STEMdentity

Welcome to STEMdentity Journal Club! Every month, I find an exciting peer-reviewed journal article and interview one of its lead authors. We talk about their paper, their work, and their STEM identities.

My guest today is Chinmay Sonawane, who is a PhD candidate at Stanford University in the Department of Biology. We’re talking about his 2026 paper “Mammal Community Responses to Increasing Puma Activity in a Suburban Preserve” in the journal Ecology and Evolution. This is such a fascinating study that points to potential trophic cascades within even a relatively small wilderness space near urban corridors with pumas (aka mountain lions aka panthers!) returning to Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve ('Ootchamin 'Ooyakma) in California, USA. We also talk about easy ways to make better figures and science communication tips!

Here’s the ScienceDaily press release for Chinmay’s paper!

Song of the week: Beautiful Mess by Gin Wigmore

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes! You can also reach out on my website!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

Robert Frost said “The best way out is always through”, but that doesn’t mean that we need to do anything alone. STEM is a team sport and so is learning to work with your particular skills and strengths, not against them. That feels especially true when moving from fighting any form of neurodivergence to embracing its superpowers while navigating its challenges. This is why I’m so honored that there are people like Dr. Kimberley Corwin in the world! Dr. Corwin has a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis (same….same) and embraced this by forming a Neurodiversity Club in her home department.

Dr. Corwin is so relatable and kind to share her experiences with us, including how she formed the club and lessons learned!

Song of the week: List of Demands (Reparations) by the Kills

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes! You can also reach out on my website!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

Ok spoiler alert: if you have a super satisfying, rich social life and you get to hang out with people in all walks of your life - work, hobbies, and anything else that lights you up - this episode might not be the one for you! Don’t worry, I’ll be back next week!

And for the rest of us.... I see you. I am you. It’s never been easy for me to just “fit in” with the people I work or go to school with and it’s taken me some time to find my people in my STEM parts of my life. But I have, and I’m so excited to share some things that have really helped me!

Song of the week: Opus by Eric Prydz

And if you’re on Spotify, feel free to check out my EDM sometimes classical playlist! (Fair warning, there is always at least one song in my playlists that totally doesn’t belong….don’t judge me!)

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes! You can also reach out on my website!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

You know what’s absolutely wild to me?! People who have full time jobs and go to school at the same time. I was a full time student for all of my higher education (undergraduate and graduate school) and I barely survived being a full-time cat mom for only half of that. But! I am really fortunate enough to get to work with a ton of amazing people and students who are balancing both with such grace. Francisco Cordova is one of those amazing people and I can’t wait for you to meet him!

Song of the week: Gods in Heat by TOBACCO

BTW - I said I would link to my mom's book, A Storytelling of Ravens by Jan Hamer. She is currently having issues with her online sellers' account - please check in shortly and I'll have it linked here or at my website!

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes! You can also reach out on my website!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

Welcome to STEMdentity Journal Club! Every month, I find an exciting peer-reviewed journal article and interview one of its lead authors. We talk about their paper, their work, and their STEM identities.

My guest today is Dr. Nadia Tarakki, who is a postdoctoral researcher at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. She works at the very cool FluxLab, led by Dave Risk. We’re digging into her awesome 2026 paper Rethinking EPA Method 21 Surface Emissions Monitoring: Quantifying performance limits for methane detection at municipal solid waste landfills in the journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. We talk about both how Method 21 performed both in their modeling results and real-world test site SIMFLEX along with how other methods perform and what method made the most sense from a cost analysis!

**Small correction: Dr. Tarakki said 2013 a few times when talking about SIMFLEX-LF. It actually started in 2023!**

Follow Fluxlab on LinkedIn

Follow Dave Risk on LinkedIn

And OF COURSE you should follow Dr. Tarakki on LinkedIn!!

Excited for more? Here is the paper that we also mentioned about the 8 Canadian landfills!

2023 to 2025 SIMFLEX Reports on the EREF Website (EREF is the Environmental Research and Education Foundation!)

And all the other FluxLab papers came out on landfill emissions this year and under the Elementa Special Feature: Climate and Air Quality Impacts of Landfill Emissions: https://online.ucpress.edu/collection/11870/Special-Feature-Climate-and-Air-Quality-Impacts-of

Song of the week: Unbelievable by ADONA

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes! You can also reach out on my website!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

Making any progress at all on the things that challenge us in our STEM jobs - and our lives - is AWESOME. Celebrate the hell out of these wins! And: sometimes you need a little extra oomph to get over hurdles that are more stressful. That’s where this episode comes in…It just takes next courageous steps!

Want to hang out and do a social media challenge sharing your courageous steps? Tag me on Instagram @STEMdentity so I can celebrate the hell out of you!!

Check out the companion episode on next messy steps here: Getting past freeze and perfectionism can be easier than you think

Song of the week: it’s a two-parter this week and they’re both so good!!

Jupiter 4 by Sharon Van Etten

Jupiter by Donna Missal

Want to work with me? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity. Schedule by clicking here or DM me on Instagram, @STEMdentity!

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes! You can also reach out on my website!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

STEM is a team sport. Our scientific endeavors and engineering marvels are too complex to be handled by the same person. Today, I’m excited to talk to one of the people who are on the “front-lines” of science and engineering: Dr. Theresa Barosh, a professional science communicator for Colorado State University! Dr. Barosh got a PhD in Ecology and moved to science communication immediately after graduate school. She writes amazing articles for Colorado State University and manages the beautiful csuatmossci Instagram account.

Check out Dr. Barosh’s dissertation to learn more about why galls are the best:

Plant-mediated interactions among gall forming insects

And: her defense video and blog post - her first major post from her PhD days focused on SciComm: Beyond the Pubs: Sprucing up Your Elevator Pitch - Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University

CSU Department of Atmospheric Science Instagram:

CSU Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere blog: CIRA science stories

CIRA video quotes

Song of the week: it’s a three-parter!

Hot Blooded by New Constellations

Hot Blooded (slow//reverb) by New Constellations & Ryan Celsius Sounds

Hot Blooded - Rose City Rework by New Constellations and STRFKR

Want to work with me? I’d love to chat about episode ideas, collabs, or working with you on unblocking you from your biggest work hurdles! STEM isn’t a solo sport. Let’s not do it alone. Schedule a call with me by clicking here or DM me on Instagram, @STEMdentity!

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

There’s no right way to give a fantastic talk and yet there seems to be a stigma in STEM against having written notes with you when you’re giving a talk at a conference or other large speaking engagement. There are so many other situations in which people are reading off of written scripts (audiobooks! acting!) so let’s drop the stigma. There are ways to easily set yourself up for giving a wonderful, engaging talk even if you script out almost every single word, so let’s dig into how to do it well.

Song of the week: It’s My Life by No Doubt

Want to work with me? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentity. Schedule by clicking here or DM me on Instagram, @STEMdentity!

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

My favorite part of going to conferences is making new, unique connections that I could never have predicted. Paul Jenkins is one of those instant connections of someone who is the embodiment of someone who has figured out how to live a life well lived, with so much more to come! Paul is the CEO of two highly successful engineering firms and still spends a great deal of focus and energy on challenging and growing himself through many degrees - the latest being a PhD in Systems Engineering. We talk about so many things - the value and need for both generalists and specialists, the joy of creative hobbies, and beyond!

Song of the week: Make it Rain by Madam Waits

Want to work with me? I’d love to chat about episode ideas, collabs, or working with you on unblocking you from your biggest identity hurdles! Schedule by clicking here or DM me on Instagram, @STEMdentity!

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

Welcome to STEMdentity Journal Club! Every month, I find an exciting peer-reviewed journal article and interview one of its lead authors. We talk about their paper, their work, and their STEM identities.

My guest today is Dr. Thomas Weber, who is an associate professor at University of Rochester in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. We’re digging into his group’s 2026 PNAS journal article “Phosphate scarcity governs methane production in the global open ocean”, written with his graduate student (now graduated! congrats!) Dr. Shengyu Wang as first author and his postdoctoral researcher Dr Hairong Xu as second author. Dr. Weber has been working on ground-breaking research in nutrient cycling in oceans and open water along with methane from both oceanic and terrestrial sources and it was an honor to get to spend an hour in his world!

Song of the week: Hold My Hand by Sam Burchfield

If you loved this episode:

• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!