Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
Julie Rivera Pérez Bridges Business, STEM to ‘Make the Magic Happen’
-
Similar Topics
-
By Space Force
The Department of the Air Force recorded significant audit achievements in Fiscal Year 2024, securing remediation's for all three of its audit roadmap targets, including two material weaknesses and one significant deficiency.
View the full article
-
By NASA
Associate Director for Mission Planning, Earth Sciences, and environmental scientist Robert J. “Bob” Swap makes a difference by putting knowledge into action.
Name: Robert J. “Bob” Swap
Title: Associate Director for Mission Planning, Earth Sciences
Organization: Earth Science Division (Code 610)
Robert Swap (right) and Karen St. Germain, NASA Earth science director (left) joined NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program, an eight-week summer internship program for rising senior undergraduates during summer 2023. Photo courtesy of Robert Swap What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard?
I work with our personnel to come up with the most viable mission concepts and put together the best teams to work on these concepts. I love working across the division, and with the center and the broader community, to engage with diverse competent teams and realize their potential in address pressing challenges in the earth sciences.
Why did you become an Earth scientist?
In the mid to late ’70s, the environment became a growing concern. I read all the Golden Guides in the elementary school library to learn about different creatures. I grew up exploring and discovering the surrounding woods, fields, and creeks, both on my own and through scouting and became drawn to nature, its connectedness, and its complexity. The time I spent fishing with my father, a military officer who also worked with meteorology, and my brother helped cement that love. I guess you could say that I became “hooked.”
What is your educational background?
In 1987, I got a B.A. in environmental science from the University of Virginia. While at UVA, I was a walk-on football player, an offensive lineman on UVA’s first ever post-season bowl team. This furthered my understanding of teamwork, how to work with people who were much more skilled than I was, and how to coach. I received master’s and Ph.D. degrees in environmental science from UVA in 1990 and 1996, respectively.
As an undergraduate in environmental sciences, I learned about global biochemical cycling — meaning how carbon and nitrogen move through the living and nonliving systems — while working on research teams in the Chesapeake Bay, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Amazon Basin.
Before graduating I had the good fortune to participate in the NASA Amazon Boundary Layer Experiment (ABLE-2B) in the central Amazon, which I used to kick off my graduate studies. I then focused on southern African aerosol emissions, transports and depositions for my doctoral studies that ultimately led to a university research fellow postdoc at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
What are some of your career highlights?
It has been a crazy journey!
While helping put up meteorological towers in the Amazon deep jungle, we would encounter massive squall lines. These storms were so loud as they rained down on the deep forest that you could not hear someone 10 feet away. One of the neatest things that I observed was that after the storms passed, we would see a fine red dust settling on top of our fleet of white Volkswagen rental vehicles in the middle of the rainforest.
That observation piqued my interest and led to a paper I wrote about Saharan dust being transported to the Amazon basin and its potential implications for the Amazon, especially regarding nutrient losses from the system. Our initial work suggested there was not enough input from Northern Africa to support the system’s nutrient losses. That caused us to start looking to Sub-Saharan Africa as a potential source of these nutritive species.
I finished my master’s during the first Persian Gulf War, and finding a job was challenging. During that phase I diversified my income stream by delivering newspapers and pizzas and also bouncing at a local nightspot so that I could focus on writing papers and proposals related to my research. One of my successes was the winning of a joint National Science Foundation proposal that funded my doctoral research to go to Namibia and examine sources of aerosol and trace gases as part of the larger NASA TRACE-Southern African Atmosphere Fire Research Initiative – 92 (SAFARI-92). We were based at Okaukuejo Rest Camp inside of Namibia’s Etosha National Park for the better part of two months. We characterized conservative chemical tracers of aerosols, their sources and long-range transport from biomass burning regions, which proved, in part, that Central Southern Africa was providing mineral and biomass burning emissions containing biogeochemically important species to far removed, downwind ecosystems thousands of kilometers away.
When I returned to Africa as a postdoctoral fellow, I was able to experience other countries and cultures including Lesotho, Mozambique, and Zambia. In 1997, NASA’s AERONET project was also expanding into Africa and I helped Brent Holben and his team deploy instruments throughout Africa in preparation for vicarious validation of instrumentation aboard NASA’s Terra satellite platform.
I returned to UVA as a research scientist to work for Chris Justice and his EOS MODIS/Terra validation team. I used this field experience and the international networks I developed, which contributed to my assuming the role of U.S. principal investigator for NASA’s Southern African Regional Science Initiative. Known as SAFARI 2000, it was an effort that involved 250 scientists from 16 different countries and lasted more than three years. When it ended, I became a research professor and began teaching environmental science and mentoring UVA students on international engagement projects.
Around 2000, I created a regional knowledge network called Eastern/Southern Africa Virginia Network and Association (ESAVANA) that leveraged the formal and informal structures and networks that SAFARI 2000 established. I used my team building and science diplomacy skills to pull together different regional university partners, who each had unique pieces for unlocking the larger puzzle of how southern Africa acted as a regional coupled human-natural system. Each partner had something important to contribute while the larger potential was only possible by leveraging their respective strengths together as a team.
I traveled extensively during this time and was supported in 2001 partially by a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award which allowed me to spend time at the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo Mozambique to help them with hydrology ecosystem issues in the wake of massive floods. We kept the network alive by creating summer study abroad, service learning and intersession January educational programs that drew upon colleagues and their expertise from around the world that attracted new people, energy, and resources to ESAVANA. All of these efforts contributed to a “community of practice” focused on learning about the ethics and protocols of international research. The respectful exchange of committed people and their energies and ideas was key to the effort’s success. I further amplified the impact of this work by contributing my lived and learned experiences to the development of the first ever global development studies major at UVA.
In 2004, I had a bad car accident and as a result have battled back and hip issues ever since. After falling off the research funding treadmill, I had to reconfigure myself in the teaching and program consultant sector. I grew more into a teaching role and was recognized for it by UVA’s Z-Society 2008 Professor of the Year, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s Virginia’s 2012 Professor of the Year, as well as my 2014 induction into UVA’s Academy of Teaching — all while technically a research professor. I was also heavily involved for almost a decade with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and its Center for Science Diplomacy and tasks related to activities such as reviewing the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research and teaching science diplomacy in short courses for the World Academy of Sciences for the Advancement of Science in Developing Countries located in Trieste, Italy, and the Academy of Science of South Africa.
I worked in the Earth Sciences Division at NASA Headquarters from 2014 to early 2017 as a rotating program support officer as part of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA), where I supported the atmospheric composition focus area. One of my responsibilities involved serving as a United States Embassy science fellow in the summer of 2015, where I went to Namibia to support one of our Earth Venture Suborbital field campaigns. I came to Goddard in April 2017 to help revector their nascent global network of ground-based, hyperspectral ultraviolet and visible instruments known as the Pandora.
What is your next big project?
I am currently working with the NASA Goddard Earth Science Division front office to craft a vision for the next 20 years, which involves the alignment of people around a process to achieve a desired product. With the field of Earth System Science changing so rapidly, we need to position ourselves within this ever evolving “new space” environment of multi-sectoral partners — governmental, commercial, not-for-profit, and academic — from the U.S. and beyond to study the Earth system. This involves working with other governmental agencies, universities and industrial partners to chart a way forward. We will have a lot of new players. We will be working with partners we never imagined.
We need people who know how to work across these different sectors. One such attempt to “grow our own timber” involves my development of an experimental version of the first NASA Student Airborne Research Program East Coast Edition (SARP and SARP-East), where student participants from a diversity of institutions of higher learning can see the power and promise of what NASA does, how we work together on big projects, and hopefully be inspired to take on the challenges of the future. In other words, I am pushing an exposure to field-based, Earth system science down earlier into their careers to expose them to what NASA does in an integrated fashion.
What assets do you bring to the Earth Science Division front office?
In 2020, I came to the Earth science front office to help lead the division. I make myself available across the division to help inspire, collect, suggest, and coach our rank and file into producing really cool mission concept ideas.
Part of why the front office wanted me is because I use the skills of relationship building, community building, and science diplomacy to make things happen, to create joint ventures. Having had to support myself for over 20 years on soft money, I learned to become an entrepreneur of sorts — to be scientifically and socially creative — and I was forced to look inward and take an asset-based approach. I look at all the forms of capital I have at hand and use those to make the best of what I have got. In Appalachia, there is an expression: use everything but the squeal from the pig.
Lastly, I bring a quick wit with a good dose of self-deprecating humor that helps me connect with people.
How do you use science diplomacy to make things happen?
Two of the things that bind people together about science are the process of inquiry and utilizing the scientific method, both of which are universally accepted. As such, they allow us to transcend national and cultural divides.
Science diplomacy works best when you start with this common foundation. Starting with this premise in collaborative science allows for conversations to take place focusing on what everyone has in common. You can have difficult conversations and respectful confrontations about larger issues.
Scientists can then talk and build bridges in unique ways. We did this with SAFARI 2000 while working in a region that had seen two major wars and the system of Apartheid within the previous decade. We worked across borders of people who were previously at odds. We did that by looking at something apart from national identity, which was Southern Africa. We focused on how a large-scale system functions and how to make something that incorporates 10 different countries operate as a unit. We wanted to conduct studies showing how the region operated as a functional unit while dealing with transboundary issues. It took a lot of community and trust, and we began with the science community.
What drives you?
I want to put knowledge into action to make a difference. I realize it is not about me, it is about “we.” That is why I came to NASA, to make a difference. There is no other agency in the world where we can harness such a unique and capable group of people.
What do you do for fun?
I enjoy watching sports. I still enjoy hiking, fishing, and tubing down the river. My wife and I like long walks through natural settings with our rescues, Lady, our black-and-tan coonhound, and Duchess, our long-haired German Shepherd Dog. They are our living hot water bottles in the winter.
My wife and I also like to cook together.
Who would you like to thank?
Without a doubt, it starts with my wife, family, and children whom without none of what I have accomplished would have been possible. I have had the good fortune to be able to bring them along on some of my international work, including to Africa.
I am also very grateful to all those people during my school years who stepped in and who did not judge me initially by my less than stellar grades. They gave me the chance to become who I am today.
Who inspires you?
There is an old television show that I really liked called “Connections,” by James Burke. He would start with a topic, go through the history, and show how one action led to another action with unforeseen consequences. He would take something modern like plastics and link it back to Viking times. Extending that affinity for connections, the Resilience Alliance out of Sweden also influences me with their commitment to showing connections and cycles.
My mentors at UVA were always open to serving as a sounding board. They treated me as a colleague, not a student, as a member of the guild even though I was still an apprentice. That left an indelible impression upon me and I always try to do the same. My doctoral mentor Mike Garstang said that he already had a job and that this job was to let me stand on his shoulders to allow me to get to the next level, which is my model.
Another person who was very formative during my early professional career was Jerry Melillo who showed me what it was like to be an effective programmatic mentor. I worked with him as his chief staffer of an external review of the IAI and learned a lot by watching how he ran that activity program.
With respect to NASA, a number of people come to mind: Michael King, Chris Justice, and Tim Suttles, as well as my South African Co-PI, Harold Annegarn, all of whom, at one time or another, took me under their respective wings and mentored me through the whole SAFARI 2000 process. From each of their different perspectives, they taught me how NASA works, how to engage, how to implement a program, and how to navigate office politics. And my sister and our conversations about leadership and what it means to be a servant leader. To be honest, there are scores more individuals who have contributed to my development that I don’t have the space to mention here.
What are some of your guiding principles?
Never lose the wonder — stay curious. “We” not “me.” Seeking to understand before being understood. We all stand on somebody’s shoulders. Humility rather than hubris. Respect. Be the change you wish to see.
By Elizabeth M. Jarrell
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Conversations With Goddard is a collection of Q&A profiles highlighting the breadth and depth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s talented and diverse workforce. The Conversations have been published twice a month on average since May 2011. Read past editions on Goddard’s “Our People” webpage.
Share
Details
Last Updated Nov 19, 2024 EditorMadison OlsonContactRob Garnerrob.garner@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
People of Goddard Goddard Space Flight Center People of NASA Explore More
6 min read Matthew Kowalewski: Aerospace Engineer and Curious About Everything
Matthew Kowalewski describes himself as “curious about too many things,” but that curiosity comes in…
Article 7 days ago 6 min read Inia Soto Ramos, From the Mountains of Puerto Rico to Mountains of NASA Earth Data
Dr. Inia Soto Ramos became fascinated by the mysteries of the ocean while growing up…
Article 7 days ago 5 min read Carissa Arillo: Testing Spacecraft, Penning the Owner’s Manuals
Article 3 weeks ago View the full article
-
By NASA
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Shauntina Lilly, a NASA Glenn public affairs officer, speaks to students about NASA’s available internships and educational resources during the STEM Goes Red for Girls event at Great Lakes Science Center, home of the NASA Glenn Visitor Center, on Oct. 21.Credit: NASA/Debbie Welch NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland supported this year’s STEM Goes Red for Girls event at Great Lakes Science Center on Oct. 21. The program provides seventh and eighth grade students exposure to some of Greater Cleveland’s leading STEM companies. The event also featured a hands-on exhibitor fair, speed mentoring, and educational classes.
Hosted by the American Heart Association, this year’s event welcomed its largest audience to date with 352 students and educators from 32 schools within Northeast Ohio. NASA Glenn’s presence focused heavily on internships and career advice, but also highlighted the center’s work with the Space Communications and Navigation program’s Deep Space Network. Glenn’s Julie Sufka also served as a mentor, speaking to young girls about STEM opportunities in mathematics.
Return to Newsletter Explore More
1 min read NASA Glenn Chief Counsel Named to CSU Law Hall of Fame
Article 2 mins ago 5 min read NASA Funds New Studies Looking at Future of Sustainable Aircraft
Article 20 hours ago 4 min read X-59 Fires Up its Engine for First Time on its Way to Takeoff
Article 7 days ago View the full article
-
By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
OCEANOS Investigador Principal Juan Torres-Pérez, científico investigador del Centro de Investigación Ames de la NASA, sostiene dos piezas de cianobacterias en las aguas de Playa Melones, Isla Culebra (Puerto Rico) durante la pasantía de OCEANOS 2024. El crecimiento excesivo de cianobacterias probablemente sea causado por una fuente de contaminación terrestre que se filtra hacia las aguas.NASA ARC/Milan Loiacono
Read this interview in English here
¿Cuál es tu nombre y tu rol en OCEANOS?
Mi nombre es Juan Torres Pérez. Yo soy un científico de la NASA del Centro de Investigación Ames en California particular la División de Ciencias Terrestres, la rama biofísica. Yo soy el investigador principal de OCEANOS. Océanos significa, en inglés, ‘Ocean Community Engagement and Awareness with NASA Observations and Science’ for Hispanic/Latino Students. La abreviación OCEANOS es en español a propósito, porque es un proyecto dedicado a estudiantes hispanos y latinos.
¿Cuál es la importancia de un programa como OCEANOS, particularmente en Puerto Rico?
La importancia de un programa como océanos es sencilla cuando miramos a las estadísticas de las minorías en Estados Unidos. La minoría más grande actualmente en Estados Unidos, somos los hispanos y los latinos. Sin embargo, cuando miramos al porcentaje de los latinos y hispanos que trabajan en la geociencias y muy en particular en la oceanografía, es mínimo. Eso es bien, bien pequeño. Así que traer un programa como OCEANOS a la comunidad hispana y latina y darle la oportunidad a los estudiantes a envolverse en un programa como este, es una oportunidad única y en particular, pues lo estamos haciendo en Puerto Rico: una de las jurisdicciones de Estados Unidos, mayormente de habla hispana. Y estamos trayendo esta oportunidad a los estudiantes puertorriqueños para que se envuelvan en este tipo de actividades y en la conservación de los ecosistemas marinos.
¿Qué ha sido algo gratificante de trabajar con estos estudiantes?
El año pasado, cuando hicimos el piloto, tuvimos muchos estudiantes que se nos acercaron dándonos las gracias. Muchos estudiantes nos dijeron que esta ha sido una experiencia única. Este año hemos tenido estudiantes de igual forma que ya se nos han acercado para decirnos si hay oportunidad para ser mentores para el año que viene también. Y no solamente eso: hemos tenido estudiantes que al principio, el primer día nos dijeron que no sabían nadar. Tres semanas después ya están haciendo snorkeling, están sumergiéndose, están trabajando debajo del agua y están haciendo algo único que jamás en su vida ellos pensaron que iban a ser.
¿Cuáles son algunas de las actividades que realizan los estudiantes como parte del programa?
Algunas de las actividades que los estudiantes hacen, por ejemplo, es que están caracterizando arrecifes de coral, tanto en La Parguera como en Culebra. Están trabajando con. Cuáles son las especies que dominan, cuáles son las especies que están afectadas por distintos factores, ya sean climáticos o factores antropogénicos. También están haciendo perfiles de playa para ver cómo la playa crece o se se hace más pequeña con el tiempo. También están haciendo trabajos de calidad de agua, tanto aquí en Culebra como en el área de La Parguera, para comparar cómo está la calidad de agua en los no solamente en los distintos arrecifes alrededor de Culebra y los distintos arrecifes de La Parguera, sino también cómo comparan las dos áreas; el este de Puerto Rico y el suroeste de Puerto Rico.
¿Qué es algo que espera que los estudiantes se lleven con ellos cuando se vayan?
Lo más importante que nosotros queremos que los estudiantes lleven con ellos es que se conviertan en agentes de cambio. Y esto significa que ellos sirvan de los locutores, de las personas que van a pasar la información, ya sea a sus familiares, a sus escuelas, a sus comunidades, también sus hermanos, sus hermanas, sus papás, sus abuelos; a todo el mundo. La idea es de que esto se convierta en algo en que muchas de que crezca y que entonces todas esas personas pues entiendan la importancia que es conservar los ecosistemas marinos en Puerto Rico y todas las herramientas que tenemos para poder estudiar estos ecosistemas de forma tal que podamos protegerlos.
Share
Details
Last Updated Nov 12, 2024 Related Terms
General Ames Research Center's Science Directorate Earth Science Earth Science Division Explore More
4 min read Entrevista con Instructora de OCEANOS María Fernanda Barbarena-Arias
Article 5 mins ago 4 min read Entrevista con Instructor de OCEANOS Roy Armstrong
Article 13 mins ago 1 min read Oral History with R. Walter Cunningham
Article 4 hours ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
OCEANOS PI Juan Torres-Pérez, a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, holds two pieces of cyanobacteria in the waters of Playa Melones, Culebra Island (Puerto Rico) during the 2024 OCEANOS internship. The cyanobacteria overgrowth is likely caused by an on-land source of pollution leeching into the waters.NASA ARC/Milan Loiacono
What is your name and your role with OCEANOS?
My name is Juan Torres-Pérez. I am a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in the Earth Sciences division, biospheric sciences branch. I am the PI of OCEANOS, which stands for Ocean Community Engagement and Awareness with NASA Observations and Science for Hispanic/Latino students.
What is the importance of a program like OCEANOS, particularly in Puerto Rico?
When you look at the statistics in the in the US, the Hispanic/Latino community is one of the largest minorities across the continental US and jurisdictions like Puerto Rico. But in the geo sciences, the percentage of Hispanic and Latinos is very, very small, including in Puerto Rico. So that’s where we wanted to propose a project like OCEANOS: to engage Hispanic/Latino students in Puerto Rico in geosciences. Specifically, engaging students in oceanography and the use of remote sensing and NASA data to study coastal marine ecosystems.
What are some of the activities that the students do as part of the program?
For example here in Culebra, students study the coral reefs and their different components. What was the condition of the corals per se? The different coral species and their status. They’re also doing beach profiles, to measure whether the beaches have shrunk over time.
One of the other things that they’re doing is measuring water quality in a few different sites in Culebra [Island] and also in la Parguera on the southwest coast of Puerto Rico, so they can compare the water quality in the east of Puerto Rico against the Southwest.
What is something that has been rewarding about working with these students?
Something rewarding is just to see their faces. Last year when they finished the program and this year as they go through the different experiences, you see how they’re learning. You see how they become engaged and how they participate in the in all the different activities. Most of the evenings, event late at night they’re still working on the data and they want to continue working with the data. So that tells you that this is something that they really enjoy and that they want to do for the future.
What growth or change do you see in the students over the course of the internship?
For one example, we’ve had students here that on the very first day told us that they didn’t swim, and we brought them to the water in the first week. We gave them some pointers, we talked to them about safety in the water, and taught them some techniques. And now, less than three weeks later they’re diving; they’re literally diving in the water collecting data and doing everything that we tell them to do. So that for us is a win-win situation.
What has been a challenge of the program?
A challenge for us is more on the on the logistics of bringing in so many students, particularly to the to the southwest coast and also to Culebra Island. These are both big tourism sites in Puerto Rico, which makes it tough for logistics like finding a place for them to stay. In the case of Culebra, we have to buy the ferry tickets to bring them to the island, the transportation and all of that. But at the end of the day it’s so rewarding that it’s definitely worth it.
What is something that you hope the students take with them when they leave?
We want the students to become agents of change. That means that they can pass on to their communities, their families, all their relatives, and their schools all the knowledge that they gain through this whole month, and eventually get others enthusiastic about not only engaging in activities like this, but also in preserving the ocean. We have some of the most beautiful coral reefs in the Caribbean here, and they’ve been suffering from a lot of different climate-related and anthropogenic activities. If we get them to tell others that we need to preserve this [marine ecosystem], and then they follow the same steps, that’s the long-term goal for us.
What are some of the environmental changes you’ve noticed in and around Puerto Rico?
One example is that nowadays there are several invasive species that have been affecting the coral reefs for at least the past couple decades and some of them even more recently. For instance, the introduction of the lionfish in the Caribbean has devastated some of the most important fish populations, such as groupers and snappers, which affects the whole food web. There are also a number of invasive seagrass species and also some other invertebrates that are literally colonizing all the areas that used to be covered by corals and the local seagrass species, and that disrupts the whole ecosystem.
Many of them are a consequence of human introduction. Most of these species are actually from the Pacific, and come in or on ships as they go through the Panama canal and eventually they get into the Caribbean. Some of the larvae and such are in there, and then they find a new place to stay and reproduce.
Some other species are probably related to climate change: the increase in surface temperatures the changes in currents and such. This is something that’s still being studied by a lot of scientists in the Caribbean and also in the in the Atlantic.
Do you see any climate change-related effects in Puerto Rico?
In particular one of the biggest changes that we have seen in terms of climate change and its impact on coral reefs is the increasing surface temperatures. We are literally going through a global coral bleaching event. That has been happening in the last in the last few years and that has affected many of the coral species in the Caribbean and many other parts in the world. Once the coral gets bleached it becomes weakened, and eventually a lot of these colonies die. Once they die they get covered by filamentous algae, and there’s no way back from there. That affects the whole ecosystem, including fisheries and others. Also, some of the coral diseases may also be triggered by these changes related to climate.
Read More Share
Details
Last Updated Nov 11, 2024 Related Terms
General Ames Research Center's Science Directorate Earth Science Earth Science Division Explore More
4 min read Interview with OCEANOS Instructor María Fernanda Barbarena-Arias
Article 19 mins ago 3 min read Interview with OCEANOS Instructor Samuel Suleiman
Article 28 mins ago 4 min read Interview with OCEANOS Instructor Roy Armstrong
Article 28 mins ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.