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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...

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...

Seismologist Lucy Jones gained recognition for doing a TV interview following the 1992 Joshua Tree earthquake while holding her sleeping infant son. Long before that, she became one of the first American scientists to enter China after it’s normalization in...

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...

“What is the earth saying to us?” Jackie Caplan-Auerbach is a volcano seismologist with the Western Washington University geology department. Jackie studies ice avalanches, which can happen at any time. Most ice landslides do not give warnings, but some do....

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...

Michelle Newcomer is now a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab but her first degree was in French and Sociology. She talks here about the fear that comes with changing careers, taking risks, and pursuing the path that you...

Kim Cobb loves being out in the field. She talks about the euphoria and passion she has for it, saying “It's like nothing I've ever experienced literally, and I've given birth to four children.” In this interview, she talks about...

“When you find yourself climbing San Bruno Mountain just south of San Francisco with a butterfly net collecting mission blue butterflies to repopulate on Earth Day, it doesn't get better than this.” Stuart Weiss is passionate about conservation ecology. He’s...

Rafael Loureiro may confess to being an introvert, but he has no fear of people. He started off talking about AGU’s Voices of Science bootcamp, which he is participating in this year to develop his spokesperson skills. That segued into...

Tom Krimigis works at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, and was previously the principal investigator for the Voyager I and Voyager II missions. A student of Van Allen, Tom built detectors to search for Van Allen belts on...

Erica Bickford’s advice to early career scientists or students is to look outside academia and explore all the potential career options available to scientists. She is particularly aware of the importance of science in daily life and in the policy...

Susan Bates has always been interested by the physical world and especially the ocean. She remembers standing on the beach as a kid in North Carolina wondering where the waves came from. Now, she gets to predict what the ocean...

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...

Thomas Wagner, NASA's Program Scientist for the cryosphere, discusses how his life has developed to study the Arctic and Antarctic. Even though as a student he initially found himself bored by studying glaciology, he soon discovered a passion for polar...

Rosaly Lopes is a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. She discovered seventy-one new volcanoes on IO, for which she was recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records. She uses her research into the surface of other planets...

An inspiring physics teacher, a lesson on the Copernican Revolution, and an immense awe sparked by the night sky ignited a passion for learning and research for Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Dr. Zurbuchen shares...

Elizabeth Schaeffer hasn’t followed the most straight-forward route into the geosciences but that’s allowed her to discover the field she most wants to study. She’s a non-traditional undergraduate studying applied geology and talks about recent internships she’s done that have...

Michele Koppes and Heidi Roop met “on an incredible landscape on the edge of the Greenland ice sheet about two years ago.” The conversation that followed made both of them think more closely about the value of science communication and...

With experiences from Azerbaijan, India and the United States, three scientists discuss how they’ve shared their passion for science in society and data transparency from generation to generation. They hope future generations continue to use data to help people withstand...

Ana Jeleapov studies landscape geography and hydrology at the Institute of Ecology and Geography in Moldova. She and a small team of scientists are trying to decrease flooding in Moldova. “Floods are a natural phenomenon” with sometimes deadly impact on...

Why do people feel they way they do about issues? Why do lawmakers and policy leaders seemingly act against their better interests? And how can information be developed in a way that leads not just to greater understanding, but to...

Kiya Riverman ended up studying glaciers because, on a field work trip, she was one of the few who could fit the ice cave in the glacier. She recalls, “you're surrounded by glaciers and then sometimes you're underneath glaciers. And...

Shelby Hurst grew up in northern Michigan where she spent plenty of time poking at and asking questions about the rocks in her grandparents’ backyard, which eventually led her to a PhD in geochemistry. She discusses the importance of women...