Lab Talk with Laura

Started in 2013, the GSA On To the Future program supports student participation in the annual GSA Connects meeting by providing financial support to attend the meeting, waiving registration fees, and providing mentorship and specialized programming with GSA leadership. Ten years after the program was started, I spoke with two On To the Future alumni who have become leaders within the geoscience community. Dr. Ángel García Jr. is the current chair of GSA’s Diversity in Geosciences Committee until June 30, when David Davis will take over as chair for the next year. In this podcast, they speak about their research, their first time attending the GSA Connects meeting as On To the Future scholars, and their visions for how to enact ongoing change and progress in the geoscience community. Comedian Sean Calhoun joins as co-host. This episode was produced by Laura Fattaruso as part of the Geological Society of America Science Communication Fellowship.

Full transcript: https://tinyurl.com/gsaotf

Interviews from the Second National Conference for Justice in Geoscience. I talk to the organizers of the conference, Dr. Benjamin Keisling, Dr. Raquel Bryant, and Dr. Rachel Bernard, as well as Geological Society of America President Dr. Mark Little, and geophysicist Dr. Edith Davis.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT available at https://bit.ly/3DaTNvf

Emily Agnello explains the lab procedures used to study CaMKII, a protein in your brain that helps create and store memories. In order of appearance: Laura Fattaruso, Emily Agnello, Laura Patrick, Meg Stratton.

In this clip from episode 12, Raquel Bryant explains how small fossil shells called foraminifera can be used to understand 90 million year old oceans.

On this episode I chat on the phone with Anna Minkina, a PhD student in Genomics at University of Washington in Seattle. Anna explains the methods underlying COVID-19 testing and how understanding the method can help us understand the delays to widespread testing in the US. We also chat about her work in genomics-- tracking the lineage of cells. Check out her article on Medium that inspired our conversation: https://elemental.medium.com/the-science-behind-coronavirus-testing-and-where-the-u-s-went-wrong-7920c3fb5049

On this episode we talk to alumni of the STEMSEAS program(Student Experiences Aboard Ships) started by Sharon Cooper and Jon Lewis. I'm joined in the studio by Emma Robertson, a UMass undergrad who sailed last summer from Woods Hole, MA to Reykjavik, Iceland. Also in the studio are Raquel Bryant and Benjamin Keisling, UMass Geoscience graduate students who have both served as mentors on STEMSEAS cruises. We also hear interviews from Alhasan Alshaarbaf of the University of St. Thomas, and Michael Martins of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Visit the STEMSEAS website to learn more and apply: http://mlp.ldeo.columbia.edu/stemseas/

This episode is all about water! We are joined by Marsha Allen from Geosciences and Mimi Alkattan from Civil and Environmental Engineering. Marsha explains her work studying storage and movement of water in the fractured bedrock of the island of Tobago, in order to plan for sustainable water pumping that considers future impacts from climate change. Mimi describes her work studying drinking water quality. Many places in the world with limited water supplies only deliver water to residents at certain times, but the water systems are designed for continuous flow-- she looks into the impacts of these intermittent water supplies on water quality. Local comedian Kim DeShields (aka Boney) joins as co-host.

Dr. Tricia Serio (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UMass Amherst) and Dr. Suzanne Sindi (Applied Mathematics at UC Merced) explain their collaborative research into prion diseases using lab experiments with yeast colonies and mathematical simulations. They explain how prion diseases form and are transmitted, why they are incurable, and how their work aims to tackle that problem. They also talk about their unique collaboration as a biologist and mathematician and how these two fields have come together in recent decades. Comedian and teacher Ang Buxton joins as co-host.

For this extra special episode I'm joined in the studio by Caroline Ladlow of UMass Geoscience and comedian Lisa Wentworth. We talk about Caroline's work using lake cores to understand storms and tsunamis, and we listen to interviews with scientists at the 2018 American Geophysical Meeting: Patrick O'Brien of the Lunar and Planetary Lab at University of Arizona describes his work studying lunar weathering, Sean Bath, a program specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes projects aimed at tackling the consequences of climate change, Ruben Rojas from the Physics Dept. at University of Maryland explains his lab's work trying to create a mini magnetic dynamo with a very large rotating sphere, Dr. Sharon Cooper and Dr. Jon Lewis, co-founders of the STEM SEAS (Student Experiences Aboard Ships) Program explain how their program gives undergrads the chance to do ocean research, and Kimberly Foecke from the Anthropology Dept. at Columbia College explains why she is rotting meat in the name of science.

On this episode I'm joined by leadership from the UMass chapter of oSTEM (Out in Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math). Undergrads Sam Marsden (current oSTEM President) and Robin Zollner (co-founder of UMass oSTEM) and PhD student Sanket Sabnis (Graduate Liaison to oSTEM)explain why it's important to have representation of queer identities in science. They also explain their research in chemical engineering: Janus particles that are engineered to have two distinct properties in one particle, polymer solutions that might be able to prevent vaccines from breaking down without refrigeration, and zeolite nano-sheets that can be used to separate hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Comedian Taylor Ortiz of the sketch comedy group Felt Waffle joins as co-host.