Meet a Scientist!

According to legend, three ancient Chinese curses state,

• May you live in interesting times
• May you come to the attention of those in authority
• May you find what you are looking for

Depending on whether you believe these to be curses—or blessings—may help determine whether science is the career for you.

May you live in interesting times.

As an undergraduate, I majored in chemistry with a minor in environmental science at a small liberal arts college called Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. It was there where my now hardened tendency to bring on “interesting times” began. The undergraduate-only environment allowed me to explore interests outside of science, while still allowing me to get a solid education in my major. I enjoyed advanced classes in Russian literature (Dostoyevsky) and African culture and politics, while completing requirements for my chemistry major. Though challenging, I have always sought to combine my studies in physical science with those in social science and the humanities.

I was able to put this dual focus into action during a semester in Costa Rica. I lived with local families and worked with a local university professor to study the effects of pollution on river water chemistry. That was supposed to be the extent of my project – conduct laboratory analyses of water samples collected at a series of points along the local river. These sites ranged from pig farms to residential housing to cloth dyeing factories. But, I decided to make this project more complete and, hence, more “interesting.” I conducted a survey of the people who lived along and near the river. I wanted to understand their relationship with the river (and the environment in general), especially their understanding and attitudes regarding pollution. I was not a very good Spanish speaker, but I went door-to-door to 50 homes with my lengthy questionnaire. More than once, I had to run outside with the families when one of the frequent earthquakes occurred. I put the results of this crude social science experiment together with the chemical analysis data into a final report that now resides in the small library in San Antonio de Belén, Heredia, Costa Rica.

My Costa Rican chemistry professor would have preferred that I had stuck only with the science, and maybe I took on too much with the project, but I am still proud of that final report. And, at the end of my stay I had to pull two all-nighters in a row to finish all of the writing. This caused me to miss my flight home when I didn’t wake up in time for the taxi ride to the airport! So, in this sense, “interesting” is life and work pushed to the limit, stressful and exciting at the same time. I have since learned to manage my time more efficiently, but now with work and family commitments competing, it is still never dull.

May you come to the attention of those in authority.

Following college, I started in an Environmental Science doctorate program at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. This was a science-focused interdisciplinary program that I thought matched my “dual” interests very well. I even got to take an environmental law course. Law was my secret passion that I perhaps would have pursued if I had not been incredibly shy and a nervous public speaker. Somehow I assumed that all lawyers were the showmen trial lawyers that you see on TV! After only a year, however, I decided that it was better to get a more traditional graduate education and then apply that deeper and more focused knowledge to the broader problems that interested me. So, I moved to St. Louis and entered in the Chemistry program at Washington University. In late 1999, I received my PhD in Inorganic Chemistry, and immediately started in a postdoctorate position at Los Alamos National Lab (LANL).

After two years as a “postdoc,” I began my current position as a Technical Staff Member in the LANL Chemistry Division. My boss and mentor was an extremely influential and energetic physicist from Russia. With him, I learned the chemistry and physics of nano-sized particles called quantum dots, or QDs. Because the research was exciting and because QDs have so many potential applications from biomedicine to lasers to solid-state lighting to solar cells, we were asked to help plan a new center for nanoscale science. Though a significant responsibility, this was an excellent opportunity for a young scientist like me to work with senior scientists and managers in an important new area. After several years of planning, the center, called the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), was created (LANL and Sandia National Labs working together). Two buildings were subsequently built – the LANL Gateway in Los Alamos and the Core Facility in Albuquerque. I am now a CINT Scientist, and I oversee the Gateway Synthetic Chemistry Facility. The great joy in my career life at the moment is working with four talented, enthusiastic, and fun postdocs. Together, we do the science of making and characterizing new nanomaterials.

However, being known to “those in authority” means that you will more often encounter new and different responsibilities. Assuming that you perform well, these keep coming. And, as I have discovered, in the world of science at a national lab (or a university for that matter), this does not always mean “science” responsibilities. There are a seemingly endless number of committees on which to serve, more centers to plan, talks to give, and a constant need to keep the funding flowing by meeting with funding agencies and writing proposals. So, through my career in science – a career I once considered a safe haven for someone who is naturally introverted – I have learned to speak and to network. These skills are as critical to a successful scientist as they are to a successful businessman.

May you find what you are looking for.

As a young kid in the ‘70’s, I was entranced by a commercial in which a completely together career woman sang, “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you're a man, 'Cuz I'm a woman!" The message was that women could do it all—work and family—and that it was no big deal. I simply assumed that this was true. My mom was my role model. She had a family and a career as a nurse, and though she wasn’t very happy, I assumed that I could do all of this AND be happy.

Well, I am happy, but I have also learned that a demanding career in science can also be stressful. It is not the kind of job that you can leave at the office. You take it home with you literally and figuratively. It is a competitive career in which you need to be compared well with your co-workers in terms of funding, science productivity, etc. It is often particularly stressful for a woman trying to juggle career and family. Compromises are necessary.

So I have found that the picture isn’t as simple as I imagined it would be and as women of my generation were told. On the other hand, I have also found that a career in science, like my Costa Rican adventure, is “life and work pushed to the limit, stressful and exciting at the same time.” In science, you may well find most of what you are looking for—and a whole lot more!

For as long as I can recall, I have been interested in science. I remember reading the World Book encyclopedia several times, marveling at the entries on engineering, technology, and science. I moved from Texas to Los Alamos in 8th grade, and thought the old science museum at Los Alamos was the most amazing place I had ever seen. The fact that my father worked at Los Alamos was a source of tremendous pride. In high school, two key experiences set me on the course my career in science would take.

I heard about a contest to fly an experiment on the Space Shuttle in 1980. I submitted a proposal on purifying metals by passing electric currents through them in the vacuum of space. It was selected for the very first Space Shuttle “Students in Space” round of experiments. I’ll never forget traveling to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to talk to NASA scientists and sit in the space shuttle simulators! I remember watching the television in awe as John Young and Bob Crippin rode the first Space Shuttle mission. Imagine my surprise when, a few months later, I was sent a patch that had flown on that mission, along with a certificate!

The second key experience occurred in the year I graduated, when Los Alamos held the 40th anniversary reunion of participants in the Manhattan Project. The renowned physicist Richard Feynman only agreed to speak if young people would be in the audience. I was one of 30 high school students with VIP seating at the very front. Hans Bethe gave the talk I’ll never forget. He spoke of the physics of supernovas—most of this went over my head. But at the end he turned to the young people in the front row and pointed his finger straight at me. “It’s up to your generation to find a solution to this problem we created. You must find a way to move beyond vast nuclear arsenals to protect peace,” Bethe said. I was stunned. My first reaction was, “what an old kook.” But after I went off to college, I kept hearing Bethe’s words and soon understood their wisdom. My generation would have to find a solution in science to the great paradox of nuclear weapons and peace.

I finished my degree at Texas Tech, and went on to graduate school at Berkeley, where I developed a novel way to clean plutonium from the environment. My work made quite a media splash—it was featured on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. I was invited come to Los Alamos as a full-blown staff member. I accepted, and began research into the weapons-related issues around plutonium. Now was the time to gain the expertise to contribute to answering Bethe’s challenge.

My first breakthrough was on how plutonium corrodes—basically how it rusts. During this time, the country stopped nuclear testing and shut down it’s plutonium factory—the Rocky Flats plant outside of Denver. Tons of plutonium around the country was left literally overnight in temporary containers. What I had discovered was that this plutonium would degrade in a very special way, potentially bursting its containers. I briefed a special board—the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—on these results. Fairly quickly, the Defense Board issued a formal recommendation to repackage all of the plutonium in the country to avoid these problems. I was a science celebrity! I was asked to train inspectors and help write a new standard for storage of plutonium. And all of this grew out of work to understand how plutonium degraded in weapons.

I was asked to lead the group at Los Alamos responsible for the nuclear cores of weapons, called “pits.” Then I was asked to lead the program looking at all weapon materials and how they age. This was timely because the government was debating whether it needed a replacement for Rocky Flats. If pits lasted long enough, then a big replacement factory wouldn't be needed. Editorials in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal talked about the issue. Again, science was at the forefront of a critical national issue, and my research was back in the newspapers!

Well, we did figure out that pits age gracefully, and the government decided it did not need to build an expensive new facility. This was a great example of how science could inform critical national policy decisions. More importantly, it showed a way that science could help reduce the number of nuclear weapons. I was excited! I began to study nuclear deterrence and policy. Could science substitute for weapons? I was asked to help lead the famous weapons design division at Los Alamos. I studied issues around weapons design and physics. For 20 years, the government had not designed or fielded a new nuclear weapon. And now they were asking an important question: Could we reduce some of the yield of the weapons, while making a more robust, more secure nuke? There were concerns, in this post-9/11 world, about terrorists stealing nukes.

Once again, I was asked to lead a team to study this concept—the Reliable Replacement Warhead. For almost 2 years, we worked night and day to explore concepts. We’ll talk about some of them at the Caf´e. We’ll also return to the opening theme: Can science substitute for weapons? Can science provide both security and a deterrent?

I was inspired to become an archaeologist by a bunch of anthropology books my mom had laying around from college and (of course) the glorified portrayal of archaeology in the Indiana Jones movies (yes, I even bought a hat like his). I was always interested in old things, which was fueled by articles in National Geographic, books on Egyptian mummies, and a family trip to the southwest when I was in middle school (Mesa Verde was the place that convinced me I'd be a southwestern archaeologist).

I went off to college with the goal of becoming an archaeologist, and after my first two semesters of classes, I took a summer field school in archaeology. There I realized that despite the discovery of whole black-on-white pots that were hundreds of years old, my interest was piqued when someone uncovered a fragment of a human upper jaw bone. At that point, I realized I was in the wrong subfield of anthropology. I returned to classes that fall with a focus on human osteology and stumbled upon a class in forensic anthropology. After that I was hooked and continued to study forensic anthropology in both academic and practical settings. (And I never did give up fully on the archaeology...I spent two field seasons excavating a cemetery in Egypt!)

I do what I do because I have the chance to take all that I've learned and apply it to problems that really matter to people. In a medico-legal setting, the impact of assessing the profile of a set of remains, as well as interpreting any trauma or pathology present, lies in the eventual identification of an individual and providing closure to families regarding what happened to their loved one. To me, this is more important to the general public than performing the same task for skeletons at an archaeological site that they've never heard of (though this would be of interest to me and the academic community).

In forensic anthropology, I have the chance to make a real difference in the lives of people, at particularly difficult time for them. This endeavor has proved to be very rewarding for me, even though most often my role in death investigation (contributing a piece of the puzzle) is not apparent to those outside of the medical investigator's office.

I would love to be able to tell you that ever since I entered Kindergarten, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. However, truth be told, when I was growing up I was much more interested in sports than any academic pursuits. As one of five children growing up in a middle class town in upstate New York, we followed avidly the progress of New York’s professional sports teams, in my case the Yankees, Knicks, and Giants. My heroes were Mickey Mantle and Walt Frazier (if you haven’t heard of them, ask your father!). Alas, I figured out before too long that although the spirit was willing, my skill level just wasn’t there for me to pursue sports. Although my family was not wealthy, I was fortunate to attend good public schools, and received a fine education that allowed me to figure out what I was good at. I got excellent grades in all subjects, but I did especially well in math and science.

With the help of some scholarships, loans, and support from my parents, I was able to attend Clarkson University, a small science and engineering school in Potsdam, New York. Aside from its reputation as a first-rate engineering school, Clarkson was and is known for its superb college hockey program and its frigid winter temperatures. I can still feel the biting cold, -40 degree temperatures against my face as I walked to and from classes. I entered Clarkson as an “Undecided Engineer,” knowing that the discipline of engineering appealed to me, but not yet figuring out which branch of engineering I wanted to pursue. I finally settled into chemical engineering because the breadth of the coursework in that curriculum would allow me to go in a variety of directions. I was also interested in nuclear engineering. Unfortunately, the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 happened during my Junior year in college. This event led me away from pursuing a graduate career in this area. I believe that my choice was common at that time. Aside from the direct blow that this accident dealt to the nuclear power industry, the impact on the educational choices of the young people of that era is still being felt. To grow again to its full potential, the nuclear power industry will need to attract a new generation of young people to the field of nuclear engineering.

Upon graduating with a B.S. from Clarkson, I faced a decision of entering the work world or going to graduate school. I chose the latter for two reasons. First, I had held two summer jobs as an engineering apprentice doing the work of a production engineer at manufacturing plants. Being a more analytical person by nature, these hands-on positions did not suit my skills. But these jobs were very valuable for me – they gave me a low-cost way to discover what I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life. On a more positive note, I was intrigued with the possibility of performing scientific research to solve big problems – energy issues were looming in the late 1970’s with large increases in oil prices and gasoline shortages. Graduate school gave me a way to immediately work toward that end, and to prepare myself for a career in energy research. When MIT’s chemical engineering department said “yes” to my application and offered me a research assistant position, it took me all of about two seconds to decide to take them up on that offer.

At MIT I met my thesis supervisor, Dr. Jefferson Tester, and embarked on a thesis research project on geothermal energy, specifically using tracers to investigate the flow of water through fractures in a geothermal reservoir. Jeff was a primary influence on my career, with his inquisitive style, keen intellect, and supportive nature. My first experience at Los Alamos came shortly after entering MIT, and I spent roughly half of my graduate school career in New Mexico, performing research at the Lab’s Hot Dry Rock geothermal site at Fenton Hill, in the Jemez Mountains. I worked alongside and learned from many staff members at the Lab. To single out just one, Bob Potter, the inventor of the Hot Dry Rock geothermal concept, had a tremendous impact on me. Bob taught me the simple truth that in science, you must let the facts guide your investigations. On many occasions, I can remember going off to investigate a concept or model that Bob and I had discussed, only to come back later and find that Bob had already discarded the model in favor of a new one that did a better job explaining the latest data we had collected at the Fenton Hill site. Bob taught me that you don’t need to treat your ideas like your children – if your models disappoint you, get rid of them find newer, better ones!

Upon receiving my Ph.D., I had job offers from three oil companies and Los Alamos. I chose Los Alamos for its world-class scientific staff and open research environment. If I had chosen an oil company, I almost certainly would have lost my job within months of being hired, as falling oil prices in the mid 1980’s led to extreme cost-cutting measures in which these companies jettisoned their entire R&D departments. As a staff member at Los Alamos, I continued to work on the geothermal energy project, and when that project fell victim to falling energy prices and a perceived lack of need for alternative energy sources, I migrated to projects that needed R&D on flow of fluids and chemicals through subsurface porous rocks. In one project, we worked to ensure the quality of groundwater beneath Los Alamos and assessed the impact of the Lab’s past activities on waters that residents of the area drink every day. But my main focus has been the Yucca Mountain Project, assessing the proposed site for permanently disposing the nation’s high level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors and unwanted byproducts from the country’s nuclear weapons enterprise. The project is vital to our ability to use nuclear power as a clean, reliable energy source in the future. It is an endlessly fascinating project, from the science to the political and social aspects. The challenge of providing estimates of the risk posed by the construction of a nuclear waste disposal facility millennia into the future is daunting, and requires creative scientific approaches. I also get to see how science impacts societal decisions, and how people from all walks of life process information and think about risk.

Throughout this journey, I’ve watched our approach to achieving a secure and sustainable energy future come full circle. We’ve gone from gasoline shortages and nuclear accidents, to an emphasis on renewable energy research, to a return to cheap oil, to a demand-driven scarcity of fossil fuels, to a potential renaissance in nuclear energy and renewable energy R&D. Having the opportunity to conduct research to find solutions to the complex and challenging issue of energy security is my chance to make contributions to the well being of our nation and the world. I’ll never regret choosing science as a career path – I guess not being able to hit the curveball was a blessing in disguise!

We have more than thirty years experience teaching, researching, and developing special projects in holography. Fred is the originator and co-author of The Holography Handbook, a Kodak award winning publication. We have shown our art work in museums and galleries worldwide.

We met in New York City while Fred was Director of Education at the Museum of Holography (MOH). There he directed the Artist-In-Residency Program, edited the museum publication “holosphere,” and traveled throughout the east coast and Europe. He was the MOH liaison for the first article about holography in National Geographic Magazine. Rebecca was a contributor to holosphere, and was among the initial group of artists to receive an Artist-In-Residence grant at the Museum of Holography, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

We spent several years in Germany developing a pulse ruby laser system that allows the recording of holograms of live subjects. We went on to produce one of the first reduced pulse portrait holograms published as an embossed printed hologram on the inaugural issue of GEO Wissen Magazine. We conducted an unofficial artist-in-residence program using the pulse ruby laser system. While we were in Hamburg, German, we traveled and consulted in England, France, Italy and Denmark.

After returning to the U.S., we became members of the Advanced Imaging group in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). We later moved to Los Angeles and co-founded Zone Holografix, a consulting and educational facility. Fred taught Holography at Pasadena City College and Contemporary Imaging Systems and Optical Systems in the graduate program at Brooks Institute of Photography. Rebecca was a staff writer for Holography News, an industry publication. While at Brooks, we were team members for the first holographic portrait of a President, Ronald Reagan, now in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution. We both received the Shearwater Foundation Holography Award for our “exemplary careers.”

Fred was the chairperson for the first Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Art & Culture Meeting at the Practical Holography Sessions. Rebecca was an Editorial Board member for the SPIE Technical Working Group publication “HOLOGRAPHY,” and participated as an SPIE holography grant administrator and juror for emerging artists in the field.

Both of us have worked as educators and consultants for holographic technical applications. Prior to moving to Santa Fe, NM, we both taught in the public school system of Columbia, MO, while Fred was an educator in the Photonics Laser Technology Program at the Columbia Area Career Center. Since relocating to Santa Fe, our most recent projects entail 3-D imaging systems involving a holographic auto stereographic screen allowing depth perception (three dimensional vision) to be used with the remote operation of a robot. Our other involvements include photovoltaic solar projects and holography workshops.

I am a “Baby Boomer” who grew up in California in the 1950’s and 60’s. My neighborhood was swarming with kids, the Beatles were HOT, I had a pair of white go-go boots and my favorite toys were Barbie dolls, roller skates, my bicycle and my pogo stick. At that time I liked math, and my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Cross, encouraged me in this area even though math wasn’t considered something girls would pursue in school or as a job back then. Science didn’t interest me much, but it shaped my lifestyle through the gadgets of the first electronic revolution: portable transistor radios, 45 rpm record players and black and white television sets; as well as the nuclear arms race between Russia and the USA. I don’t remember practicing fire alarms at school, but baby boomers remember “duck and cover” drills in preparation for nuclear attacks! I had no idea that the nuclear age began in New Mexico, and I never dreamed that someday I would be an environmental scientist at the birthplace of the atomic bomb…

By the early 1970’s I was a teenager in a small town in Connecticut. Rivers and lakes across the America had been dammed for hydroelectric power and used as industrial and domestic sewers while the US economy grew rapidly. The fish in Lake Erie were either dead or toxic and Ohio's Cuyahoga River was so polluted it had burst into flames. The “environmental movement” was growing quickly. I was passionate about the environment and helped to organize a demonstration in our town to coincide with the first ever “Earth Day” in 1970. The nationwide event aimed to put pressure on President Richard Nixon to sign the Clean Water Act, which he finally did in 1972. Around this time I discovered that I enjoyed math, chemistry and physics; mainly due to two outstanding teachers, Mr. Law and Mr. Pietrowski. But I still hadn’t linked my passion for the environment with my growing interest in math and science.

I also loved the arts, and after graduating from high school I moved back to California to study theatrical design in college. During my second year in college I took a calculus class in order to fulfill a requirement, and to my surprise, I loved it! Once again, I had an inspiring teacher, Professor Lenore Blum, who was a both a world renowned mathematician and an early advocate of programs to increase the participation of girls and women in mathematics. That class set my professional life on a new course. I changed my major and graduated from a Mills College with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics.

My degree in math opened many doors, including a great job, and later, acceptance into one of the top Geology PhD programs in the country at the University of California Berkeley. At the time, I didn’t really understand what a PhD was. My Mom was a high school graduate, and her Dad was a zinc miner. My Dad graduated from college, but his Dad made cut shingles from timber in logging camps. I definitely did not come from an academic heritage, but I had a friend who was getting a PhD in Anthropology and thought, “if she can do it, then why not me?” I had just finished a book with an interesting description of the geologic evolution of the Western US, and wanted to get into a profession that took me outdoors more, so geology seemed like a good fit. At Berkeley, I had another great mentor, Professor William Dietrich. With his guidance and a lot of help from fellow graduate students, I set up and carried out field experiments in the coastal hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean just north of San Francisco. I used the data from experiments along with my mathematical skills to create a computer model to predict what caused the destructive, fast moving landslides called debris flows that occurred in California during big rain storms.

After completing my PhD I was offered a job at a government research organization called CSIRO in Canberra, Australia and moved there with my new husband, Kent, who also studied geology at Berkeley. We lived and worked in Australia for eleven years. During that time I travelled to every corner of the country working on projects that used science and mathematical models to help foresters, farmers and ranchers improve their land management practices to preserve the ecology and other environmental values of rivers and streams. Both of our children were born and raised in Australia and have many great memories of the odd wildlife (kangaroos, cockatoos, possums and kookaburras), the dramatic coastlines and beaches of Southern New South Wales and the spectacular, multi-colored marine life of the Great Barrier Reef.

In 2000 we decided to move back to America and chose to live and work in beautiful Northern New Mexico at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I now work on understanding and predicting the impacts of climate change and energy development on water resources. I work with scientists from all over the country, and the world, on this global challenge and recently travelled to Alaska (where I watched a grizzly bear catch salmon for her cubs) and Brussels, Belgium (where I saw medieval buildings and ate lots of chocolate) to give seminars about my research. I think I have one of the best jobs in the world, and know that I was fortunate to have so many wonderful mentors who made math and science fun and exciting for me. Thank you for inviting me to Café Scientifique, and I hope I will share some of my passion for science and water issues with you.