Search Interviews

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...

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...

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...

William Putman, research meteorologist with NASA , was always fascinated by the way meteorologists on television could predict what was going to happen. But instead of comparing weather reports with the blowing of the trees outside his house, Putman now...

Nicholeen Viall is a research astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, with her research focus being the sun and solar wind. Listen to Dr. Viall talk about her start in space science, her greatest accomplishment, and her hopes for...

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...

It took 21 years for Trevor McDougall to leave Australia, but when he did, he was on a plane headed to the University of Cambridge and a masters and Ph.D. in Oceanography. Besides the life-changing event of going from one...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Daniel Minguez, a geophysicist for Chevron, helps create new geologic models of the earth’s layers, trying “to build geologic stories for how different geologic elements got there.” Daniel discusses his work which focuses on boring techniques and navigating plate tectonics....

Father, son, and daughter discuss their own discoveries of science in their lives. Scott, patriarch of the Linneman family, discuss his journey as first-generation college-goer while son Charles and daughter Dorothy shed light on the influence of their father's work...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...