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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...

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...

The next time you see a young kid skateboarding through the neighborhood, possibly listening to punk rock on their earbuds, remember that one day that kid could be your local science professor. Doug Jerolmack’s sturdy voice and love of experimenting...

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...

After one spends 50 years with the same organization, what’s next? That’s the question Dave Mao is attempting to answer after a highly-decorated career at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Born in Shangai and raised in Taiwan, Mao came to...

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...

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...

Krystal Yhap’s interest in urban water resource management was sparked by the conversations around water safety in Flint, MI. She’s now a graduate assistant at the University of Maryland studying the water system in San Francisco. She talks about her...

Ingrid Hendy, Professor at the University of Michigan and section president-elect, shares stories about discoveries in her field and the challenges she faced. She reflected on the curious zebra striped sediment that lured her into her field – mud she...

Sandra Cauffman was told growing up in Costa Rica that she couldn’t be an electrical engineer because she was a woman. Decades into a career which has largely involved getting her hands dirty building instruments to fix on spacecraft, the...

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...

For Ved Lekic, the opportunity to interview his mentor, Barbara Romanowicz, was a little daunting, so he brought along some questions. Once the conversation turns and Ved has a chance to answer some questions as well, we meet a very...

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...

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...

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...

Kenneth Jucks, Program Manager for the Upper Atmosphere Research Program at NASA Headquarters, has gone from launching weather balloons, what he calls a “poor man’s satellite” to take measurements up to 25 miles above the Earth’s surface, to managing five...

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...

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but Andi Brinn Thomas is dealing with thousands of pictures of the world. The Image Data Scientist in the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit within the Astromaterials Research Exploration and Science Division...

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...

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...

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....

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...

Erin Robinson is the Executive Director of the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP). She knew from early on that she was interested in science and her field of remote sensing, from good science teachers in middle and high school to...

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....