Search Interviews

As a child, Luke Oman was always looking out the window. Today, he works on atmospheric processing for NASA. How do volcanic eruptions affect everyday life? What happens when sulfur dioxide gases from volcanoes interact with sulfate aerosol and stay...

James Butler has studied atmospheric chemistry, ozone depletion for over thirty years. Now, as the Director of NOAA’s global monitoring, he helps direct research into the hole in the ozone layer and climate change. He knows firsthand that we have...

Denis-Didier Rousseau, Senior Research Scientist at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and Fall Meeting Program Committee Chair shares how at six years old he set the goal to be a paleontologist. He discusses how that has shaped his life...

Brian Cairns works for the NASA Goddard Institute for space studies in New York, where he focuses on developing instruments that will make better measurements of small particles in space. In this interview Dr. Cairns discusses his start in engineering,...

In the mid-1990s, the town of Libby, MT, discovered they had a serious problem. The small town of fewer than 3000 people had reported over 300 fatalities from asbestos contamination. Enter Aubrey Miller, from the EPA, and Geoff Plumlee, from...

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...

Cynthia Rosenzweig has been studying earth's changing climate and its impacts on agriculture for over 2 decades, yet she continues to be fascinated by the subject on a daily basis. Dr. Rosenzweig currently heads the Climate Impacts Group at NASA's...

Glenn Orton is so deep in Jupiter mission information that he gets envious when he’s not involved in a space project studying the gas giant. The senior research scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory studies the composition and structure...

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...

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...

Miguel Román, a Physical researcher Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, shares his journey from his childhood in San Juan, Puerto Rico to NASA. Seeing the impacts of hurricanes and urban growth where he grew up, and the practical...

Zachary Wolff talks about how his path to studying and creating models as a graduate student at UC Irvine was not straightforward: he first considered medicine and meteorology before working on a CICE radiation study and discovering his interest. While...

While many of the interviews at the conference were with experienced professionals with a career spanning several decades, this interview is with a young up-and-coming PhD student who traveled all the way from the Philippines to attend her first AGU...

Dr. Amy Winebarger is an astrophysicist in the Heliophysics and Planetary Science Office at NASA. Listen to Amy talk about what makes sounding rockets awesome to work with, the rewards of being a mentor, and how a New York Times...

Meet Xubin Zeng, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Arizona. Dr. Zeng was amazed by the power of mathematics at a young age and found his calling in physics. Listen to Dr. Zeng discuss what inspires him,...

Louise Prockter knows a thing or two about logistics and planning. When the first image of the unseen hemisphere of Mercury popped onto the screen during a flyby mission, her first thought was, "oh thank God, it's in the middle...

Meet Eric Lindstrom, a former Physicial Oceanographer for NASA who now works with Saildrone, Inc to map the ocean floor. Eric spent his first day at the beach when he was 3 days old and has been fascinated with marine...

Catherine McCammon, staff scientist at Bayerisches Geoinstitut, University of Bayreuth, Germany and longtime AGU volunteer discusses collaboration and explains how she has found that the “the whole is great than the sum of its parts,” is truly an accurate statement....

This Sao Paolo, Brazil based senior space research scientist is best known for explaining geomagnetic storms. In 2017, he received an AGU prize for “cutting-edge work” on space weather and processes. He remembers being a UC Berkeley graduate student in...

The potential downside of a career in always seeking discoveries is that it may stunt the development of your confidence. Even as someone who walked into NASA, living the dream in his mind, Nathan Kurtz experiences that downside, politely calling...

Bidyut Bikash Goswami has found that people are very interested in his field of climate science and meteorology, even if they don’t fully understand it at first. He notes that people tend to assume that climate science means climate change...

David Young, Director of Science at NASA Langley Research Center, discusses his life's work studying the earth's climate. After an early interest in astrophysics, he focused in on earth science due to his desire to do research to help humans....

Chris Atchison didn’t set out to create a project tailored for students with physical and sensory disabilities but ending up doing so anyway. He talks here about working on a virtual reality project and, when trying to find students who...

Lori Glaze, Acting Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, works with everything from understanding asteroid trajectories and material make up to the InSight mission which recently landed a rover on Mars. It’s no exaggeration to say Lori...

Padma Yanamandra-Fisher, a research scientist at the Space Science Institute, shares stories of her career in planetary science. She recounts how defining the launch of Voyager was and the significance of the growth in the field since. Padma shares her...