Tidbits of Research

My guests today are two very dear friends, Laura Yan and Maddie Reynolds. Laura is a PhD Candidate in history at Columbia University, and her research focuses on changes in migrant port workers' everyday life in Singapore from 1945 to 1979 and Indian Ocean networks of migration and capital that connected Singapore with Hong Kong and Bombay. Maddie is finishing up her PhD in English at Cornell University, studying representations of animals in a few 19th century novels (like Frankenstein or Alice in Wonderland), and she has accepted a Humanities Scholars Program postdoctoral fellowship position with the Society for the Humanities for the 2021-2022 academic year. We talk today about research in the fields of History and English, the similarities between these two fields as far as pursuing a PhD goes, transitioning to writing for your thesis, as well as how they felt undergrad prepared them for grad school. 

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My guest today is Logan Schmidt, currently a curriculum developer at Smithsonian Science Education Center, in Washington DC. She did her undergrad at Wellesley College, majoring in Biology and Classical Civilizations, and later did a Masters at Boston College in Secondary Science Education. We talk about field research, penguins, how to best engage with our communities, and the challenges and joys of curriculum development. 

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Today, I am joined by Perry Roth-Johnson, an aerospace engineer and science educator. He’s currently an Assistant Curator of Aerospace Science at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, California. We talk today about the Space Shuttle Endeavor, his numerous and varied projects at the California Science Center, the purpose of museums in our society today, but also his path to his current work from his undergrad in mechanical engineering and his PhD research on wind turbine design. 

We talk about Perry’s podcast, “Ever Wonder? from the California Science Center”, towards the end of our chat. You can check it out here.

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My guest today is Eugene Law, a doctoral candidate in soil and crop sciences at Cornell University. His broad interests revolve around environmental, economic, and social sustainability of agriculture and food systems. We talk today about the environmental benefits of using 25% Kernza (a perennial grain) flour in your bread baking (and I know we’re all doing a lot of that recently), but also his experiences as a first generation student, and his love for teaching.

You can follow Eugene Law on Twitter.

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My guest today is Janani Hariharan. She's a PhD candidate working in the field of soil microbial ecology at Cornell University, and her current research is on the Biogeography & Ecology of Streptomyces.

We chat today about terrestrial microbes, analyzing soil samples from the Adirondacks, the importance of biodiversity, but also how our identities affect how we engage with the world.

You can follow Janani Hariharan on Twitter.

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My guest is Jason Marvin, a Biomedical Engineering PhD Candidate at Cornell University. His current research is on tendon regeneration, and, in particular, finding ways to promote scarless tendon healing. He’s an (NSF GRFP) Fellow and an organizer of a number of science communication workshops. We chat today about his diverse research experiences, and his advocacy for equity and inclusion in higher education.

You can follow Jason Marvin on Twitter.

This episode was edited by Candice Limper. 

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My guest today is Dr. Ana Maria Porras, currently a Cornell Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow. She’s a biomedical engineer whose research ranges on topics from tissue engineering to the gut microbiome. Our chat today touches on critical stages in the development of your gut microbiome, the importance of a global perspective when researching diseases, as well as #microbemondays, her social media initiative which uses art to communicate science.

If you want to follow Ana Maria Porras on Instagram, you can do that here (her account in English), or here (her account in Spanish).

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We are joined today by Dr Alice Nadeau, currently an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in mathematics at Cornell University.Her research is in dynamical systems, and, in particular, their applications in ecology and climate. We talk about how the extreme axial tilt of Pluto’s could explain the existence of glaciers on its surface, the importance of a good human connection when picking your PhD advisor, and how much of her research is spurred by a need in the society that she feels mathematics can fill.

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"Tidbits of Research" is a podcast chronicling my search for interesting tidbits in the lives of researchers across diverse fields. Every episode features a conversation between myself and a researcher, in which we try to unravel the stories of their interests (research or otherwise), projects, passions, and everything in between. 

Our music is “float-and-fly” by goldguardtele.