Welcome to STEMCasts: Capturing the journeys of successful STEM professionals. In this episode, we have a conversation with Raja GuhaThakurta, an Astronomer & Professor at UC Santa Cruz who's research is focused on the formation and evolution of galaxies. His group at UCSC led the SPLASH survey of red giant stars in our closest large neighbor Andromeda (M31) and its dwarf satellites using the Keck II 10-m telescope and DEIMOS spectrograph.  Link to the very successful Science Internship Program founded by Prof. Raja GuhaThakurta Highlights from this episode include:

• Recollections on becoming a latent carrier of the "astronomy bug" at an early age
• Taking the plunge at Princeton, succeeding in spite of challenges
• The people part of the journey, the most important part
• Get acquainted with Andromeda: our nearest neighbor.
• What it takes to succeed in STEM and Raja's advice for high school students.

Thanks to our host for this episode: Emily Cunningham, Graduate Student at UC Santa Cruz.

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