Search Interviews

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...

Distinguished Professor of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara speaks with Ph.D. candidate in the Hydrogeology program at the University of Nevada, Reno.

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...

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,...

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...

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...

John Geismann, professor of geosciences at the University of Texas Dallas, shares his discovery into the science field and favorite aspects of working with students. He discusses the critical point we are in society and need for the global community...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

Ross Stein is CEO and Co-Founder of Temblor, Inc., Adjunct Professor at Stanford University, a scientist at the Unites States Geological Survey, creator of films about earthquake science, and president of the AGU’s tectonic physics section. In this interview, Margarete...

The start of a fruitful career for Richard Eckman was being on a team which discovered that the stratosphere and ozone varied in relation to the sun’s 27-day rotation. Eckman, who now works with NASA’s Atmospheric Composition Modeling and Analysis...

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...

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...

In this interview, Dr. Meloe S. Kacenelenbogen discusses her expertise in ‘aerosols,’ suspended particles in the atmosphere. These small particulates can affect air quality and human health and can also impact the Earth’s radiation balance. We also discuss why she...

Aaron Piña is the National Program Lead for Atmospheric Sciences and Fire Weather Research at the United States Forest Service where he runs a research program that helps transition knowledge into the hands of decision makers around the world. Initially...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Michael Freilich, Director of NASA's Earth Science Division, shares about his life studying the oceans and Earth as a system. While still in his high school's oceanography club, he started exploring a question about how waves move that later became...

Sprites are electrical discharges like lightning, but up in the middle atmosphere. Having only been in the scientific literature since the 1990s, sprites captured Geoff McHarg’s imagination while observing the Aurora in Alaska. Perfect for a guy whose view of...

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...