They will be working on their own projects as well as working with anyone in the astronomical community who is interested in submitting a blog post. They all have experience writing and editing in different formats and are ready to help you share your stories and experiences. If you'd like to pitch a blog post, please email wia-blog_at_lists.aas.org and we'll work with you.
Read on to get to know the new team!
--Jo
My journey into space science started after I took a remote sensing class at Washington University in St. Louis in 2011. I was astounded by the beauty of the images the Spirit and Opportunity rovers sent back from Mars. The orange-tinted skies, the gently rolling red hills, the wind-polished black rocks jutting out of the ground were more incredible than any still life I’d ever drawn. So, I switched my intended major from printmaking and drawing to earth and planetary sciences, landed a summer internship at the California Institute of Technology, and wrote a senior honors thesis on martian lava rocks. In 2014, I started a doctoral program in planetary geology at Cornell University. My research ended up taking me from martian geology to the organic chemistry of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. During the summer of 2015, I worked with scientists in Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Planetary Ices Lab analyzing bubbling vials of liquid methane in a tabletop Titan simulator. It was a thick plastic bag pumped full of dried nitrogen gas; we called it “Titan in a bag” and it was the best. I enjoyed Titan chemistry so much that I decided to transfer to Johns Hopkins and continue my doctoral studies in the PHAZER (Planetary HAZE Research) lab, zapping cold gases with neon, purple plasma. Ultimately, I decided that getting a Ph.D. was not the right option for me and I graduated from Johns Hopkins with my master's in earth and planetary science in 2019. I moved to Seattle and wrote software to calibrate satellite images for a geospatial analytics start-up. After a year of debugging Python scripts and obsessively documenting everything in Markdown, I decided to get back to something I’ve always loved: writing.
Currently, I am a freelance science writer for Professor Dave Explains, a YouTube channel that offers educational videos for advanced high schoolers and early undergraduates. I’m also a member of the Lab & Research committee for SoundBio, a nonprofit DIY biology lab in Seattle, and a co-organizer for #BlackInAstro. In my free time, I love to hike in the Cascades or the Olympics, climb all of the things, and bop to West Coast rap.
Describe a time you made a personal connection with the universe.
Looking at a MastCam image of Home Plate from Spirit during a remote sensing class.
What is a freelance science writer?
I’m still figuring this out myself! It means I spend a lot of time researching, thinking, writing, re-writing, editing, and then doing it all over again.
How did you end up working in that position?
I’ve always loved writing and after years of graduate school and a stint in the space industry, I decided to pursue freelancing full-time.
Who inspired/s you?
Toni Morrison, Dr. Chandra Prescott-Weinstein, N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler
What community issues are important to you and why?
I’m passionate about making STEM accessible to communities of color. My experience in graduate school has shown me that students of color are not just unwelcome in STEM programs, but are often threatened and belittled. That needs to change. One way of making that change is by offering STEM education outside of the classroom and within non-traditional spaces like community centers or just out on the sidewalk.
Tell us about a favorite moment so far in your career.
Watching a live feed of the 2012 Mars rover landing at PlanetFest in Pasadena, CA with hundreds of other space nerds and planetary scientists.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to take the same career path as you?
I’m going to repeat the advice given to me during my freshman year of undergrad: embrace serendipity. It’s okay (and often wonderful) to take a different path and meander from the track that’s been laid in front of you.
What do you do for fun?
Hike in the Cascades or the Olympics, read graphic novels like Saga, cook elaborate vegan dinners, obsess over how cool whales are.
What are your goals as a part of the Women in Astronomy Blog Team?
Highlight the experiences and research by women, especially women of color, at all levels of their astronomy career.
Her astrophysical data analysis skills range from gamma-ray, X-ray, UV to optical regimes. She is currently broadening her skill set by working on radio analysis for some pulsar candidates using the Green Bank Telescope data.Describe a time you made a personal connection with the universe.
Long long time ago.. during my undergrad in 2005. I was super fascinated by all the pretty images from Hubble and felt inspired by Carl Sagan!
How did you end up working as an Assistant Research Professor?
I joined here as a postdoc but got promoted to this position based on my research progress.
Who inspired/s you?
A lot of people who have followed their dreams despite many hurdles.
What community issues are important to you and why?
Imposter Syndrome, equality for women in Astronomy, raising awareness among women to support other women, diversity.
Tell us about a favorite moment so far in your career.
Finding the first ultraluminous X-ray source in the Andromeda galaxy and publishing my first author paper as a Master's student :). It gave me a lot of courage to keep going!
What advice would you give to someone who wants to take the same career path as you?
Have a mentor who could help guide you through the process of earning a doctorate. I came from a place where I knew no one who had a doctorate and I wish I was prepared better.
What do you do for fun?
Painting, camping in summer :D, crochet
What are your goals as a part of the Women in Astronomy Blog Team?
Add my 2 cents working towards the betterment of women in Astronomy. I look forward to working with our diverse team on existing issues and raising awareness among the whole community.
Astrophysics and Astronomy are my passion. I decided that I wanted to learn more about that field when I was 5 years old. Of course I did not know anything about the path that I needed to take for that, but I tend to be very stubborn and not listen to anyone when I make up my mind. Hence I decided to choose physics as my major when I attended the University in Hamburg in Germany.
I am the happiest person when I am sitting at a telescope and observing celestial sources. On a related note, I really like working with students because I think they have great ideas!
As a postdoc at the Green Bank Observatory and later at West Virginia University I became a part of the Pulsar Search Collaboratory, first as an external collaborator, later as a staff member and project director. That educational outreach program gave me a lot of possibilities to work with younger generations through research projects providing a lot of fun to both sides. Therefore, I decided to extend my knowledge also towards teaching by applying for my current job at Haverford College which I really enjoy.
Who inspired you?
Jill Tarter in an indirect way and Carl Sagan. I read his book "Contact" for the first time when I was 12 years old. At that time I did not understand much of the physics discussed in that book, but I was
immensely struck how he managed to predict the very different reactions of people all around the world to receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilization. The heroine of that book, Ellie Arroway,
was created by Carl based on Jill Tarter (as Jill told me many years later when I met her). Through that book, I learned at a very young age that no aim is unreachable. Finding the way to get there is the hardest part and usually many ways can lead to it.
By now I have read the book in four different languages. I still enjoy it very much and now I have the physics knowledge to also follow its scientific concepts.
What community issues are important to you and why?
I really cannot stand stereotypes. As a woman who decided to go into physics I very often heard sentences like "Are you really sure you can do this?", or "Physics? But this is something that only boys do...". You do not need to hear these doubts from others when you are just about to make an important decision in your life. I decided to give it a try and started to respond to the latter question with "Then we will change that!". I was stubborn enough to get through this, but I can easily imagine that not all of us (women and men alike) are that determined. To work against the existence (and persistence) of stereotypes I am trying to help students from various minority groups to realize their potential and to develop strategies on how to fulfill their professional goals.
Tell us about a favorite moment so far in your career.
Moving the 100 m Effelsberg radio telescope (located in Germany) for the very first time when I was a grad student. Same for the Arecibo Telescope and Green Bank Telescope. Did I mention already that I am a passionate observer? ;)
What advice would you give to someone who wants to take the same career path as you?
First of all, you can make it (no matter what other people say)! Be determined. Sketch a plan of where you would like to be after say the next five years. If you wish to go to college, make a list of colleges
that you are interested in. The same counts for grad school. List several institutes that you are interested in and not only one. Getting a position has a bit to do with luck and sometimes we do not get
in. This is by no means a judgment of your capabilities. In such a case you need a plan b (and c and d if possible). As I said earlier there are several ways to become professionally who you aspire to become. We all have our individual paths to go.
Be prepared to live for some time in other countries (that sounds scary, but it is a really great opportunity to get to know people and other cultures!). Do not shy away from reaching out for special opportunities like applying for a grant to be able to attend an international conferences, or to work for a couple of months at another institute on a project.
Your goals are important, but so are you! Do not stress yourself out on a regular basis. Think of the whole "problem" that might give you headaches piece by piece. Think only about that first piece and how you can solve it before you move on to the next piece.
Also, take time off. I am not kidding here. Not working on the weekend is something that I have done for years and it feels much great. Your work will also be there on Monday morning and it is really important for your mind to rest.
What do you do for fun?
I really love photography. Hence if you cannot find me, I am usually somewhere with my camera, exploring new areas. I can do this for hours without talking to a soul. My camera is always with me when I go exploring. Another passion of mine is exploring the Southwest which is unbelievably beautiful. Therefore, you can very often find me hiking in national parks in the Southwest with my camera.
What are your goals as a part of the Women in Astronomy Blog Team?
I enjoy writing and hope that I can raise awareness and discussions in the community as a member of the team. There are still topics that are not necessarily talked about often like neurodiversity, mental health, and harassment. We need to move away from issues that we see as stigmas and that are not talked about. Furthermore, I would like to learn from my colleagues as well as the astronomical community how we can improve the experience of becoming and/or being a scientist in current times.
Outside of research, Katrina is passionate about empowering women of color to succeed in STEM. She is a co-founder of The #IAm Project for Women of Color in STEM (www.iamstemproject.org), an organization dedicated to this goal. She is also a budding science journalist with a desire to build bridges between academic research and society through writing.Describe a time you made a personal connection with the universe.
A year ago, my partner & I were visiting family in Arizona & drove up to Sedona for the weekend. It’s a city in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, making it the perfect place to stargaze because of its clear skies & low light pollution. The night sky was absolutely breathtaking — I’ve never seen so many stars! In that moment I felt like a (very tiny) part of a bigger whole, and lucky that I get to study such a beautiful Universe.
What is your job?
I am a particle physics PhD candidate at the University of Chicago and a collaborator on the MicroBooNE experiment at Fermilab. MicroBooNE is a liquid argon detector investigating an excess of events seen at low energies in previous neutrino oscillation experiments. For my dissertation, I’m working toward setting the first measurement of an exclusive differential electron neutrino cross-section on liquid argon. I should be finishing up within the next year!
How did you end up working in that position?
I have always been intrigued by physics questions that lie at the intersection of astro & particle physics. My first two years of grad school were spent as a collaborator on a liquid xenon detector hunting for signs of dark matter. After I earned my master’s degree, I switched over to studying neutrino oscillations at Fermilab. Many neutrino studies use similar technologies as dark matter research, so to my surprise, it was an easy transition.
Who inspired/s you?
I am forever inspired by the physicists who paved the way for someone like me to succeed: Willetta Greene-Johnson, the first Black woman to earn a physics PhD from the University of Chicago in 1987, and Cacey Stevens-Bester, the second Black woman to accomplish the same feat, in 2015.
What community issues are important to you and why?
I am very invested in equity & inclusion in astronomy & physics, particularly for people who exist at the intersection of more than one marginalized identity. To that end, I find retention of these talented scientists especially important, along with accountability from the systems and institutions that contribute to pushing them out.
I am also passionate about science communication through journalistic channels. In the future, I hope to contribute my scientific expertise toward making complex research topics accessible to non-academic audiences, and increasing scientific literacy & trust.
Tell us about a favorite moment so far in your career.
After my first year of grad school, I spent the summer on shift for the XENON dark matter experiment in the mountains of Italy. I stayed in a small village (with a population of just over 300) for a month helping to run the detector, troubleshoot any issues, and make sure data was being collected properly. It was such a transformative experience — my first time traveling solo! Definitely a highlight of my time as a PhD student.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to take the same career path as you?
Surround yourself with an empowering community of mentors who will root for you, guide you, & advocate for you. Getting a PhD truly takes a village — I can’t imagine being this far without a solid support system in place.
What do you do for fun?
I love to write — I’ve kept some form of a personal blog since high school, and I’m currently participating in a two-month memoir-writing workshop. I also like to read. And before the pandemic hit, I was an avid thrifter. I love to shop, but on a grad school budget, I had to be creative. I enjoy the flexibility thrifting allows in experimenting with my personal style.
What are your goals as a part of the Women in Astronomy Blog Team?
As a Black woman, I am hoping to bring an intersectional perspective to topics already covered in the WiA blog. I also would like to expand the blog content to highlight exciting research initiatives and discoveries by amazing women in astronomy-related fields, who deserve the recognition just as much as their male counterparts.
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