Search Interviews

Erica Bickford’s advice to early career scientists or students is to look outside academia and explore all the potential career options available to scientists. She is particularly aware of the importance of science in daily life and in the policy...

John Booker Grab grew up in New Mexico and remembers, at the age of 8, running out the back door into the Santa Fe National Forest to go and collect fossils. He then went on to study at Montana State...

Rafael Loureiro may confess to being an introvert, but he has no fear of people. He started off talking about AGU’s Voices of Science bootcamp, which he is participating in this year to develop his spokesperson skills. That segued into...

Doug Archer has a rock collection, only he’s never actually held any of the stones, and they are hundreds of millions of miles away on Mars. As a research scientist working with the Curiosity Mars rover in NASA’s Johnson Space...

James Famiglietti, hydrologist and Director of the Global Institute for Water Security, University of Saskatchewan, discusses his work with NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experience (GRACE) and the evolution of technology throughout his career including its impact on water security....

You may know Marcia McNutt as the current president of the National Academy of Sciences, but did you know she’s also someone who got restless enough to give up what many consider the be the perfect job? While teaching at...

Engaging young students outside of the classroom can help further a life-long interest in science. Elizabeth Eubanks is trying to bring these kinds of experiences to as many kids as she can. As a science teacher, she’s heard from students...

Jill Marshall, Assistant Professor of Geology at the University of Arkansas thought she was ready to go to college, but there she was on the campus of Boston University as a freshman overwhelmed by her surroundings and on shaky financial...

Michael Wong is just as comfortable talking about science as he is with working on it. Currently a post doc at the University of Washington in Seattle, he talks about his work and path through science, from being inspired as...

President-elect of AGU natural hazards focus group and Northwestern University seismologist delights in getting away from conventional wisdom and pointing out when there’s Much Ado about Nothing. He reflected on his career trajectory from research on space to the depths...

Richard Johnson is an AGU member who has been coming to Fall Meeting for years. He discusses some of the keynotes he’s attended in recent years, like those by Jerry Brown, Elon Musk, and Dan Rather. A sci-fi enthusiast, Richard...

While Patrick Taylor spends a huge chunk of his time in the clouds, his work has nothing to do with daydreaming. The Research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center is working on understanding more about the role of clouds in...

Scott Tyler, hydrology engineer at the University of Nevada Reno and AGU Hydrology section president, shares his work on Antarctic ice shelves, nuclear waste, and stream restoration. Do we need to build sea walls in ten years or in one...

Daniel Minguez, a geophysicist for Chevron, helps create new geologic models of the earth’s layers, trying “to build geologic stories for how different geologic elements got there.” Daniel discusses his work which focuses on boring techniques and navigating plate tectonics....

Seismologist Lucy Jones gained recognition for doing a TV interview following the 1992 Joshua Tree earthquake while holding her sleeping infant son. Long before that, she became one of the first American scientists to enter China after it’s normalization in...

Emily Wolin is almost singe-handedly trying to upgrade Myanmar’s national seismic network. As a student, Emily saw the Mount Saint Helens eruption. Today, she helps scientists in Myanmar prepare their country for the aftermath of the next hurricanes to come...

Dr. Claire Parkinson, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center since 1978, discusses using satellite data to monitor sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic and serving as project scientist for the NASA satellite Aqua, which makes measurements of...

Putting up tall PVC pipes with pointy sensors to measure electrical fields in an approaching lightning storm may seem reckless, but it’s all part of the job for Timothy Lang. The NASA research scientist spends a lot of time in...

Jack Kaye, associate director for research at NASA's Earth Science Division, discuss his origins as a chemist and earth scientist, and how he was recruited to Goddard to be a chemist among meteorologists. "My boss would advertise me as his...

Kristen Erickson, Director of science engagements and partnership, recently helmed NASA’s efforts to involve over 154 million adult Americans with direct participation with the 2017 total eclipse – the largest engagement effort in NASA history. But in her more than...

Michele Koppes and Heidi Roop met “on an incredible landscape on the edge of the Greenland ice sheet about two years ago.” The conversation that followed made both of them think more closely about the value of science communication and...

Elizabeth Rampe, a mineralogist, studying Mars at the NASA Johnson Space Center, shares about her life and work. She focuses on minerals on the surface of Mars which formed from water-rock interactions, which have the potential to show billions of...

Michael Meyer, NASA's Chief Scientist for the Mars Exploration Program, talks about his life and work in science. As a teenager working as a deckhand on a treasure diving boat in Florida, he was hired to replace some fired divers...

Why do people feel they way they do about issues? Why do lawmakers and policy leaders seemingly act against their better interests? And how can information be developed in a way that leads not just to greater understanding, but to...

Kiya Riverman ended up studying glaciers because, on a field work trip, she was one of the few who could fit the ice cave in the glacier. She recalls, “you're surrounded by glaciers and then sometimes you're underneath glaciers. And...