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Steve Montzka has been at NOAA for 28 years, working on atmospheric science, atmosphere chemistry, and trace gases in the atmosphere. He started there as a post-doc, drawn by the work he saw NOAA scientists doing on the hole in...

As a program scientist for the astrobiology program, the Mars Sample Return program, and the DAVINCI mission, Lindsay Hays’s domain spans from NASA HQ to Venus to Mars and back again. Lindsay became one of the first to witness images...

As the program scientist in NASA’s Planetary Science Division and the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, Tom Statler works with mission teams as they send robots to asteroids and other entities in our Solar System. From a science-rich upbringing to his...

Adrian Brown is the deputy scientist on the Mars 2020 Rover mission at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.. Adrian uses his background in geology to explore Mars via the Mars Rover, living out his childhood fascination with the planets. He...

Sylvain Costes is the Branch Chief, Open Science project manager, and principal investigator for NASA’s Ames Research Center. Sylvain oversees over 80 NASA scientists and technicians, but he’s primarily a biophysicist leading research on radiation and DNA to understand how...

Dr. Lin Chambers is the Deputy Director of Science Activation at NASA Headquarters, and she spends her time there sharing NASA’s science with learners in local communities across the country. Lin started at NASA after her freshman year of college...

One Small Step partners Susan Stover (67) and C Campbell (53) realize they have many parallels in their lives as they talk through their experiences losing their husbands, discuss banned books, and find common ground in their shared perspective on...

Charles Webb is the Deputy Director of NASA’s Joint Agency Satellite Division, where he helps lead a team to develop and launch satellite missions for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Charles has a gift for translating between scientists and...

Hashima Hasan is the program scientist for NASA’s James Webb, XP, and NuSTAR telescopes, helping to bring those missions from cradle to grave. Hashima followed the space race closely growing up in India, which inspired her to navigate into the...

Duane Waliser’s path in science meandered from an Oregon apple farm to a UCSD Oceanography institute to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he now serves as the Chief Scientist for the Earth Science and Technology Directorate. At JPL, Duane helps...

Delia Santiago-Materese is a program scientist at the NASA’s Planetary Space Division in Washington, D.C., where she helps facilitate science and works with the community to make decisions about where NASA’s scientists should be exploring next. She spends her days...

Daniella Scalice is the Education and Communications Lead for NASA’s Astrobiology program, and she sits in NASA’s MAIANSE program for incorporating American Indian and Alaska Native science into NASA’s STEM research and education initiatives. She works in western and Indigenous...

Cynthia Hall is the community coordinator for NASA’s Transform to Open Science program, where she works with organizations and communities to build diverse scientific collaborations with NASA. She works to make scientific research and processes more inclusive and accessible to...

Dr. Alex Lockwood is the project scientist on the science communication team for the James Webb Space Telescope at the Space Telescope Science Institute. While earning her Ph.D. in Planetary Astronomy and Science, Alex had the unique opportunity to star...

EXP391 / EXP397T sedimentologist and volcanologist Dr. Mike Widdowson talks to Onboard Outreach Officer Maya Pincus about the twists and turns throughout his life that resulted in his various adventures aboard the JOIDES Resolution.

Chris Klein, an Andover native and author, discusses his German and Irish roots. He recounts his life growing up amidst classism in the 1980s. Inspired by AP US History class, he discovered his passion for research-based writing, determined to preserve...

Spouses Jolene Croasmun (60) and John Brown (65) talk about how they both came to live in Salt Lake City, their journeys as single parents, and first meeting each other. Jolene and John talk about what they enjoy doing together...

One Small Step partners James Knudsen (57) and Brian Myers (58) talk about their upbringings, the experiences that shaped their career trajectories, and how their political views have changed over time.

John M. Moody started out as a small boy from a small town in Texas, visiting Lake Texoma and admiring the wealth of fossils all around him. This led him to a career in geology through which he pioneered the...

David Shiffman is a shark guy first, marine conservation biologist second. Sharks are in his Twitter handle, he’s writing a book about them, and he was wearing a shark shirt the day we interviewed him. We talked with David about...

Noah Petro is a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center- which doesn’t seem like much, but it includes being the lab chief of the Planetary Geology, Geophysics and Geochemistry Lab at Goddard and being the project scientist...

From a childhood filled with archeology lessons from his dad, to graduate studies measuring gases from active volcanoes, and then designing early warning systems to detect volcanic activity, Dr. Florian Schwandner's life goal has been to make a difference in...

Melissa Scruggs is currently working towards earning her PhD in Volcanology at UC Santa Barbara, and there's nothing else in the world she would rather be doing. But she didn't always know this- after dropping out of high school to...

Friends and colleagues, Joselyn Fenstermacher (46) and Amber Harrison (43) discuss their involvement with environmental activism in Big Bend, Texas.

Eli asks his great uncle for advice on becoming a scientist. They discuss their love of reading and the worlds a good book can open for you.