DL: How far into your degree path are you in and what kind of research are you doing right now?

HB: I am about to go into my fifth year of my PhD, hopefully last year. So I am in a geochemistry degree program at UCLA—it’s the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences—but my work is extremely interdisciplinary. So the particular methodology that we use is a geochemical method, so mass spectrometry on carbonate mineral samples, and we use that particular methodology to essentially measure the temperature of formation of these carbonate minerals. The idea being that if we can understand or measure the temperature of formation of the mineral, that reflects its environmental temperature when it was precipitating or forming. But I, in particular, use snail shells, which are made out of calcium carbonate, so that’s why they’re crunchy, they’re actually a mineral that the organism grows. So the temperature that we should be getting when we do this geochemical method is essentially the growth temperature when the snail was alive. And I actually do this methodology on fossils, snail shells that are anywhere from 10,000 years old to 26,000 years old, and the idea there is that we should be able to reconstruct the temperature of that time period when the snail was living. So if I have a 25,000 year old snail shell that I’m going to put through my mass spectrometer, hopefully, I’m getting a temperature that’s reflective of the temperature 25,000 years ago, wherever that snail was living. And this is incredibly helpful for climate reasons. I essentially try to work on reconstructing the temperature of what we call the Last Glacial Maximum, which was about 25,000 years ago, using snails that were alive during that time period. So I can reconstruct the environmental temperature and compare to what our best climate models simulate for that time period. 

DL: Where do you source the snail term? Are they mostly around UCLA or different parts of the world?

HB: Yeah, that’s a really good question. The actual fossil snails have come from an area in China called the Chinese Loess Plateau, as well as Central Europe. So think Hungary, Germany, that area, Central Europe, as well as the Canary Islands, which are an archipelago off the coast of Morocco, about 100 kilometers off the coast, but are basically part of Spain. So different regions, but I have explored modern snails as well around UCLA. 

What is your research and where are you in your academic journey?

DL: I’m going into my third year at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, getting a PhD in physics. But I’m also on that same path, getting a master’s in physics I think at the end of this next semester, and then I got, at the end of last semester, a certificate in photonics. But my research is more kind of optical and photonics, with a bit of computational physics thrown in there.

I focus on satellite remote sensing of different layers [of the atmosphere] interacting with each other. So aerosol-cloud-radiation-climate, just basically two surfaces coming together, and I can look at the interactions, the feedback and then model different things. And the program we use that was developed in my lab, it basically splits up the big part of the atmosphere and you can make it into a bunch of layers and in each layer, you can put different things. So you can put, if layer one is the top of the atmosphere, and layer 14 is the bottom, you can put in layer one through seven or something just Earth atmospheric gasses. And then another layer, you can put aerosols and another one, you can put a cloud. Things like that. And then at the bottom of the layers, you can put, let’s say there’s some snow, so you could put snow with larger grain sizes, which means it’s been there for longer, and then on top of it, some fresh snow. And you can kind of look at how with the incoming Sun based on where it is in the sky, based on what wavelength is coming in, the radiance or reflection of the light off of the surface. You can look at the albedo and the atmosphere, things like that. We basically just mess around with different layers, different impurities in the snow, grain size, things like that.

And we can use some test cases. So one thing that I did was a test case of a volcano eruption, and that changes the density or amount of particles in the sky, and we just messed around with that in the atmospheric gasses file and got to see how that affected all the light coming in and bouncing off. You can look at the ozone layer and things like that. Temperature, some climate change applications. 

The reason I picked him as my adviser is because I really liked science communications, and I wanted to be doing research that was at least of interest, or that people—if I do end up explaining this to, you know, the general public in a way outside of my thesis, or my dissertation—is in a way that they can understand it, they see why they should care about it, what the program does, just for real world applications. So a lot of my friends are doing things with lasers in the optics and photonics lab, which is really cool, but sometimes it’s hard for someone not in the physics field to see the practical applications of it. It’s great for advancements in our field, but in everyday life, some people need something a bit clearer, so I take something with climate change applications instead.

HB: Basically, you’re doing sort of the hard construction of models that get used to do the work that I eventually use to compare to my on-the-ground snail proxy data.

DL: I suppose so.

HB: Yeah. So coming at climate from, from two different perspectives. I think it’s pretty cool.

DL: That is pretty cool.

HB: Yeah, I know that you have a physics background. Did you have any introduction to geosciences before starting this internship? Or how did you get into physics in particular?

DL: I took my first physics class in high school, and it made sense in my head—everything happens for a reason. It’s not more of the intro bio or chemistry classes where you’re kind of memorizing definitions and terms and parts of the body and things like that. So I liked the connections that I could make in my head with physics; everything happens for a reason, this leads to this leads to this, it just felt nicer.

So I kept going with it, and then I had up until then thought I was going to be a writer or a journalist, so that was kind of in the back of my head. So when I applied to schools, depending on the school, I either put physics or journalism, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. And I had never heard of science journalism or science communications before. And when I got to—I went to undergraduate at GW, the George Washington University in DC—I became a physics major, journalism minor. But then I found some science communications and science reporting classes in the journalism school, which was kind of my first introduction. And we had some visiting professors from National Geographic and things like that. Once I kind of figured out that I liked that—because I always liked you know, tutoring or being a TA explaining things to people so that they can understand it, I always liked that I thought I was gonna be a professor for a while, but I don’t think I want to do that anymore—I kept taking my journalism classes for the minor, but I kind of worked with the professors to curate everything so that it was science related. So I took a class called “Art of the Interview”, but every single person I chose to interview was some kind of researcher. My professors were good about working with me, and then even in my physics department, the research I did for undergrad, the adviser I picked is an editor at the Physics Today, which is a physics journal. So he helped me kind of focus my research less on being super intricate research and more the communications aspect of it, which was nice.

I haven’t had a lot of experience with Earth Science prior or geophysics prior to this internship. I mean, I do a little bit with you know, I just look briefly at the volcano eruptions with the models that I do, but not super intricately. So this is- honestly I really, really like it. I wish—my undergrad didn’t offer any geophysics degrees—so I kind of wish I had had that option. A lot of things that I like, or I end up finding that I like are things that I just didn’t know about before. Not that I never kind of tried it, but just I didn’t know about it. 

Did you kind of always see yourself on this path? Or was it a decision you made later on?

HB: Yeah, well, I think I do resonate with what you just said about where you are isn’t necessarily reflective of what you were initially interested in because maybe you just didn’t know about it. Yeah, so that’s kind of where I started my journey as well. So I guess going all the way back to applying for colleges, I think very similarly to you I thought I was going to go more into a humanities program. So I actually applied pretty much everywhere as a political science major, so that’s what I was technically accepted as but pretty last minute in high school, I joined Science Bowl. So like academic decathlon, but only for sciences and the way my team functioned was we broke up the team members into different specialties of science. And so I was the earth science and astronomy person. I think as I started kind of training for Science Bowl, I just found myself way more interested in astronomy and geology than, you know, chemistry or biology. And I think that also goes back to just as a young kid, I was pretty obsessed with things like dinosaurs, fossils, and planets. So yeah, it was sort of like tapping back into a latent childhood thing.

So through Science Bowl, I started learning astronomy and geology on my own, so by the time I actually started college, I switched my major to astrophysics, which was hard coming with literally no math preparation—I didn’t take calculus in high school—so I started from the ground zero and didn’t ultimately finish with astrophysics. I bopped around between different majors before landing in Earth and Environmental Science. But it started because I took a GE class called like Earthquakes 101. The professor for that class basically took me on immediately as a research assistant as a freshman, so it was just really helpful and encouraging, and making up basically the skills that I lacked from not having the mathematical background.

But that really first got me into the idea of being a geoscience major, and then I had a very good TA experience. As a student, my TA for a different class offered to mentor me in essentially the lab that I’m still in now nine years later. So he mentored me on the same research that I’m doing now, and it just went from there. So now I’m working with Dr. Aradhna Tripati, and have been for many years at this point.

But yeah, I think there are few people that I have met that knew from early childhood that they were going to grow up and be a geoscientist. When I switched officially into our geoscience department, every single person in my classes had not gone into UCLA for that degree; they were transferring from other majors because they took a GE class that really inspired them, or they didn’t have a lot of other options, and so it was always sort of like this mishmash of people with different interests, but very competent, very curious, and finishing undergrad with that group of people was really, really awesome. Yeah, so roundabout way of coming to geoscience, but I’ve come to learn, that’s kind of how it goes for everyone. And then it’s just kind of you find yourself in a grad program, because maybe you got obsessed with something that you learned about.

DL: How did you find this internship?

HB: So I have a friend who worked for UNAVCO. She did a couple of internships, and then I think was kind of a freelancer for a bit. So I’d heard about the work that she was doing with EarthScope, and earlier this year, on a whim, I just decided to look up the website and look at the careers and internships, and I saw that they had a sci comm internship, and it was live, and I still had enough time to apply. And I guess I should say that I’ve always been interested in sci comm, but UCLA, I guess—no shade—does not have active sci comm classes. If they do exist, they’re not offered frequently and they might also be for the graduate level, and there’s a lot of restrictions on what classes that you’re allowed to take. I have just been doing my sci comm efforts sort of on the side, semi professionally.

I do work at Griffith Observatory as a museum guide, which is all about communicating in real time to people. But I never had a really professional focused opportunity to learn about how to do print science communication, or online science communication and so the internship seemed to match all of the skills that I had or wanted to develop and it was like the first time that I felt on paper, “Oh, I’m qualified for science communication”. So I applied and got the internship. 

What about you, Davie?

DL: I mean, I had—my only other sci comm internship was back in the summer of 2021. And so that was my first real world case, and that was like the semester after I took my first sci comm class. After that I was always looking when the summer time came around, you know, searching science communications internships, I would reach out to people back at SciLine where I worked, and say, “Hey, have you heard anything?” because they, you know, I’m still in touch with. There’s also a lot if you go on Twitter, if you go to #sci comm, there’s a lot of postings like that, and newsletters and things like that. So I think just in one of my searches, I found this one. I had never heard of EarthScope before, probably because I didn’t really dip into Earth science a lot previously. But when I found it, I applied, you know, not fully knowing what EarthScope was, but knowing that I wanted to do some more sci comm.

When I got it, I was a little nervous that it was too much of an only physics background, and not enough, but they took me on, they wanted my perspective on a lot of things. I mean, the first thing they threw at me was the “What is DAS” page because I had the laser background, the photonics background, that I have my certificate in photonics. But I am really grateful for it because at SciLine I learned a lot of sci comm, but I didn’t actually get to publish a ton of written sci comm. It was more interviewing, open source type of things, quotes for journalists to use, they do a matchmaking service between researchers and journalists that need certain experts for their stories. So I got to see that more of a behind the scenes thing, but not actually, in terms of writing, so this is really, really nice.

Now I can kind of see both sides of it and actually also get some things published that I can use in a portfolio, which is nice. But I do really, really appreciate all of the work that [EarthScope] does and I liked that I now have this knowledge of geophysics as well and I think I’m kind of going to keep that going. I like this kind of niche sci comm topic. And I mean, it’s always relevant. I’ve been looking for a sci comm that is relevant to most people in general public and this seems very much it. What’s been your favorite part of being one of the sci comm interns so far this summer?

HB: I think, well, I have just vastly improved all of my Adobe skills.

DL: Me too.

HB: I was familiar with Illustrator, because that’s how I kind of format and do touch ups for a lot of my figures, like my map figures coming out of Python, it’s just easier to do stylistic edits in Illustrator, but I didn’t, I very much don’t have like the design background and that’s something that going into the internship I was nervous about, because I feel that I have an eye for what aesthetically looks good. I just don’t know how to create it myself, and, you know, you got to just practice. And I think, yeah, for literally everything that I’ve done so far I’ve created the graphics, either kind of condensing and simplifying concepts and doing explainers that are sort of a TLDR version of whatever I’ve written. So it’s been really nice to kind of focus on the graphic design stuff. And I know that I can take that skill with me for a bunch of other things that I’m doing and sort of work on passion projects in a more sophisticated way.

DL: Even freelance we could continue after this.

HB: Yeah, yeah. So I have a pretty substantial, I think, amount of graphics that I could put in a portfolio at this point. I also animated for the very first time using After Effects which is really cool. So yeah, just like the artistic skills have come out and I have not had the time or the opportunity in my PhD thus far to work on these things, so that has definitely been the highlight thus far. 

What about you?

DL: I love my “What is DAS?” page. I knew Adobe Premiere Pro from undergrad and some of the classes that I took with news reporting, we had to learn Premiere Pro and basically make it as if it was a segment. I had touched Photoshop before, but not a ton, mostly just to clear up an imperfection in a photo or something, not to a huge extent. And then I had looked at Illustrator before but got overwhelmed and closed it. So this has been great. I feel really, really comfortable using Illustrator. I mean, we’ve made tons of graphics already, just kind of on a whim. I really like a lot of the posters that I’ve made and how they’ve adapted. I mean, I turned three different ones eventually into one big one, which is really cool.

The articles we kind of have on the backburner ready to be published whenever they’re more relevant, or when we get around to it, I’m really excited for those to go up because I can kind of see the timeline that we’ve put into our articles, and not even just ones on the EarthScope website, like the one for Yellowstone that we’re doing things like that. It’s really cool to see the full process and I’ve always wanted to. I’ve done articles for assignments, but never for publication besides one, one-off thing I did for this organization called Planet Forward, which is associated with one of the professors I had at GW. Yeah, so I really am excited to have some stuff published. I’ve always been really excited about that, so it’s really cool to see it kind of come to fruition. I think before the internship wraps up, I’ll try and have some more outside of just the intern interviews that we’re doing; more publication pieces to put on the website because I want to have those in a portfolio by the end of the summer.

HB: So how does this internship fit in with your future goals? I think you’ve kind of hinted at it already, but do you have a grand plan or anything like that?

DL: I used to always think I had a grand plan, but things change. For a while, like I think I said, I thought I was going to be a professor just because before I started sci comm that was my only outlet to kind of explain physics to people and it was people in intro classes. But since discovering sci comm I’ve kind of veered away from that. I’ve always known I didn’t really want to do research for the rest of my life, stay in a lab, or even just what I’m doing now is theoretical and not experimental—I just do it on a computer. But I don’t think I want to do that post grad.

I’d like to stay in sci comm, doing things like what we’re doing here, or just even an editor I’d be, I’d like to be a science editor, like at Springer Nature or places like that. This helps me at least forward it so that I can keep going with sci comm because as a grad student, there’s not a ton of opportunities, at least at my school, there is no graduate program for sci comm. There’s an undergraduate degree and I worked with the department to have—I’m taking a course next semester, a science communication seminar, so I worked with them, and they are allowing it to count for something in my master’s, which is why I’m getting a master’s next semester. So I can take that without it not counting for anything.

But I’m really excited for that because I mean, since I graduated in 2022 up until now, I haven’t really had an outlet for that. Just, you know, doing it on my own just to keep the skills going but not building the skills in any way in a professional sense. So this helps, and I’d like to keep getting roles like this when I can. I mean, once you get into your third year of a PhD program, your workload or your course load kind of goes down a bit, so I feel like I could definitely take on some either a part time role or freelance or just things like that. Yeah, this definitely helps to kind of 1. secure my passion for it. And I’m definitely sure this is what I want to do once I graduate, but 2. also help the portfolio and just keep working on those skills that I have and getting to actually do science writing in article form instead of just video form, like I’ve done in the past. What about you?

HB: I really enjoy science communication, which I think has been evident by working in a museum setting. So I think this internship I foresee will kind of help me broaden my portfolio in terms of just the skills that I have. So Adobe Suite stuff, as well, as you know, like, now I know a podcast tool that I could use. And writing about a different type of science, broadening my portfolio as I get ready to kind of look for jobs in the next six months or so.

But I think it’s something communication-wise, I’m really interested in. Something that is related to planetary science or climate science is what I’m interested in. Even climate policy related things, something that is communication heavy that allows me to kind of flex a skill of knowing the research and how to talk about the research, but also translate that to a public-facing media form, whether that’s video or print. That’s kind of what I’m interested in doing.

DL: As I’ve done more sci comm, or even just as I’ve gone forward, in the science field, I’ve realized how important sci comm is, and how many scientists don’t have the skills. And that’s, you know, what workshops, we have short courses, seminars are for. But I’ve just realized more and more, not only how much I like it, but how important it is. And that kind of fuels my continuation of it.

HB: That resonates with me, working in the climate realm. I just taught a seminar for freshmen on communicating climate change, and the very shared opinion of how pressing climate change is, how bad it is, but also differentiating between “are we doomed?” and “is there hope?” In general, everyone was very confused coming into the class about things like, “How bad are things? What can I do as an 18 year old student? How is my interest in business economics, for example, related to solving or helping to solve this crisis?” And so we had a lot of conversations about how the communication around climate change, for example, is pretty bad, and it leads to a lot of miscommunication, or misunderstanding, that leads to a lot of apathy, a lot of anxiety. And really, the onus is on scientists to learn how to better communicate and know their audience. So knowing what to say to a policymaker instead of your colleague down the hall, for example. And so I think that’s hopefully where my skills are going to be better suited, rather than contributing to the science because there are thousands of climate scientists and they’re all doing great work. But not a lot of people are becoming communicators or trying to better the science-to-policy pipeline.

DL: Basically, our TLDR is that we love not only our internship positions as sci comm career interns at EarthScope, but also have realized how important it is and how needed it is in the science community and just in general.

HB: We love to talk about science, all science. We love making sure that non-scientists understand what scientists are doing and also helping scientists be better at talking about their work so that everyday people can actually understand and care about it.

DL: I love our niche.

HB: Yes, so niche.