"I've always had an interest and a fascination with space." A conversation with Jonathan Hale.

Jonathan Hale is one of 25 students in the new Student Airborne Science Activation (SaSa) program at the NASA Ames Research Center. Students at SaSa are undergraduates from minority-serving institutions, competitively selected across the United States. Over the course of...

“There were locations that I went to that no human has ever been to before.” An interview with Dr. Mary Beth Wilhelm.

Dr. Mary Beth Wilhelm is a research space scientist at NASA Ames Research Centre. In this interview, Mary Beth talks about lab hopping, visiting five continents in five months, winning the Ames Early Career Researcher Award, and her hopes for...

"You just go wherever there are interesting patterns." An interview with Dr. Rama Nemani.

Dr. Rama Nemani, Senior Earth Scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, works on ecological forecasting. In this interview, we discuss how Rama’s career trajectory moved from farming to supercomputing, NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), the difference between simulation modeling and...

“It wasn’t a big leap from there to the ocean.” An interview with Dr. Dan Whitt.

Dr. Dan Whitt studies currents and the circulation of nutrients in ocean ecosystems. Dan describes his Ph.D. research on internal waves ‒ oscillations found where the ocean is stratified by density ‒ and compares this effect to an expertly-poured Arnold...

“Be open to change. Build a team that has all different aspects and is interdisciplinary.” An interview with Ella Sciamma-O'Brien.

Dr. Ella Sciamma-O’Brien is a research scientist in laboratory astrophysics and planetary science. As a member of the Astrophysics and Astrochemistry Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center, Dr. Sciamma-O’Brien has been working on the Titan Haze Simulation (THS) experiment, developed on the...

"I was one of those kids who always wanted to be a scientist." An interview with Egle Cekanaviciute.

Dr. Egle Cekanaviciute is a Principal Investigator and Research Scientist in the Radiation Biophysics Laboratory at the NASA Ames Research Center. She is also one of the Course Directors for STAR (Spaceflight Technologies, Application and Research), an intensive training course...

Examining geomicrobiology in caves and mines, with a side of space exploration and astrobiology. An interview with Penny Boston.

Dr. Penny Boston is a woman of many talents! A notable academic with a background in microbiology and geology, Penny has investigated microbial life in the lab and in the field as a speleologist -- someone who studies cave science....

"We look at life in extreme environments and learn about what life can do, how it adapts." An interview with David Smith.

Dr. David Smith is a microbiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center. David led the design, construction, and validation of two NASA Balloon Program payloads carrying biology experiments (E-MIST and MARSBOx) as well as the use of a bio-aerosol collector...

Bob Conover talks about building Ranger, a JPL spacecraft that went to the Moon in the 1960s, then restoring it again 50 years later

In the summer of 2015, Bob Conover led a team of 12 volunteers to restore a 50-year-old Ranger spacecraft at the California Science Center. Bob is a retired JPL engineer who originally worked on the Ranger at JPL in its...