CAAAS.

Terri Fiez

Hello, I'm your host Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Welcome to season two of Buff Innovator Insights. This podcast features some of the most innovative groundbreaking ideas in the world. I'll also introduce you to the people behind the innovations, from how they got started, to how they are changing the future.

Today I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Reiland Rabaka, professor of African, African-American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies. He's also the inaugural director of the newly established Center for African and African-American Studies. He earned a bachelor's degree of fine arts at University of the Arts, and then his master's and PhD at Temple University. Dr. Rabaka is the author of numerous scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays, as well as more than a dozen books. He currently teaches topics, including the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Lives Matter movement and introduction to hip hop studies.

During today's podcast, Dr. Rabaka describes the mix of church, poverty, family, and jazz that shaped his early years. He also tells us about the unique combination of mentors and educational opportunities that ultimately led him to CU Boulder. Finally, he talks about the newly established Center for African and African-American Studies at CU Boulder and his vision for its future. Let's meet Dr. Reiland Rabaka.

Hi, Reiland. Thank you for joining us today.

Reiland Rabaka

Thank you so much for having me.

Terri Fiez

I'd like to just kick right off and get to at the core of you, your family is so important to you and your mother and your grandmother played an important role in your life. How would you describe them?

Reiland Rabaka

Church ladies, grew up in a very, very strict religious household and that really shaped my early years, but obviously growing up in the black church was fundamental. So that really shaped the whole way I see the world. So my world view is very couched in African-American religious culture.

Terri Fiez

Well, let's dig in a little bit more here. You grew up in the south with much of it in Texas. So I know music played a very important role in your life. How did you get started with music and what was it that drew you in?

Reiland Rabaka

Gospel music. The first form of music that I ever really started playing as a musician was really as a youth minister of music. So church music, and from there, I really got involved in jazz music. Now, part of the reason I gravitated towards jazz was because that was one of the ways that I could help my mom pay the rent. While gospel was the sacred music that I gravitated toward, jazz was the secular music. And in terms of jazz, it allowed me to be a working musician at a very young age.

So I got my first major gig as a jazz musician at age nine. That's when I got my first $100 bill. I thought it was monopoly money because I'd never seen a $100 bill and it changed my life forever because I was able to help my mom buy groceries and do different things. And so the economics of it growing up in poverty the way that I did, being able to make money playing this music that I would play for free. Yeah. So it was the beginning of my life as a professional musician. I also joke and say it was the end of my childhood because when the other kids on the block would go out and play, I was rehearsing. I was practicing getting ready for my next gig. So I feel like it was both a blessing and a curse if you will.

Terri Fiez

Music was also your ticket to a really top quality education. And you've mentioned that you had to audition at a very young age. Talk about that.

Reiland Rabaka

Yeah. It's really, really just an incredible experience to receive arts education. This is in again, the public school system in Dallas, Texas, and they have just a really renowned high school there called, it was called Arts Magnet is what people commonly call it but the proper name is Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. And from that high school, you have a lot of incredible artists like Edie Brickell, Paul Simon's wife, Edie Brickell, Roy Hargrove, jazz musician, Erykah Badu, Neo Soul musician, Norah Jones, jazz musician. There's so many people that came out of that high school that it's really, really incredible.

So I was one of those kids where after a lot of the social struggles of the 60s', they had all of these Arts Magnet, high schools set up around the country. And it was really an opportunity for somebody like myself, a very, very poor kid to get access to just, I don't know, top notch, music education, arts education, and everything. And I really feel like as a jazz musician I was swinging, so I would swing my way from the neighborhood to college. So being at that high school exposed me to so many different artistic movements and so different genres of music and everything. I feel like it was a real turning point in my young life.

Terri Fiez

What were some of your other favorite subjects in school? What else did you enjoy in terms of academic subjects?

Reiland Rabaka

English. I liked literature partly because of the Harlem Renaissance. Honestly Terri, when I grew up, I thought I could go to Harlem and hang out with Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen and Claude McKay and Georgia Douglas Johnson and of course, W.E.B. Du Bois. And so honestly, I liked that vibe of just having lots of different artists and intellectuals and activists all in one space, and that's something that has preoccupied me since my adolescence.

Terri Fiez

It's really fascinating. I do want to go back to one more thing. I know you've talked about being very poor growing up and growing up in the projects. What was your experience coming from your home life, going to this art school which was in many ways, very elite and you were among the elite. What was that experience like for you?

Reiland Rabaka

Well, this is really difficult and of course this is me reflecting back. So this is all hindsight, but when I think about it right now, it was both an angst feel experience. And it was also a breakthrough experience. It caused me a great deal of anxiety because obviously a lot of the kids I went to high school with had the latest cars and nice clothes and everything like that. And so you can't help but to feel tight and a bit demoralized.

On the other hand, what I realized was when it comes to art in the United States of America, a lot of the social constructions are transcended. So it wasn't necessarily about my class background, my working class background, and my underclass background. It wasn't necessarily about my race or my gender or my religious affiliation, any of that, it was really based on talent. And so it's like artists create their own unique world where we vibe with somebody, we connect with people based on their talent, based on their ability to express themselves and say something about the modern moment.

And in that context, Terri, I became one of the most popular kids in the high school and it was based on talent. So nobody really cared where I came from. It was more about where I'm going to go. So where can your talent take you? And so I was very geeky, very bookish at that time. I was probably reading about a book a week. Books was a way for me to escape, was to get away if you will, it would take me to a whole nother world. So I would read these books about all different parts of the world, but especially the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America and I really thought one day I was going to be able to go there when I grow up and everything. And my teacher started telling me, if you keep swinging like this, you're going to go on tour all over the world.

So the more they would tell me that the more I would be in the practice room. I'm in the woodshed working it out, trying to get better as a musician. And I'm literally thinking like this is going to be my ticket. So Terri, for me, I've always seen education as a tool for self transformation, but also social transformation.

Terri Fiez

Actually, your story is so inspiring. Thank you for sharing that.

Reiland Rabaka

You’re too kind.

Terri Fiez

I'd love to just continue on then from high school, which you had this very unique experience in high school, you made a decision to go to college. How did you decide where you would go and how did you navigate that process?

Reiland Rabaka

It was a very gut-wrenching, scary experience because nobody in my family has ever gone to a college or a university. And thinking about going to college was something that excited me, but it also terrified me if I can be perfectly honest with you. We had guidance counselors and every year different colleges would come to our high school and they would hold auditions. And we would create these video, these VHS tapes of us performing, and we would send them off to different colleges.

So you had two opportunities, Terri. You could either take the audition when they come to the school, but not all of them would come every year, or if you wanted to go somewhere else, you could send your VHS tape out and I must've sent out maybe 25 or 30 of these VHS tapes. And I got into most of the top schools, if not all of the top schools that I applied to, but the problem was Terri, because I grew up in abject poverty I needed scholarships. So it wasn't just getting into the colleges. How do I pull down scholarships to be able to pay for college? And that's something that when you're a 16 or 17 year old kid, you're just excited that colleges are interested in you, but you don't really know, understand about scholarships. So that's where the guidance counselors came into play as well.

Terri Fiez

So you never said where you went. So where did you go to college?

Reiland Rabaka

I went to the University of the Arts, which is one of the premier arts conservatories in the country. And I went there, one, obviously because they gave me a full scholarship. Two, they emphasize two tracks. So if you take the performing arts track or the visual arts track, you still have to take a philosophy of art track where they ground you in the specific aesthetics, which means the art theory of whatever genre that you are developing expertise in, so as a jazz musician, literally I was able to do jazz studies. So not only was I was able to perform, but I could understand the history of jazz, jazz criticism, jazz literature. I was fascinated that jazz was not merely music in the roaring in 1920s, right? They actually called it the jazz age. And so here is African-American music Terri, that becomes a metaphor for an entire epoch, an entire era in American history.

And so I began to think about that and said, wait, wow, hip hop. This thing called rap music of my generation, this also is the soundtrack of modern America, at least for young folk at the time, this is the soundtrack of modern America. And then if you look at MTV and VH1 and all of the video shows, rap was all over. And so I began to see images of black and brown folk, musicians doing it at a very, very high level. And I began to think maybe I could possibly have a career as a musician, as a music historian, as a music critic.

Terri Fiez

I would just want to probe a little bit, did you have a single experience or a mentor during your undergraduate experience that created some transformative decision, direction of where you would go from there?

Reiland Rabaka

I had a couple of them because I'm a geek. First and foremost, I would say Dr. Camille Paglia one of the leading feminists, aesthetics feminist art critics in the country at the University of the Arts. And she really, really took me under her wing and exposed me to cultural aesthetics, to feminist aesthetics, to queer aesthetics. The fact of the matter Terri, is that even if you come from an oppressed group, in America you actually can use art as a medium to express yourself. And so I really got into protest art.

So I would say Dr. Camille Paglia was a huge influence. And then I got exposed to African-American studies. So my first African-American studies classes ever, I had an undergrad and most of those professors were actually PhD students at Temple University which had the first program in African-American studies. And that had a significant impact on me because it was actually in one of those classes that I got an opportunity to revisit The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. I first read that book in junior high school, and it really just shaped so much of my experience to be perfectly honest with you.

Terri Fiez

Well, we'll come back to William Du Bois, but before we get there, next you went on to pursue a master's and then a doctorate degree. Did you know what kind of job you would hope to get after getting your PhD?

Reiland Rabaka

I think I was just hoping to get a job. If I can be candid, I was sitting up there teaching at a Philadelphia Community College. I was as a TA, obviously I studied at Temple University with Molefi Asante, Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Kwame Anthony Appiah. So there was a lot of folks who were really heavy hitters if you will, within African-American studies. And they would come through our department because again, as I said, at the time, it was one of two PhD programs in African-American studies. And it was the place to be people called it, the black Mecca where all of these artists and intellectuals and activists would come together. And it seemed to me, Terri, when I was in grad school, I'm telling you, it seemed like, it might not be the case, but it seemed like once a week there was somebody just incredible coming through to deliver a lecture, whether it was Alice Walker or Tony Morrison or Cornel West or Robin D.G. Kelley, there was always folks coming through.

And so that really peaked my interest where I began to think that, hmm, maybe I could come out of here and be a professor.

Terri Fiez

So what brought you to CU Boulder in the early 2000's?

Reiland Rabaka

Wow. When I came out of grad school, I accepted a job at California State University Long Beach, but that's a teaching heavy school Terri, so I had a 5/5 teaching load. I taught five classes in the fall semester and five classes in the spring semester. So when the University of Colorado Boulder said, "Hey, bro, we'll give you two classes a semester." I jumped at the opportunity to come to Boulder. Can you imagine here's somebody like me, Terri, that an African-American studies, most of the people that had graduated up to that time, I think I was number 63 to get the PhD in the field, most of them were at teaching schools. They were at a HBCU, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, they were at community colleges. So there were very few with PhDs in African-American studies who were at research one universities.

And what attracted me to Boulder was the fact that Manning Marable had been out here in the department of ethnic studies. Joy James had immediately preceded me in the department of ethnic studies. And so these are obviously iconic figures within my field. And once they vacated this position in African-American studies, I went after it and obviously everything worked out 15 years ago and I was able to come out here, the fact that they were not only going to give me a 2/2 teaching load, but I was also going to have a small research portfolio that would allow me to travel to Africa and the Caribbean and all throughout the south and other chocolate cities, cities with high concentrations of African Americans, it just blew my mind that the school was going to help to pay for my research. Whoa, this place called Boulder sounds like a little bit of heaven to me. Of course, I got here and I went through culture shock, but I would leave that alone, Terri.

Terri Fiez

Well, let's go to your scholarship because I think this is really fascinating. Throughout your career, you focus your scholarship on William Du Bois and I love your story of your first introduction to who he was. Can you talk about that?

Reiland Rabaka

Absolutely. Just want to shout out Mrs. Robinson is my first grade teacher. So I was in the first grade Terri, and I was precocious as I've already explained. And it was Black History Month and Mrs. Robinson handed out these cards, there was like on placards and on one side it would have an image of a Black History Month figure. And on the other side, it would have a small excerpt about their life and who they were. And I of course wanted Duke Ellington or Charlie Parker of the Aloneness Mark and Mrs. Robinson gave me a card with what I believed was a French man on it. And it was Du Bois. I thought I knew something and I got upset and I went to Mrs. Robinson's desk and said, "I don't understand. This is Black History Month and you sit up here and gave me a freshman. Everybody has got black people. How come I can't get some black people in my card."

And she said, "Reiland, you need to get somewhere and sit down. If you would read as much as you run your mouth, you really could do something. Now, go back there and read that card and don't make me call your mama." And I said, "Okay. Yes, ma'am" All you got to say is call my mama and I'm going to act right. So I went back to my desk and I read the card. And Terri, when I read the back of that card, it changed my life forever. I read about William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. I read about how he graduated with his PhD from Harvard University. I read about how he founded the NAACP. I read about how he wrote The Souls of Black Folk and help to usher the Harlem Renaissance into being. And something just clicked inside of me that I could grow up and be an intellectual, an artist, and an activist.

Terri Fiez

And you have, so tell me what classes do you teach at CU Boulder so I can come sit in on them.

Reiland Rabaka

You are so sweet. I teach a course on the Harlem Renaissance. I teach a course on the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power movement. I teach a course on the Black Lives Matter movement. Believe it or not, I was teaching one of the first courses on the Black Lives Matter movement in the country. And my most popular class is a class on the hip hop movement, which is called introduction to hip hop studies. And that is where really that core serves as like a feeder for our department, because a lot of students come into that class not necessarily knowing what African-American studies is and I try to hook them into the feel. And I do that by trying to emphasize that African American studies is an interdisciplinary discipline. I know I'm putting it badly, but by which I mean that we study not simply race, but also gender, class, sexuality, religious affiliation, ability/ disability.

We really want to make sure that people don't overdetermine black folk based on race, that we also want to factor in their gender, which I'm very committed to black feminism, sexuality. I'm very into black queer, black trans studies, not all black focus straight. Class, I've been telling you Terri about my underclass of working class background and everything. And so again, I am so much more than merely race or culture in that sense. I also want to factor in a lot of other areas that intersect and impact my life.

Terri Fiez

Excellent. You recently founded the Center for African and African-American Studies known as CAAAS. Why did you start the center and what do you hope to achieve?

Reiland Rabaka

I founded the center because from the time that I came to Boulder in 2005, I realized that unlike many other public universities, the University of Colorado at Boulder does not have a space dedicated to black history, black culture, and the black struggle. And this is something I have been campaigning behind the scenes for 15 years. And when the Black Lives Matter movement happened, I realized that this is our moment, this is our time. We founded this center and the center Terri, will have three programs, a research program, visual and performing arts program and a student services program. And in that sense, I can't tell you how excited I am and the students are, and black folk all throughout the Denver Metropolitan Area are to actually have a little piece of the rock, a little piece of the Rocky Mountains that is dedicated to black history, black culture, black struggle.

Terri Fiez

What do you think will be your greatest challenge to achieving the vision for the center?

Reiland Rabaka

Funding. Money. I'm talking to you, Terri. I hope you hear me, but no, with all due respect funding I think will be a real challenge. I wanted a post-doc dissertation fellowships, the whole range. And so there's a wide variety of things that go beyond the startup budget. We're going to have obviously distinguished lecture series. We have a performing arts, series, a music series, like a concert series, a film screening series called the Africana Cinema Series. And so there'll be a lot of different things that we have going on in this particular center that I believe will attract a wide variety of people that typically don't think of CU as a center for studying black history and black culture.

Terri Fiez

That's just fantastic. So as you think about the next decade or two, so I'm going to push you out there to the future. What are you optimistic about and what is your hope for the future of the work that you do and the breakthroughs that will be found?

Reiland Rabaka

Well, I think a lot of it has to do with getting to center off the ground, making sure that we are self-sustaining, whether it's through grants or donations or probably a combination of both, but making sure that we can grow and develop to our fullest potential, I don't know what our fullest potential actually is because we're just getting started. I would love to invite allies, people who are not African-American, not African people, not Caribbean people, but I would like for them to come and join with us in this important work. Long-term I want to create a center where everyone is welcome to come and study and learn about various aspects of the black experience. And so to really create a synergy where we can get together and have critical dialogue about issues that are really, really pressing for Africans, African-Americans is going to be really, really important.

Terri Fiez

I think you capsulated that extremely well. So I'll just end with one last question. What are you most proud of in your career?

Reiland Rabaka

I'd like to think that part of my legacy is how I'm also trying to share that with my students. I want my to dream really, really big but Terri, I also want to give them the tools to build. I want our generation to leave a mark not simply on this institution, but on this country. And so lastly, Terry, my legacy, I hope will be one of institutional transformation. What I mean by that is I think once the center is established, people will know that you and I, Terri, were out here. They will know that under your leadership, we helped to found this brand new center. So we are literally transforming this institution that we love so much. So I've identified some problems on the Boulder campus, but I've also come up with those solutions as a good social scientist in the Du Bois tradition. I don't just identify problems, I offer up solutions to those problems.

Terri Fiez

Well, this has been so much fun to hear your thoughts today Reiland and what a treat it is to be able to spend this time with you. Thank you so much. And I know our listeners are going to really enjoy hearing your whole background in your approach to life, which is so positive. And you are going to make that positive change you've talked about.

Reiland Rabaka

Thank you so much for this invitation and this opportunity to dialogue with you.

Terri Fiez

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Reiland Rabaka, professor of African, African American, and Caribbean studies and director of the Center for African and African-American Studies. To learn more about Dr. Rabaka or for more Buff Innovator Insights episodes, visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at CU Boulder, Terri Fiez. Thanks for joining me for this episode of Buff Innovator Insights.

Meet Dr. Reiland Rabaka, inaugural director of the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS). Dr. Rabaka describes the mix of church, poverty, family and jazz that shaped his early years; the combination of mentors and educational opportunities led him to CU Boulder; and his vision for CAAAS.

Off

Traditional

White

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Jennifer Balch (Geography; Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences; Earth Lab)

Anonymous — Thu, 06 May 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Jennifer Balch (Geography; Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences; Earth Lab) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/06/2021 - 00:00

In this episode of Buff Innovator Insights, meet Dr. Jennifer Balch, associate professor of geography and director of Earth Lab—a project at CU Boulder and CIRES. Learn about how her work in places like Kenya and Amazon rainforests shaped her interests in the relationships between fire, Earth systems and people, and how she’s working to transform data into insights to help solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.

Terri Fiez

Hello, I'm your host Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Welcome to Buff Innovator Insights, a podcast for science fans, creative thinkers, and lifelong learners. This podcast offers a behind the curtain. Look at some of the most innovative, groundbreaking ideas in the world. Even better, it's an up close and personal introduction to the people behind the innovations, from how they got their start, to how they are making tomorrow better for all of us.

Today. I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Jennifer Balch, Associate Professor of Geography and CIRES, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at CU Boulder. She is also a director of Earth Lab, a project at CU Boulder, and series that specializes in data intensive, open, reproducible, environmental science. Dr. Balch's research aims to better understand the role of fire on earth at a global scale. Her team examines how shifting fire regimens are reconfiguring tropical forests, encouraging non-native grass invasion, and affecting the global climate. As an undergraduate she studied ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, and she received her master's and PhD from Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

In this episode we'll learn how a summer trip to Kenya gave new focus to Jennifer's lifelong love of science, how a decade of studying fire in Amazonian rainforests gave her unique insights into the relationship between fire, earth systems, and people, and how her research and teaching seek to turn massive amounts of data we can now access into insights to solve our most challenging problems. Let's talk with Dr. Jennifer Balch.

Thank you for joining me this morning, Jennifer.

Jennifer Balch

Yeah, thanks for having me, Terri.

Terri Fiez

Really excited to learn more about you and to share that with our listeners. Let's go ahead and get started. You grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What was that like?

Jennifer Balch

It's cold. Yeah, it's cold most of the year there, but my dad was in the military, so we moved around a little bit, but I was also born at the tail end of my dad's career in the air force. And so I was born in Fairfield, California, but I grew up most of my life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And growing up, my dad wanted to keep me out of trouble, and so I played soccer, field hockey, and basketball in high school, and I think that's one of the places where I learned team dynamics and leadership skills, was through my strong love of sports, but also the strong encouragement that I got to get involved in all kinds of activities.

Terri Fiez

So what were some of your favorite subjects in school?

Jennifer Balch

I loved math and science, I loved asking questions, and I took this elective in my senior year of high school that was on experimental design, and I was able to design this experiment around brine shrimp, and secondary smoke consequences for brine shrimp, and I remember going through the catalog, ordering straight up nicotine, and I just designed this crazy fish tank that would smoke cigarettes for me and ingest the smoke back into the tank that held brine shrimp. I really have a lot to be thankful for in having some great high school science teachers who encouraged me to follow my nose.

Terri Fiez

So I have to ask, how did the brine shrimp respond to the secondhand smoke?

Jennifer Balch

Oh man, so a lot of them died. As you might expect. But the interesting part was looking at the differences between—because not only was I able to test the effect of secondhand smoke, I was also able to test the effect of primary smoke and inhalation, and then also just the direct effects of nicotine. So it was this really cool experimental design, and there was a gradation. That was one of my first goals at this way of thinking.

Terri Fiez

That's great. So how did you decide where to go to college?

Jennifer Balch

Yeah, so I applied to a lot of different schools, I can't even remember exactly how many, but probably a dozen. And I really wanted to go to Princeton, my parents had divorced when I was younger and I grew up mostly with my dad, and so I was really longing to be closer to my mom, she lived in Pennsylvania, which was not too far away from Princeton. And I got rejected. I got rejected, as many people get rejected from some of these institutions that are hard to get into, but I wrote them a letter. I wrote them a letter and told them they made a mistake and that they should accept me, and lo and behold they came around and accepted me.

So I think part of that story too is I don't give up. I hold on to ideas, I hold on to proposals and papers and I just keep pushing forward, and I think that's something that has also served me really well in my career is don't let rejection get in your way and slow you down. And the funny part, too, is that also happened to me in grad school. I didn't write a letter, but I got rejected from graduate schools the first time applied, all of them, and that could have been the end of my career had I let that moment deter me from pursuing graduate studies in science.

Terri Fiez

That must've been quite a letter.

Jennifer Balch

I know, I wish I could find that letter and just look at, wow, that must have been convincing. I wish I had those same tidbits or phrases now to fall back on.

Terri Fiez

That's great, that's really a compelling story. So when you went to Princeton, did you know what you wanted to study?

Jennifer Balch

No. I knew I loved science, I knew I loved asking questions, but the only thing that I thought you could do with a science career at that point was to go and be a doctor, a medical doctor, and so I was pre-med, I was taking all the pre-med classes. And this was another moment in my career that was pretty transformative, which was thinking about what I was going to do for a summer between my sophomore and junior years, and I reached out to a medical doctor I knew from my hometown, and he was going to Kenya, he did that frequently to provide services for remote hospitals. So I volunteered to go with him, and I spent a summer in Kenya.

But before I went I was doing some research in the library, I wanted to understand malaria and what the patterns were and challenges were around malaria for this region, which was about five hours north of Nairobi, and I was looking for this senior thesis that another student had written about this region and about malaria, and it wasn't in the library. So I went to the librarian and I was like, "People aren't supposed to check these out, and I was just wondering if you know where it might be," and she pulled me aside and said, "Okay, I'm going to tell you where it is, but you can't tell anybody I told you," and it's this professor has it, who's in the ecology and evolutionary biology department."

So I go knock on his door and I say, "Hey, I'm going to Kenya, and the librarian told me you have this senior thesis on malaria. Can I take a look at it?" And he said, "Oh, you're going to Kenya. You take a package for me." I was like, who is this guy, and what kind of package is he going to ask me to take? And it ended up being a birthday present for Joyce Poole, who is an incredible scientist and studies elephant communication, and I ended up then joining Joyce Poole and Samira and Louise Leakey, amazing paleontologists, out in the African Savannah, watching wildlife, and wow, that was a remarkable experience, and it also opened my eyes to, wow, you can have a career in studying the natural world.

And so I came back to Princeton after my trip to Kenya, and I went back to this professor's office, Andy Dobson, and I said, "I think I want to switch majors. I think I want to be an ecologist, whatever that means." And so that's what I did.

Terri Fiez

That's a great story. So you changed majors and you found your passion, what did you do then when you graduated from college?

Jennifer Balch

So I did a lot of odd jobs after college. I worked for the American Museum of Natural History for a summer internship after I graduated, that was an amazing experience. I ended up working for a law firm, a corporate law firm, for awhile, I was attracted to the idea that, oh, you can travel, and where they sent me was Trenton, New Jersey. I worked for a corporate law firm, I worked for the ACLU as a legal intern. I was like, I want to do something that matters. I had this amazing experience being able to study nature for the beauty of nature itself, but I really was searching for something that mattered for the more immediate, and our challenges around our environment. And I also then went to work for the Environmental Law Institute in DC, and after those experiences I came to the realization that I still loved asking questions, and I wasn't able to do that in those pathways, and I decided that I really wanted to go back to graduate school and I wanted to do more science.

Terri Fiez

So you said you applied to many schools, where did you end up going to after you finally, in the next cycle, were successful?

Jennifer Balch

Yeah, so first round, didn't get in. Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and go at it again. I only applied to three schools the second time around, and I got a little bit smarter, and I also decided to apply for some funding myself. I was like, you know what, I'm going to make this happen. And so I applied for an NSF graduate research fellowship, and I also applied for a Fulbright, and lo and behold, once those came through I got into all three schools I applied for, and I ended up going to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Terri Fiez

So tell us some about your research there and what it is you studied in your PhD.

Jennifer Balch

Yeah, so I studied Amazon forests and how they respond to fire. Fire is a critical tool that's used in frontier expansion, and so what I was studying in the southern part of the Amazon was essentially how Amazon tropical forests are sustaining the amount of fire that they're seeing today. And in order to do that, I was part of a large Brazilian American team that set up large scale experimental burns. I studied that process of what happens when you set fire to Amazon forests at different frequencies to see what their resilience was. I studied that for my PhD, which was about six years, and then I continued to study it for another four years. So about a decade of my life was spent literally tagging and following about 10,000 trees and how they were responding to this disturbance.

Terri Fiez

And then what did you do when you finished your PhD, after you'd completed this work?

Jennifer Balch

So after my PhD I proposed to do some work as a post-doc that was essentially looking at global fire patterns, like what's driving global fire patterns, what kinds of fuel do you need, what kinds of drag conditions, what kinds of sparks do you need for global fire to happen across different systems, from the tropics to the Tundra? And so I proposed that work and it was funded, and I spent four wonderful years in Santa Barbara at NCEAS, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, trying to tease apart, what were the global patterns and drivers of fire.

Terri Fiez

So after that I know you joined Penn State University, and then very shortly came to CU Boulder. What drew you to CU Boulder?

Jennifer Balch

Yeah, when the geography department here advertised a new faculty position trying to understand disturbance dynamics and climate change I was like, oh my gosh, this job has my name written all over it, and I couldn't resist also the opportunity to be in a place where fire matters. Boulder, Colorado, and the front range, and this place in the west is a place where fire is a threat, and fire matters to us a lot.

Terri Fiez

So shortly after you joined CU Boulder, campus launched the Grand Challenge, which are ambitious but achievable goals that harness science, technology, and innovation to solve important national or global problems, and you had a very interesting and revolutionary idea that you proposed, tell us about that.

Jennifer Balch

So I remember the email that I sent to a colleague asking, "Hey, I've got this idea, it's called Earth Lab, a data synthesis center for earth systems research, what do you think?" And when I came to Boulder, I mean one of the other draws for me too is this town is just chock full of earth nerds, data wizards, and space geeks, and I was like, wow, why doesn't Boulder have a synthesis center in the same way that Santa Barbara had, which is where I did my postdoc. And essentially the pitch was, we've got all this data that we've collected about our planet, we need to better understand it. We need to shift from the era of data to the era of insight, and we need to do it fast.

Terri Fiez

So you're now, what, five years into Earth Lab's founding. Where is it now, and what are you doing, and who are all your partners in this?

Jennifer Balch

Yeah, it's such a great question. We have an amazing education program that reaches over 200,000 unique users a month, our learning portal earthdatascience.org was just a glimmer of an idea just a few years ago, and it's really hitting on, there's a huge demand for learning new skills around earth and environmental data. I'm also super proud of our analytics team and our analytics efforts in terms of, gosh, how do we take machine learning and artificial intelligence, how do we take those techniques also to the wealth of remote sensing data that we have out there? And in terms of our discoveries and our science, we've built some really great partnerships, for example, with Zillow, where we've matched hundreds of millions of housing records with information on natural hazards to better understand our exposure and the patterns of vulnerability in our society in terms of where we put homes.

Terri Fiez

Do you use your science to help inform policy?

Jennifer Balch

Yeah, absolutely, and I would also say that we take a stance that science has a lot to offer, and we don't necessarily prescribe different pathways that policymakers should take, but we provide information that can be really valuable. And I've had many conversations with our Colorado representatives about what the science is seeing in terms of our wildfire problem. and is this going to get worse? Where is it going to be worse? Who's most vulnerable? How are we going to solve this problem? Because the science can help us inform those decisions.

And part of my drive to communicate the science, and last fire season I don't know how many journalists I talked to you, but it was dozens and dozens and dozens. I was like, look, I'm going to try and answer as many questions as I can, because part of the challenge is that we need to rethink how we are dealing with fire. We tried the experiment of putting fire out for 100 years, and it doesn't work, and it hasn't worked, and we need to absolutely rethink how we are building into flammable places, and how we are putting people at risk. So yes, absolutely do I get involved in those conversations and try and help where science can help.

Terri Fiez

That's amazing. You talked about some of the educational opportunities, or access that you're providing through Earth Lab. What are some of your favorite classes to teach?

Jennifer Balch

So I teach an introductory class to physical geography, it's essentially how the earth works across all of our systems. And I just, I flood that class with amazing imagery from satellites, from understanding snow patterns and dynamics, to understanding wildfires, and it's just incredible eye candy. And I think the students, once they see that, they see the power of what science can do and how it can help us understand, and it fulfills a science requirement. And so I also see it as an opportunity to inject a little bit of science into the students who may be following other career paths, so that they can appreciate a little bit about how science can show us how our earth system works.

And I also have had many female students in that class say to me, "Oh, I can't do science." Come to my office hours and say, "I'm really struggling in this class, I can't do science." And I'm like, "No, no, no, you can do science, absolutely." And I think part of it too, and this is part of what I hope my legacy is, is that showing other women that they can do science, and the world needs their discoveries too.

Terri Fiez

That's great. So my final question, as you think about the next decade or two, and the work that you're doing in understanding fire, and of course these have been very hot topics this last summer in particular, what is your hope for the future for your field, and do you think there are some breakthroughs that will be found that would really helped to advance the knowledge and the management of fires?

Jennifer Balch

Yeah, absolutely. I think the critical advance that we need on that front is science has to help us figure out how to live with changing fire, and I think we can do it. I think we can do the science that will help us navigate out of this really vexing wildfire problem. Millions, tens of millions of people were exposed to smoke from wildfires last year in the US. We've done the work that shows a million homes were within wildfire perimeters over the last two decades, and I think part of it is just, it's knowing what the problem is, but it's also science can help us figure out solutions to where's the best place to live, in terms of where do we develop? There's a lot of low hanging fruits in terms of how we're building into flammable places.

In terms of what do the next couple of decades bring, I mean, I think this is also critically where Earth Lab comes in, which is we need to shift away from the era of data to the era of insight, and we need to turn those mountains and mountains of data into wisdom that can help us figure out our most challenging environmental problems. And I also think what's coming next, and what needs to be more of an emphasis, is who's at the table, and big data has a big diversity problem. We need to make sure that anybody who wants data skills can get data skills, and I think what's also coming is our society is going to more and more be operating in code, and our second language needs to be a programming language, and we need to teach our students across all disciplines, where it makes sense, to increase their data skills, because it's going to be in the novel combinations of data, it's going to be in taking the data trash and turning it into data gold. Where are we going to find those new insights and new discoveries?

There's a huge number of discoveries that are going to happen because of the data that we're collecting about our planet and how people are engaging with our environment. One of my key motivations is that I do believe science is a gift. We developed a vaccine, we landed a Rover on Mars, we can absolutely contribute to how we live more sustainably and equitably on this planet.

Terri Fiez

We've been talking with Dr. Jennifer Balch, Associate Professor of Geography and Director of Earth Lab, a project CU Boulder and CIRES. You can learn more about Dr. Balch and Earth Lab at earthlab.colorado.edu. For more Buff Innovator Insights episodes, and to join our email list, visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host, and Vice Chancellor for Research Innovation at CU Boulder, Terri Fiez. It's been a pleasure being with you for this first season of Buff Innovator Insights. Innovation is for everyone, we can all make the world a more interesting and better place. Sometimes it just takes a spark. We'll see you next season.

Learn how Dr. Jennifer Balch's work in places like Kenya and Amazon rainforests shaped her interests in the relationships between fire, Earth systems and people, and how she’s working to transform data into insights to help solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.

Off

Traditional

White

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Sidney D'Mello (Psychology; Computer Science; Institute of Cognitive Science; Institute for Student-AI Teaming)

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Buff Innovator Insights Podcast: Dr. Sidney D'Mello (Psychology; Computer Science; Institute of Cognitive Science; Institute for Student-AI Teaming) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/29/2021 - 00:00

In this episode of Buff Innovator Insights, we meet Dr. Sidney D’Mello, Associate Professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science and the Department of Computer Science at CU Boulder. Dr. D’Mello describes how his unique combination of education and research experiences led to his leading-edge work at the NSF National Institute for Student-Agent Teaming, which is reimagining the role of artificial intelligence in the classroom to better serve both students and teachers.

Terri Fiez

Hello, science fans, creative thinkers, and lifelong learners, and welcome to Buff Innovator Insights. I'm your host, Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. This podcast gives you a behind the curtain look at some of the most innovative and groundbreaking ideas in the world. Even better, it's an up-close and personal introduction to the people behind the innovations, from how they got their start to how they are making tomorrow better for all of us.

Today, I'll introduce you to Sidney D'Mello, Associate Professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science and the Department of Computer Science at CU Boulder. Before joining CU Boulder, he was an Associate Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at the University of Notre Dame. He has co-edited seven books and published more than 300 journal papers, book chapters and conference proceedings. D'Mello's research team is interested in the dynamic interplay between cognition and emotion while individuals and groups engage in complex real-world tasks. He now leads the NSF National AI Institute for student AI teaming, which aims to develop AI technologies to facilitate rich, collaborative learning experiences for all students.

In this episode, we'll learn about how Sidney's research and educational interest evolved through his unique college and graduate school experiences, the possibilities he has discovered while engaged in research and innovation at the intersection of multiple disciplines, and how his leading edge work at the Institute for Student AI Teaming is re-imagining the role of artificial intelligence in the classroom to better serve both students and teachers. Let's get started.

Hi Sidney. Thanks for joining me today.

Sidney D'Mello

Hi Terri, how are you?

Terri Fiez

Good. I'm really excited to talk about your background and the research that you do. Let's go ahead and get started. Growing up, what were some of your favorite subjects?

Sidney D'Mello

Realistically and honestly, I didn't really have a favorite subject. I just looked at school at the time as just something you do, but I really didn't quite get inspired by any real topic until later on. But generally I had kind of gravitation towards science and math.

Terri Fiez

Were there outside activities that you liked to pursue?

Sidney D'Mello

Yeah, very much so. I was a huge fan of sports, played a lot of soccer and running. And then later on I transitioned from playing more sports to more music. I really got into music pretty deeply. So actually I would say my main activities and pursuits at the time was really music and guitar and such.

Terri Fiez

Were there any people that influenced you in terms of your music that you were pursuing?

Sidney D'Mello

Yeah. I had a good set of friends and we tried to play together. One of my friends basically took classical guitar from a very young age, so he was very helpful in kind of showing me the ropes and always exploring new music. And that was a really formidable experience for me.

Terri Fiez

You have this interest in music and you sort of like math and science. How did you decide where to go to college?

Sidney D'Mello

So it really wasn't very much a large search or a big decision. I had friends who were going certain places and I decided to go to this small university in Memphis, Tennessee called Christian Brothers University. Among other things, it was really a financial thing. I didn't want to have large amounts of student loans. I knew some folks there and I thought Memphis... I was really big into the music at the time. So I think it just worked out, but it wasn't a very deliberate decision. It was just more, "Yeah, I'll go here," kind of thing.

Terri Fiez

And then how did you decide what to major in?

Sidney D'Mello

I had a view of schooling that was very extrinsically focused at the time. It was about you go to college, you get a degree, doing money. So I knew I wanted to do something that could get me a gig. So I decided to just pick engineering. I picked electrical engineering, electrical and computer engineering. This was about 1999, where there was a dot-com boom occurring at the time. So it just seemed like a really good choice in thinking about careers of the future.

Terri Fiez

Well, I think for many of us, it's always serendipitous how we end up where we do. It's helpful to hear that background.

Sidney D'Mello

Exactly.

Terri Fiez

So what were your experiences that stood out for you in your undergraduate program?

Sidney D'Mello

Two things come to mind. I took this wonderful class in world religion, and then we actually visited mosques and temples and churches and monasteries. That was really cool. My first actual class that really started getting me interested in academics in a more deeper way was we had this wonderful class on computer networks and it was very project oriented class where we basically spent at least two months focused on a project of real value. And that really made me think, "Wow, this is a whole different perspective on schooling than taking tests and doing homework."

Terri Fiez

So you graduated from college in 2002 when there was an economic downturn. How did that influence what you did after college?

Sidney D'Mello

I kind of did see the writing on the wall in terms of the jobs outlook around 2001. That's when I started thinking about going into graduate school, but realistically, I applied to a few graduate schools, but got rejected from almost all of them because I didn't know what I was doing. And rightly so. I knew nothing about what is a PhD? I didn't know what a journal paper was. So I then applied to a master's program at the University of Memphis in computer science, so just a local school. So I got admitted there and that's really, I think, another very serendipitous pathway that really got me into my PhD studies later on.

Terri Fiez

Very interesting. Well, I know in your master's degree, when we talked, you described how you kind of found your stride. Can you tell us about that?

Sidney D'Mello

Because it was actually the first time I got involved in actually doing research. I joined my graduate school advisor, professor Stan Franklin had a research group on AI and we were actually studying human consciousness, which is one of the most foundational questions to this date, probably second to where do we come from? And we focused on researching the topic in a very interesting way. It was a very interdisciplinary. It was my first deep exposure to psychology, to human cognition. And it was this blend of taking the best out of behavioral and cognitive sciences and then computing sciences. So building computer models of these really hard to pin down upon cognitive processes such as consciousness.

Terri Fiez

So the interdisciplinary part here was the combination of psychology and computer science. Is that right?

Sidney D'Mello

Yeah. And I would add to that a third one would be philosophy. Because a lot of these questions of consciousness and actually language that are really deep questions, having a philosophical lens to guide our thinking can help us kind of think through. Because there are limits. At the time, definitely there were limits to what you can get through the regular tools of the scientific practice, experiments and brain scans and computer models. But philosophy offered an opportunity to think about these questions and guide the science in a very different way.

Terri Fiez

So now, as you talk about this, it sounds very abstract, but actually your work was very grounded. Could you talk more about the work itself?

Sidney D'Mello

One of the projects I've started working on was called Intelligent Distribution Agent IDA. The basic idea was to help to understand the job of what they call dispatchers of the Navy that essentially matched sailors to trains and to ships. It's a very complicated process because I think there was 300,000 sailors at the time. Right? But what was interesting was we approached this and instead of just taking off the shelf tools from computer science, we try to actually emulate the cognitive processes of these dispatchers by studying them and actually emulating the decision-making. This is an example where we were taking a very real world practical problem, but using that as a context to really make scientific discoveries and technological discoveries. So that's an example of how we were trying to model cognition computationally, but in the context of an actual real world problem of value.

Terri Fiez

Now, I know you moved into research where you were looking at emotions, and the emotions project. Can you talk about that?

Sidney D'Mello

What occurred was there was another group actually across the hall, shall we say, that focused on developing intelligent tutoring. So it was the same idea. Like we were working with dispatchers, they worked with emulating human tutors. So human tutors are one of the most effective ways you can learn, one-on-one tutoring, but it's really expensive. It's really hard to scale. So the idea was to build computer programs that can actually emulate human tutors, but it turned out that a large part of what tutoring is and what underlies effective tutoring is that human tutors focus on students' emotions. They're attentive to students' motivational and emotional states. If a student is confused, they will offer a hand or if a student is frustrated, they will respond with some empathy and motivation and keep them going. This was completely missing from the computer tutors. So our project was actually focusing on bringing in some emotional intelligence to these computer tutors. And mind you, this was about 2003, 2004. This is when emotional intelligence was getting a lot of traction and getting into the mainstream.

Terri Fiez

The whole idea of EQ, emotional intelligence, was really taking off. And then you're looking at it in terms of how do we model that within a computer?

Sidney D'Mello

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So we first identified, what are the emotions? Then we focused on how can we measure them through humans? But then we said, "Okay, let's see if we can get computers to measure them." So we decided we wanted to target confusion, frustration, and boredom. And we looked at a multimodal approach. So we looked at analyzing facial expressions. This is when facial expression tracking, which is now a commercial product, was just getting off the road. We were working with some of the older cameras where you actually had to turn the lights off in the room so you can get reflections on the pupil and things like that. We looked at body movements. We had what we always lovingly referred to as the butt sensor. It essentially were pressure pads you put on the back in the seat of a chair and tracks your posture and your movement patterns. It's a very diagnostic signal. And we looked at the context. So looking at the context of the interaction with the tutor.

So with these three pieces of information, we were actually able to develop reasonably accurate models of confusion, frustration, and boredom. Then we said, "Okay, let's have these run live in the tutoring system so if it senses that you're confused, it would try to kind of motivate you." So we worked on what we call motivational scaffold. So if the tutor felt you were frustrated, it would respond with some encouragement and empathy. If it felt you were bored, it would try to liven things up. And if it was confused, it would try to reinforce the idea that actually confusion is not necessarily a negative thing and it's okay to be confused and we can help you work through this confusion. So the idea was this motivationally supportive tutoring system. And as a side note, we also contrasted that with the kind of humorous and kind of slightly snarky version that would kind of kid around. And actually some of the students really loved that one too.

Terri Fiez

Okay. So they responded to that. So clearly you did some really interesting work in your PhD. Where did you go from there?

Sidney D'Mello

I spent the next two and a half years, I stayed at the University of Memphis first as a postdoc for about a year. And then I switched to a research assistant professor, basically being able to kind of run a mini version of my own lab. And that's when we had a group of people, we advised students and so on and so forth. So that's kind of where I was. And then I had an opportunity through another project. I was recruited to Notre Dame where I guess they liked my interdisciplinary perspective and they actually created a position for me, which I'm always very grateful to them. That was actually half in computer science and half in psychology. So I was very much in these two departments that actually have different schools. So I moved there in 2012, spring.

Terri Fiez

So what research did you pursue at Notre Dame before coming to Boulder?

Sidney D'Mello

We were continuing our work in emotion. And then I realized that actually what we were noticing is that... I got really interested in the concept of boredom, which is another very understudied emotion. And we, at the same time, we got interested in a manifestation of boredom called mind wandering. And this is when you just zone out. And boy, isn't that tricky on how do you measure that? So we spent a lot of time actually understanding mind wandering in the context of reading, and then at the same time we developed mechanisms to detect it so automatically pick it out. And in this case, we started looking at eye movements, and then we also worked on interfaces that could kind of fully close the loop by sensing and responding to mind wandering.

So for one thing, you can actually make the reading interface more interactive. So we worked in a system. If it detects this mind wandering, it actually asked students to provide a self explanation. That brings their attention back. That helps them refocus, relearn, and we showed that had real benefits. So that's one way you can just help students on the fly.

But another thing is, frankly, a lot of times you can use it as a way to quantify the interesting ness of educational materials and certain topics. If students are all struggling on a certain topic or because of high mind wandering, the teacher can then decide to focus, "Okay, I'm going to focus on this topic." So it can help teachers plan their next classes in a way that's sensitive to basically students' attention.

One other thing I realize is that with the internet and social media and mobile phones, it became increasingly easy and important to do this research in the wild. So we started taking this whole program of research outside of the lab with all our control in the classrooms, into offices. And that really kind of expanded the bandwidth and I would like to say the significance and relevance of our work.

Terri Fiez

What prompted you to come to CU Boulder?

Sidney D'Mello

I really loved Notre Dame. I had a great set of colleagues there and I was there for five and a half years. I got tenured there. Again, it was just a matter of opportunity. I just randomly ran into professor Mike Mozer at a conference in DC at a meeting in DC. And he told me about this opportunity. And I was really excited. I wasn't even thinking of leaving, but it was the fact that I could be back in an Institute of Cognitive Science. That was just really exciting to me. I wanted to get into more neuroscience and the fact that we have a scanner here was important and relevant. And also, I wanted some sunshine and I also wanted to get healthy and get back into nature.

Terri Fiez

Great answer. Well, you were recently awarded one of the inaugural NSF AI, which stands for Artificial Intelligence Institutes. Can you tell us what the focus of that institute is?

Sidney D'Mello

So in our Institute, we're looking to see how we can re-imagine the role of AI in education. So previously with great success, AI has been used in with respect to personalized learning. And as I said, one-on-one tutoring and so on. So we said, how do we use AI and embed AI in classrooms? How can AI be part of the ecosystem between students, teachers, and small groups of students? So AI Institute is focusing on developing these AI partners. These are AI agents that work with small groups of students in very carefully designed curricula along with the teachers.

And the idea is for the students, the AI and the teachers to orchestrate meaningful and rich collaborative learning activities that are enhanced and supported by AI. It's like a teacher working with multiple AI partners together with students. That's kind of our vision. And underlying this vision really requires a lot of foundational AI challenges that we need to overcome such as simple as how do you do speech recognition in a noisy classroom environment? How do you do team science where now suddenly a member of the team is an artificial intelligent agent, as opposed to, for example, another student? And lastly, how do we address issues of equity and access and fairness in AI algorithms? How do we design AI with an ethics, equity, and justice focused mindset? So these are the challenges that our institute hopes to address by bringing a diverse set of folks together, all unified around a foundational mission.

Terri Fiez

And it also seems like one of the things that you're really helping to promote is additional leverage for our teachers so that they can be more effective in the classroom and be able to individualize the work and the support for students in the classroom.

Sidney D'Mello

What teachers are really good at and what they love to do is be with their students and help their students learn and grow. The more we can have AI help teachers achieve this by taking care of some of the more routine tasks and also enhancing the learning by working very closely with teachers is really where we'd love to be. And as a teacher myself, right? The time spent in the classroom is the best, most engaging, amazing time, but there's everything else around that. We can just focus teachers and allow teachers to have an opportunity to just do what they do best, which is love and nurture and help the students grow. Then we've been successful.

Terri Fiez

That's great. For you, getting involved in research really put a real focus on what your direction would be. How are students involved in your research and what do they get out of it?

Sidney D'Mello

I think what students get is multiple things, but the most important thing is for students to understand what is research and what is it like to pursue a career in research? And what is it like to do research? What is it like to have a question that only you are addressing and it's your question and there's no answer? I think those experiences can be quite transformative for many students. Some of them actually say, "Wow, I did this. This is not for me." And I think that's a great response and they want to do something different. We welcome diversity of experiences and opinions, but others say, "This is exactly what I want to do."

Terri Fiez

That's great. So what are you most proud of in your career so far?

Sidney D'Mello

If I have to think about what I'm most proud of, I'm really proud of the fact that I'm able to bring people together because I've had these different experiences and I've worked in all these different areas in my graduate training and in Notre Dame. I'm proud of my ability to kind of work at the intersection of different research areas in education, in emotion science, in cognitive science and in learning sciences and in computer science.

Terri Fiez

Yeah. And that will have huge impact bringing those disciplines together. So my final question is in the next decade or two, what are you optimistic about in your field and what is your hope about the future of the field?

Sidney D'Mello

So whether you know it or not or like it or not, AI is kind of embedded in our world, in our homes, in our communities, and in schooling. The question is where do we go from here? We have an opportunity to really redefine and at least attempt to redefine and reconsider how AI can be beneficial for folks. At the same time, we're very well aware that there are a lot of fears and concerns of AI with respect to surveillance, with respect to automation. And we also want to use this institute as an opportunity to really understand these concerns and work with communities to provide models of how AI in education can be implemented, that can stand up for other folks to use.

So for example, we've adopted a framework called the Responsible Innovation Framework at our institute where we ask certain questions every time we make decisions involving AI. And the central question really is what is it that we should do? Not just asking what AI can do. Because you can collect all kinds of data and you can do all kinds of things, but what are the responsible things to do? So we've also adopted this idea of co-design, of a way to design AI systems with the exact members of the community that they are impacting. So I hope that we will be in a place where maybe the conversation around AI in education has shifted. There's more accountability, but at the same time, there's actually more success and more impact.

Terri Fiez

Thank you, Sidney. This has been a very stimulating conversation. It's so exciting to see the kinds of work that you're doing and the impact that it's going to have over the years to come.

Sidney D'Mello

Thanks, Terri. It was my pleasure.

Terri Fiez

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sidney D'Mello, Associate Professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science and the Department of Computer Science at CU Boulder. You can learn more about Dr. D'Mello and the NSF National AI Institute for Student AI Teaming at colorado.edu/research/ai-institute. For more Buff Innovator Insights episodes and to join our email list visit colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at CU Boulder, Terri Fiez. It's been a pleasure to be with you. Innovation is for everyone. We can all make the world a more interesting and better place. Sometimes it just takes a spark. We'll see you next time.

In this episode, Dr. D’Mello describes how his unique combination of education and research experiences led to his leading-edge work at the NSF National Institute for Student-Agent Teaming, which is reimagining the role of artificial intelligence in the classroom to better serve both students and teachers.

Off

Traditional

White