Socializing with Scientists

Sinéad was born a scientist. As a child, she asked for extra math and physics lessons on the weekends, and she thrived at University College London upon finding fellow science folks. Now, Sinéad Farrell , PhD, is a geophysicist at the University of Maryland, and she uses remote sensing satellites to study Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. She also explores the ice on foot, braving polar bears and froz...

Logan grew up in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, bears ambling through his Colorado backyard and summers full of prairie dog census volunteer work. But it wasn't until an Introduction to Linguistics class during his first semester at McGill University that he realized he wanted to pursue a degree in biology and language. With his formative years spent exploring nature, research in anima...

In college, Dianne didn't take any biology classes (she was a German studies major). But she was curious about almost everything, so in her first semester of graduate school, she tried an environmental microbiology class. She fell in love.  Dianne Newmann is now a microbiologist at Caltech , studying bacteria and the antibiotic resistance they sometimes develop. She recently discovered that i...

Dylan was a kid who found comfort in math and fun in music, but ultimately he followed a path to science. He became a physicist and was inspired to study climate change by a speech that US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu gave, as well as his time working at a backcountry lodge in the Canadian Rockies. Dylan Jervis now works for GHGSat, a company that monitors greenhouse gas emissions, most notably...

Katie was a curious, hard-working kid, but it wasn't until her freshman year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that she found her calling. That year, she happened to be placed in two geography classes, and her career trajectory started falling into place.  Katie McMahon is now a PhD student in human environment geography at UC Santa Barbara, and her recent work in Science Adv...

To prepare for the moment his telescope landed on the moon, Brian read sports psychology books. "You're not going to read Kepler or Isaac Newton [to learn] about how to deal with high pressure situations," he said. It turned out he didn't actually need much help. Brian Walsh is a space physicist and professor at Boston University , and he and his team created a telescope that l...

Sarah Kugel grew up smashing pokeweed berries to make her own paint and assembling intricate habitats for garter snakes. She was a kid who loved nature, and, when she went to college, she majored in resource ecology. But Sarah always had an interest in business as well, and now she combines the two as the director of a nature center in Massachusetts. She considers the organization its own ecosyste...

I'm thankful for all of you, and for the scientists who make this podcast possible! I hope you have a relaxing and peaceful Thanksgiving. If you'd like to email us with comments or suggestions, we'd love to hear them at  socializingwithscientists@gmail.com . Find us on the Socializing with Scientists website , or follow us on Instagram or Bluesky . Thanks for listening!

Brad grew up in small town Illinois, playing outside all summer, building go-karts and tree houses in the woods. He went to the University of Illinois to study engineering and Carnegie Mellon for robotics. Later, he shrunk his focus: he began building tiny robots the size of a grain of sand. Now, Brad Nelson, PhD , is a Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich. He just published...

Melissa was born into a family of scientists, but she always wanted to be a historian. As she grew up, however, she realized that science allowed her to satisfy her infinite curiosity and desire for discovery, and so she "went into the family business." Melissa Harrison, PhD , is now a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she studies how human cells turn partic...

Case was a regular California kid: he skateboarded, he surfed, and he also liked math. He tried a few different majors in college, but finally found his calling: environmental engineering. He went to graduate school, and a lucky encounter during the first week changed his whole life. Case van Genuchten, PhD , now works for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ( GEUS ) and just published...

Ever since she was a little girl, Cassia has loved playing the piano. Her mother made sure she had music lessons, and Cassia felt like she was fulfilling her mother's dream learning the instrument.  But she also loved science and math, and after her undergrad years she found herself searching for a research field and a graduate program that inspired her. She happened to read a few studies lin...

Charlie grew up in England, surrounded by books. At age 11, she declared that she wanted to be a research scientist. When she was a teenager, however, she started gravitating towards helping people more directly and went to medical school at age 18. After graduating, though, she realized her heart wasn't in medicine, and a remembered lecture from years earlier on post-stroke brain recovery in...

Bradley grew up in suburban Australia, fascinated by the scientists in movies like Jurassic Park. He also eagerly read biographies and memoirs, and his love of animals and people soon grew into a successful career as a comparative psychologist. Bradley Smith, PhD , now teaches and researches at Central Queensland University in Australia, spending much of his time thinking, learning, and talking ab...

As a child, Samuel enjoyed eating "potato smileys" and "turkey dinosaurs," even though most of his meals were homemade. As he grew up, he played sports and became interested in optimizing his nutrition to improve performance. But his first day on the job at a sports nutrition company convinced him to apply to graduate school to study nutrition, not sell it.  Now, Samuel Dicken,...

Fadi Lakkis grew up in Lebanon during a time of political unrest, which led him to perpetually question the world around him. Once he became a nephrologist with a speciality in immunology and transplantation, this questioning pushed him to do better science, as well as approach research from unexpected angles. Now, Fadi Lakkis, MD , is a professor at Stanford University, and he's working to h...

Allison grew up during a tumultuous time in a city bruised by crime. Playing sports helped secure a kid's reputation, so she focused on athletics, eventually becoming the first female pole-vaulter in the state of Ohio. Division I universities recruited her (she was also class valedictorian), and she settled into life at an Ivy League college. Then, she started studying sleep. Now, Major Allis...

We have several great episodes in the works! I can't wait to share them, starting in September. 

Raised in a bilingual household in Istanbul, Lidya had lots of questions. She was keenly interested in people, and, on top of that, wondered things like, does her personality change when she speaks a different language? This led to her pursuing psychology in college to study human behavior in many different contexts. Now in graduate school at the University of Amsterdam , Lidya Yurdum 's fasc...

As a child, Katie thrived in her suburban Chicago backyard, reading The Boxcar Children and leading her little brother on adventures. A second grade unit on Jane Goodall cemented her curiosity about primates, and two fantastic high school teachers excited her about biology. But it wasn't until college that she thought science could be a career. Now, Katherine Amato is a biological anthropolog...

Jenna was never really interested in school. She loved theater and the arts, but  academically, she struggled. She had dyslexia, and "always felt like I was failing...never thought I was very smart," she said. It wasn't until her sophomore year of college that things started to turn around:  she discovered an academic field that truly excited her. Jenna had always been observant - n...

The first time she looked through a telescope, Shannon lost her breath. A self-proclaimed "science camp kid," she learned early that she wanted to do research, and that space would be her subject. Shannon Curry , Ph. D. is now the director of NASA's MAVEN mission, a spacecraft that has been orbiting Mars since 2014. She and her team at the University of Colorado, Boulder are trying...

When he was a child in Kitchener, Ontario, Scott MacIvor would go on urban walks with his mom. He had a bucket, and was allowed to bring home one piece of nature each day: a snake, or a bumblebee, a caterpillar. He loved examining them all. Now Scott is an urban ecologist at the University of Toronto , working to connect people with the nature that's hidden all over the places where humans li...

When she was a kid in Iowa, Heather didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up. She loved solving problems and adored science and math, and when she went to college, she majored in chemical engineering. Then she had an internship: it soon became clear to her that engineering was not the right career choice.  So, after college, she moved to Seattle. Heather worked in a human genetics r...

The first eight episodes of Socializing with Scientists Season 1 have been a blast! Next Wednesday we'll publish another interview, but this week we're taking a little breather. I wanted to talk about what's coming up, to say thank you to the scientists who have spoken with me, and to tell the listeners who have been tuning in each week how much I appreciate you: There are so many o...