Internships, conferences, and grad school: A space student's guide

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So you want to pursue higher education in space science and exploration. We've got some tips this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of The Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. This week, we're exploring the challenges and rewards of pursuing higher education in space-related fields. From internship insights to conference strategies and grad school survival tips, we've got you covered.

First, Elizabeth Koenck, our new Zed Factor Fellowship intern at The Planetary Society shares her story of the power of space internships as she pursues her future in space policy. Sara Miller, who's an organizer of AbGradCon and a PhD candidate at Cornell discusses how to best leverage conferences. Then Briley Lewis, a PhD graduate at UCLA and a correspondent at STARtorialist lets you know how to survive grad school and celebrate in the process. We'll close out our show with Bruce Betts, our chief scientist in What's Up? Our new children's book series about planets, which was written by Bruce, is sure to fire up the imaginations of the young space fans out there.

If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. But before we get into the bulk of today's show, I want to send a congratulations from everyone here at The Planetary Society to all the people around the world that helped make NASA's Europa Clipper mission possible.

The spacecraft blasted off on its way to Jupiter and its moons earlier this week on Monday, October 14th. It was a beautiful launch in the culmination of decades of work. We'll share more about that next week, but in the meantime, take a moment in the coming days to go out there and look up at the skies and imagine Europa Clipper cruising on its way to Jupiter. It's going to help us unlock the mysteries of Europa's subsurface ocean and its potential for life. This is a big moment in the history of space exploration. Congratulations, everyone. We finally have a dedicated mission to Europa on its way.

Now, for a few years, The Planetary Society has been working with an organization called the Zed Factor Fellowship to provide internship opportunities to students. The Zed Factor Fellowship connects aspiring aerospace professionals from historically excluded backgrounds with organizations in the aerospace industry to help them build their careers. Elizabeth Koenck, our new intern, hopes to pursue a job in space policy. She's been working with our team in Washington, D.C. to learn more about how to shape the future of space exploration. One of her major projects here at The Planetary Society is finding new ways to empower space advocates outside of the United States. Here's her story of the power of internships and the ways that space science fosters international collaboration.

Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Koenck: Hi, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's wonderful to meet you.

Elizabeth Koenck: It's great to meet you. Thank you for having me here.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: You're one of our interns working with our space policy team. How did you first become interested in space policy?

Elizabeth Koenck: Yeah. I think, for me, it goes back a long way. I think I've always been interested in space in some capacity. Part of it grew up in Colorado. I can drive 20 minutes from home and I can see the Milky Way, and I think that just gives you this tangible appreciation of space that doesn't exist everywhere. And then growing up, I always liked science. I always was interested in that. I competed in science fairs for physics projects. I took several years of physics when I was in high school. For a long time, that was the plan, just study physics, go do all this cool stuff. Fortunately for me, as someone who never liked doing labs and all that very much, I discovered that there are other options out there and I became really interested in studying international relations.

That's a whole different long story, but for a while I thought that would be a complete journey away from studying space, from talking about space. A girl from my high school came back and spoke to one of my classes about how she had gone to Johns Hopkins for international relations, realized, "Well, she still loves space and she found a way to work in space policy," and that's kind of what did it for me. Now, I'm a student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. where there's this increasing dialogue about how space and international relations interact and what that means in the future. Space is something for everyone. That's really interesting to me.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's so funny how so many of us got into these space careers being like, "I want to know the mysteries of the universe." And then through that ended up thinking, "You know what I want to do? Here's my specialized niche within this. I want to do science communication or I want to do space policy." There's so many options for people out there that are far beyond just doing the math and building the spaceships.

Elizabeth Koenck: Yeah. And I wish I had realized that sooner, because there was this time period where I was like, "Well, it's one or the other. You can't do both." And it's good to know that science isn't just for scientists and there are other ways to interact with it. There's other people that are needed in science.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: How did you end up as an intern at The Planetary Society?

Elizabeth Koenck: Last January, I applied to the Zed Factor Fellowship. That's a fellowship that helps underrepresented groups, so women, minorities, people with financial need, get access to internships in space. I learned about it through the Georgetown University Space Initiative. I applied, I interviewed with The Planetary Society, and they accepted me as an intern, which is super exciting.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Zed Factor Fellowship is just doing such wonderful things and every intern we get from the organization just adds something so wonderful to our group. It's wonderful that this exist, because I know for me as a woman from the Middle East and just as a woman in general, I felt like there were so many barriers in front of me when I wanted to get into space. It's really cool having an organization like this that tries to set people like you up with a dream and an organization that can help you facilitate that.

Elizabeth Koenck: No, I absolutely agree. I think especially with internships which are so complicated, they can be unpaid. It can be so hard just to gain a foothold gain experience in an industry which of course is a prerequisite for any job. I think it's so important that there is an organization out there just dedicating itself to finding people who have this interest, who have these talents, and making sure they can make their dreams possible somehow. So I really appreciate that they do that.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I know there's probably a lot of different organizations you could have ended up working with, but you ended up with us. What is your read on The Planetary Society and what has your time been like so far?

Elizabeth Koenck: I think every day I get a little bit more impressed, to be honest. I wasn't sure what it was going to be like going in. I've worked for nonprofits before but this is a different setup. It's about advocacy. It's really interesting just to see the way the organization functions. I think the work that The Planetary Society does, both US and abroad, is really good and important and I'm glad someone's doing it. I've really enjoyed my internship so far. Gotten to just learn a lot about the space world. I haven't taken any classes on it in school, so it's cool just to be able to learn a little bit more about the history of space policy, the history of space exploration, and then apply that to our modern day problems.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What are some of the adventures you've been able to go on so far?

Elizabeth Koenck: I'm a government relations intern. I'm based in Washington, D.C. so I've been able to go to the Hill to a few meetings. I've gone to the Space Capitol Forum by Payload, a couple events like Legacy of Light was a Space Business Roundtable.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And recently you got to hang out with some of the people from Australia who were interested in space as well, right?

Elizabeth Koenck: Yeah. The Space Capitol Forum, which was held by Payload, they released a newsletter all about space. It's great. Highly recommend. Was at the Australian Embassy and there are representatives from all sorts of Australian companies there, so it was really interesting to be able to see this new and emerging space market and how they're interacting with everyone here in D.C.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So while you're working with us, what is your focus?

Elizabeth Koenck: I am working on some of that space policy stuff, the government relations stuff, building those relationships with Congress to ensure space gets its funding. But most of my time is dedicated to a research project about how The Planetary Society can better engage with its members abroad. Planetary Society has a lot of members who don't live in the US and a lot of our advocacy focuses on US and NASA-centric issues, so learning about how other space agencies function, what opportunities exist for members to engage with their governments, and hopefully lead to international advocacy efforts around the world.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. We've had a lot of collaboration with international space agencies, but each and every one of them is different. It's still very meaningful that we do most of our work with NASA, because it is the largest and most well-funded space program. It feeds into partnerships all around the world, but there is so much that we could do to allow people to interface directly with their space agencies and with their governments. But as I said, that's a really complicated thing. What are some of the biggest challenges you're finding in trying to figure out how to facilitate that connection?

Elizabeth Koenck: First of all, I'll just stress how important this is. I think my interest in international relations and space comes from this idea that space is global. Every single country could one day have access to space and we need to figure out how to better collaborate. That means engaging people as well. It's a challenge, though. Every agency is different, every government works differently. We're really lucky here in the US that it's so easy to go to our members of Congress to go directly to NASA to advocate for the things we want to see. And that's not true everywhere. Or if it is, it's more bureaucratic, there's more steps, or we just don't have the connections in place to be able to facilitate that. So I think it's just building up that network and learning how advocacy works. That's the biggest challenge right now.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's a really complex thing. I mean, if you take even one of them, like the European Space Agency as an example, that's a bunch of smaller space agencies from different nations which all have their own rules. They're all collaborating in this larger system together. It's basically a bunch of separate space agencies in a trench coat together pretending to be one entity. And that's a really hard thing to master. How do you go about learning about each of these space agencies that you can find a meaningful way for people to do this advocacy work?

Elizabeth Koenck: I love that description of a bunch of space agencies in a trench coat. It's even more complicated than that, because for ESA, not every country even has a space agency. Some of them just have an office housed under some other department that helps direct space policy, so it gets really complicated. I think I've just been approaching it, trying to learn as much about these space agencies as I can. They publish lots of information. Other people publish information. A lot of them work with NASA. What does that look like and how does that inform their work?

And then in terms of advocacy, trying to research well. How does the budget process work for each of this agency in each of these countries? And then what opportunities already exist for citizen engagement? Sometimes, those are limited, so then it's asking, "Okay, well, if these opportunities don't exist here exactly, how else can people engage?" In Canada, it can be hard to advocate for space funding just because the process of departmental priority list is complicated. Organizations and movements like Don't Let Go Canada have had a lot of success doing grassroots organizing, so it's then learning about, "Okay, what might grassroots movements look like in these various countries and how can those help our members get what they want today?"

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. Because if systems don't already exist for people to do this kind of advocacy, we can then try to form steps to allow people to make those connections. Maybe in the future, we can find a way to do more advocacy and impact those spaces and agencies through this process. But I mean, it's a very large thing. I'm thinking specifically of these kind of rising space agencies that we've been seeing more recently, like the Indian Space Research Organisation has been absolutely crushing it. Their missions have been pivotal and it's wonderful seeing that nation go through its own kind of Apollo era almost.

Everyone there is so excited, but how do the people there interface with their government to try to support these missions? And then how do we use that same kind of logic in nations that are just starting out? You've got places like Australia or the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, that have these space agencies but they're getting started. They've got some space missions going, but they're just getting on the ground. So if we can make the impact early, we can hopefully help create this bridge so that there is a larger, more robust system of communication between the people and that space agency.

Elizabeth Koenck: Absolutely. A lot of it is just building up those connections, reaching out to people, asking the agencies themselves what opportunities exist. I think an important thing, too, is to recognize that The Planetary Society, our infrastructure is built to do this advocacy in the US. And in order to do this effectively abroad, we need to recognize that other countries have different systems and we have to be able to work within those systems and understand that they might function in different ways. That doesn't mean it's dysfunctional, it just means it's different.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, come on, if we can actually help support these space agencies, help everyone get the advocacy that they need, and then build those bridges so they can all collaborate together, just imagine what opportunities that would bring up in space. We won't have to be so upset as an example that NASA is losing funding for X mission when we know that India is going to do it or China is going to do it. It really takes a lot of that pressure off so that we can be a little less sad about it and a little more joyous as we help support all the space agencies around the world.

Elizabeth Koenck: I agree. This kind of speaks to my own personal passion in this area, which is ensuring that countries around the world have access to space because space, as we well know, is such a valuable tool for national security, for people, for building sustainable food systems, for environmental monitoring, and every country should have access to these tools. Making sure these new space agencies that are coming up have access to them and facilitating that for the people in those countries is going to be so important to ensure that space is an area for all the people of the world, not just people who live in a country with NASA.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well said. I mean, honestly, as a child, I don't know what my experience would've been like if I didn't have the knowledge that someday I could grow up and use my space dreams to actually form a career. If I thought I had to jump through hoops to immigrate to another country or those opportunities just weren't there for me, who knows how that could have changed the trajectory of mine or your life?

Elizabeth Koenck: Oh, absolutely. I think about that all the time. The thing is it shouldn't be that way, because we can all... No matter where on planet Earth we are, we can look up at the sky. We can see the same sky up there, Northern Hemisphere, the same stars, Southern Hemisphere, the same stars, and we should all have access to that.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, before I let you go, what are you hoping to do with all of this in the future? Where are you hoping to take this career?

Elizabeth Koenck: That's a great question. It's one I ask myself every day. I will say I think opportunities are rising everywhere. Every day, space is revolutionizing itself every moment. Last week, a really good report came out from RAND about how the Space Force can use its technology for human security to help people, to look for human trafficking, to look for environmental concerns, to protect against famines. And I think doing research in that area is something I'm looking forward to in the future. Honestly, we'll see where it all takes me. I think that's still to be determined.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, we'll see and I know everyone here will be cheering you on along the way as we do with all the interns that come through. We love seeing their journey afterwards and where they end up in life, so I wish you seriously all the luck.

Elizabeth Koenck: I appreciate that so much. Thank you so much.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks, Elizabeth. Internships and research positions are great ways to build up your connections and skills and so are conferences. They're key to helping students build community and find job and research opportunities. Our next guest is Sara Miller, a PhD candidate in Earth and Atmospheric Science at Cornell University. She was one of the organizers for this year's Astrobiology Graduate Conference or AbGradCon. AbGradCon has been around for nearly two decades and is organized by students and faculty that hope to build an interdisciplinary and inclusive astrobiology community. It fosters collaboration and provides practical training for early career scientists.

This year, the conference was held at Cornell University from June 6th through the 14th. There were 101 conference participants from first year graduate students to postdocs. They came from 10 countries and 59 different universities and institutions. This conference along with others is free to attendees because there are many generous people out there who want to support students who want to build these connections. The Planetary Society, with the support of the Halicioglu Family Foundation gift, sponsored 20 international students to attend the conference.

Our decision to sponsor international students who wanted to attend this event came from feedback that we received during our internal Search for Life Symposium earlier this year. Sara Miller had such a wonderful and transformative time at one of the previous AbGradCon that she decided to become one of the organizers this year.

Hi, Sara. Thanks for joining me.

Sara Miller: Hi. Yes, thank you for having me.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I was speaking in a recent meeting with some of my colleagues about this episode and all of the people I'd spoken with about their journey toward becoming a graduate student and what that's like. And immediately, Jen Vaughn, our COO, mentioned that I had to talk to you because of our recent involvement in AbGradCon. How did you get involved in organizing this event?

Sara Miller: I was first an attendee of AbGradCon last year. It was my third year of graduate school and it was held at UC San Diego and it was a wonderful event. It was just really impactful on me and my science journey, science career. I met some really great people who I'm still close friends with to date. I found some people to collaborate with in my research and I'm very fond of the history of AbGradCon and what it's done for graduate students. It's really a low stakes way to present your research.

It's a peer-to-peer environment, so it's a great way to practice presenting and sharing your science. I really wanted to have a hand in making it even better the next year. My advisor, Dr. Britney Schmidt, here at Cornell, she during her time as a graduate student was an organizer of AbGradCon and was really supportive of me picking up the baton and trying to do that this past year. I had a lot of really great support here at Cornell and I had a really great experience in San Diego last year, so I was excited to do it again locally.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's really wonderful when you find an event that makes such a difference in your personal life that you want to then take that next step and really support it because you know what it could mean for other people.

Sara Miller: Absolutely, yeah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. And thankfully, I think depending on timing, we might have Britney Schmidt on the show next week to talk about the Europa Clipper launch. That'll be really cool to let people get to know her a little better.

Sara Miller: I hope so. She's really incredible. She's just done so much in the field already and it's pretty spectacular.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. I had a great time with her in Washington, D.C. this last year at our Day of Action. It's wonderful how just getting into this community, you see these people on their journeys. And particularly at conferences, you end up bumping into them and forging these friendships that can make a huge difference in your career.

Sara Miller: I think it's so helpful, especially because astrobiology in general is such a kind of inherently multidisciplinary field that collaboration is so important. I think you can be really impactful in the field as a physicist or a chemist or a biologist, but you really need to work with others who know other pieces of the puzzle. It's great because most people know Britney. I think everybody I've met in the field, they're like, "Oh, yes, I know Britney. I have a great experience or story or something with her." It's nice to go to conferences for that reason. I think they're so important for building and maintaining your community and your network.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: But especially when we're talking about something like trying to understand life on other worlds, this is a field that, while it has a long legacy, is only kind of crystallizing. We're finally having technologies and missions that are allowing us to do this work, which necessarily means that a lot more people are going to begin to try to pursue those careers. I think AbGradCon and other conferences in this vein can really allow people to help shape those careers through their connections. What do you think is the most powerful bit about AbGradCon and these other graduate conferences that can help people to make these connections and actually form the career that they're hoping for?

Sara Miller: I think the diversity of science that's shared is so impactful when you go and you hear about your peers who are studying in the lab like nanoscale microbes and biosignatures, and then you see people who are going into the field and going to places like Western Australia and studying hypersaline lakes and things on macro scales. It's so interesting just to see the broad spectrum of what you can do to contribute in astrobiology. I think it's a really neat opportunity to see what's out there and see options for where you could go in your career because there's really so many different areas where you can contribute meaningfully.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I did have that issue personally when I was going through school. I knew what I wanted to do, but trying to connect that to how to find a career doing that was very challenging. Going to these events, I think, is a really powerful way to actually find those career paths that you might not be aware of.

Sara Miller: Yeah, absolutely. I think to talk to your peers, too, and really... Not necessarily commiserate, but really just share experiences with like, "I'm in the job hunt now," or just hear how other people are finding opportunities or using their research meaningfully. It's a great way to just bounce off of each other and really learn from your peers on how they're making an impact in the field and planning their futures.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We're all on our own unique journey, but it can feel very lonely when you don't know what to do next or you're struggling with the thing that you're working on. It's that power of friendship and that power of connection and seeing your struggles in other people that can really allow you to contextualize that and push through those challenging moments so that you can actually have that career that you want.

Sara Miller: Absolutely. I think the overarching goal of AbGradCon is really to give young planetary scientists an opportunity to share their science, but I think maybe even more than that observationally, what I've seen at the conference itself is that people build a stronger community that they rely on their entire careers. I know from Britney, my advisor, that she still is in contact and close contact with the people that she planned and attended AbGradCon with, which is such a cool, I think, example of how lasting these relationships are and meaningful.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I think a lot of people that go into these complex scientific fields grapple with two things. Primarily this idea of imposter syndrome like, "How do I fit into the context of this? Am I worthy of being here? Am I smart enough to do this?" And then there's the secondary issue of, "Do I feel represented in my field? Am I welcome in this community?" How do you feel like AbGradCon helps people deal with those feelings or hopefully overcome them?

Sara Miller: That's such a great question, because I personally have really struggled with imposter syndrome over the years. I came into astrobiology from aerospace engineering where I was very much in the minority as a woman. And then when I switched fields in my graduate career, I felt like, "Oh, I don't have the right background." It's more about, I think, how you look at it. Britney was so supportive in saying like, "Your engineering background and the fluid dynamics that you studied and everything you've done to this point is useful. You can use it towards adding a good fresh perspective to astrobiology." I think that's one of the beauties of going to these events and these conferences is you'd be hard-pressed to find something with your exact background or find somebody who shares your exact background. I think it's great to go there and to see how everybody really contributes something very unique and very different. It all adds to the field in different ways and I think it helps knowing that there's not a right way to go through graduate school or to get a job in astrobiology because there's not really that many ways that are repeated. I think people are successful in taking very different paths and it's neat to see the diversity of that at these events.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Do you have any advice for people on the best ways to network or leverage those connections after you make them at the conferences?

Sara Miller: For example, coming up in the end of the year is another big conference for a lot of people in astrobiology. It's the American Geophysical Union general meeting. AGU is just a really a large meeting ground for people of different fields. In our astrobiology and AbGradCon community, we were already talking about, "Who's going to be there? Where are you presenting and when can we meet up?" And I know after AbGradCon this last year, even remotely different chats were set up for the microbiologist and the geochemist just to keep sharing relevant research and tools that they've found.

I think now it's even easier to hop on a Zoom call with somebody and catch up. I know I often, with the close group of organizers that I worked with, we have coffee chats where mostly we just talk about our lives and have coffee and chat. But occasionally it is sharing how our research is going and what progress we've made and what tools we've found. So I think it's so easy to maintain connections now and especially if you attend more events and you have opportunities to renew those connections in person.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Anytime I'm at these events in person, it's really magical to see the connections that people put together. When you start talking about the issues that you're having with a particular thing you're researching or something you've been thinking about in general, there's always someone there that has some interesting insight and suddenly you're in a collaboration together.

Sara Miller: I love that. Yeah, I think it's so helpful, too, to see what other people are doing and how they're approaching their research. It can often, even later, I think, influence how you approach your own. I think it's so helpful just to stay connected.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What are some of your favorite moments from this year's AbGradCon?

Sara Miller: I will preface this with there was so much amazing science shared. Last year when I attended AbGradCon as an attendee and then this year as an organizer, I am floored by some of the science that's shared, things I didn't know you could do, and just really interesting fresh perspectives. But my favorite moments are the little things that went into organizing it and building that connection with those participants. There was a moment where... It was a lot of people. It was like over 100 attendees. I went to go pick up pizzas for one of the dinners and I filled my SUV entirely to the brim with pizzas and I was driving back to the event with another organizer and balancing pizzas on our lap. I think my car still smells like pizza. You go there and everybody knows you at that point, so everybody pitches in to come and help shuttle pizzas to the dining area.

I think it's the little things. You really almost instantly rely on those people to help you with your science and moving pizzas. It's really great. We had movie nights. We kind of watched and we did a sing-along to Mamma Mia most nights, because after science is done, you just want to do anything else to let some steam off and give your brain a break. There's lots of karaoke at night and just a really fun way to decompress from trying really hard to share your science well and to be a sponge and to absorb all of the great information that's being shared at the conference.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's always the after hours karaoke that is my favorite part.

Sara Miller: Oh, I love it. That's the part that you remember and I think that really solidifies the bonds that are built there and it's really... It's so great.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, for people who aren't into this specific realm of science, do you have any recommendations for how to find the conference that best suits your needs and your future career?

Sara Miller: Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't be afraid to step outside of what you think are the bounds of your research. Astrobiology, as I mentioned before, it's so inherently multidisciplinary. I think you can be a valuable contributor coming from a lot of different fields and perspectives with different research. AbGradCon, it could be a great first conference for a lot of people. It's a great way to share your science if you don't have a lot of background presenting at conferences.

One of the beauty of the conference is it's fully funded for graduate students, so you apply and, with the help of our amazing donors like The Planetary Society, we're able to bring students here with funding. That's great, but I think just not being afraid to step outside of the bounds of your own field. I've presented my own research, which is in planetary oceanography and specifically Europa at Earth oceanography conferences where I really have to go and show more background about Europa as a moon of Jupiter and it has this global ocean. And then, of course, kind of very niche astrobiology science conference, AbSciCon, where, of course, you don't need to do that background. You really just dive into the model and the results, but of course you need to maybe explain more oceanography background.

You approach it different ways, but I think not being afraid to go outside of your comfort zone a little bit and connect with different communities because it's amazing how many people can help you with your research who aren't necessarily strict astrobiologists or whatever your field is.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And who knows, you might stumble upon a topic or someone you want to collaborate with and suddenly you're realizing that the thing that you thought your career was going to be could be something else, and you can apply that science to a totally different realm of discovery.

Sara Miller: Absolutely. I mean, that's how I found astrobiology, too, is I didn't even know about it until I'd already started a PhD program in electric propulsion engines. I'm still so passionate about electric propulsion, but in the course of my master's degree back at Georgia Tech, I took an elective class in planetary science just because I needed a science elective and it was available and it sounded interesting and it fit my schedule well more than anything. I was hooked. It was so fascinating and I remember having a conversation with that professor and saying, "Man, I wish I knew this was an option when I was choosing graduate programs." And he's like, "Sara, if it's too late for you to switch fields, God help the rest of us because you have so much career ahead of you. If you love this, go for it." It was all the encouragement I needed, but I really think it's so great to expose yourself to go take classes outside of your field and to attend conferences outside of your field and to just really try to be a sponge and absorb as much as you can from as many people as you can.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, thanks for being the kind of person that has this experience that impacts your life and then sharing it with others. I think that's a really powerful and uplifting thing to do.

Sara Miller: Oh, absolutely. I think as much as you can prevent those feelings of imposter syndrome and make this community more welcoming and accepting, the better. Really, I think it's better for everybody.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Absolutely. I mean, so many of us have had to overcome these feelings. The more people we can get together, the more we can impress upon people that this isn't just about you and your innate abilities. This is about us all working together to solve some of the biggest mysteries in the history of humanity. It's all right if you don't get it right the first time and it's okay to lean on your friends and the people that you connect with. If we can do that, I think we can make this a really welcoming community.

Sara Miller: Yeah. And just not being afraid to ask for help and to really lean on your collaborators and your peers. It's great.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. Well, I'm glad that we could help send people out for this event and I hope you have a good AbGradCon next year.

Sara Miller: Thank you. Yes, I'm excited about next year's event. I think AbGradCon 2025, it's going to be held in Boulder, Colorado at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The organizing team was all in attendance at this past AbGradCon, so I think the baton has been passed and they're already doing such a good job about making it even better and more inclusive. Yeah, it's going to be great.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Changing people's lives one conference at a time. You never really know how it's going to [inaudible 00:33:29] people.

We'll be back after the short break.

Thanks so much for joining me, Sara.

Sara Miller: Thank you for having me.

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Sarah Al-Ahmed: I've made so many wonderful connections at these conferences. You never know when a chance meeting could completely change the course of your life. Networking and seeking opportunities that can help you build out your resume are helpful, but if you want to go into space science, a key factor is making sure that you have the community support you need to make it through your education. As we've spoken about in recent weeks on the show, I'm a huge fan of showing my love for space through the outfits and jewelry that I wear.

One of my favorite online shops is STARtorialist. It's a woman-owned small business that was founded by professional astronomers. A few weeks ago, I got one of their emails in my inbox. It was celebrating one of their graduate student correspondents who's our next guest, Dr. Briley Lewis. She recently got her PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles or UCLA.

As part of processing this huge moment in her life, Briley wrote an article for STARtorialist called What is a Ph.D., and Why is Celebrating it Important? Getting a PhD is a huge and admirable undertaking no matter what field you go into, but there are some unique challenges when it comes to pursuing a doctorate in space-related fields. Briley's been through all of it and she's got some great advice for students, along with the friends and family that want to support them.

Briley's worked with many organizations over the years, including Astrobites, Scientific American, Popular Science, and Space.com. Her research focuses on high-contrast imaging of exoplanets and debris disks. Now that she's got her PhD, she's moving on to her next chapter in life as a post-doc.

Hey, Briley.

Briley Lewis: Hi. Nice to see you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Or should I say Dr. Lewis?

Briley Lewis: Yeah, that's still unreal. Absolutely unreal.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's got to be a really wacky feeling after so many years working towards this. I mean, I think people do have some understanding that getting your PhD is difficult, but the sheer time, commitment, and the scale of the work that goes into it is something that I don't think a lot of people really generally appreciate.

Briley Lewis: Yeah. It was very strange because it's something that I've worked on for so long that it just became like this is what my life is now. It almost seemed like I can keep doing this indefinitely and it's fine. I'm doing research, I'm hanging out. On the day of my actual defense, I thought it was going to be this triumphant moment. And if anything, it was just this weird... You know the feeling you get when a Netflix show ends and you're like, "Oh, God, what comes next"? It feels like emptiness. It was more of that and I basically stared at a wall in my office the rest of the day, just trying to process that six years of working on this thing was over.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Sometimes when those big moments come, it doesn't hit you all at once. You just got to take that moment to decompress and then it'll hit you in the small moments. You'll be cooking eggs two weeks later and suddenly it's like, "I did that."

Briley Lewis: Yeah, that's pretty much exactly how it's been.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I think that's why it's so important to take these moments to celebrate every step along the way. It's one thing to internally process, but it's another thing to have the people around you really support you in your journey and to mark those big moments and to take the moment to celebrate, because how are you as a single person supposed to process this huge thing you've just been through without the support of your community and your friends and your family there to really mark those moments with you?

Briley Lewis: Yeah, exactly. I feel very lucky that I've had a really supportive community around me all of grad school. I know that there are some horror stories. Not everyone has a great experience in grad school, but I had a great cohort of other grad students with me. I had the best advisor I could have asked for. I had Emily Rice who sent that email for STARtorialist and she's basically the reason I ended up at the grad school I did anyways. She really helped me talk through that decision.

And then my family, even if they didn't always know the intricacies and details of what academia is like, because I'm the first in my family to get a PhD. Even if they didn't totally, viscerally know what it was like, they still were really supportive. I have a bunch of friends in astronomy who are a year older than me, so they did their degree one year ago, so they just went through it. And then some of those students who were younger than me, it's just nice when there's this ecosystem of you get to see the people before you do it, and then you get to go cheer on the people after you once you've been through it. Having a great grad community was definitely the most important thing in grad school for me.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We can attempt to do these kinds of Herculean tasks alone, but the way I always try to describe it to people... This might just be me watching too many cartoons, but friendship is magic. You cannot get through these things by yourself and no one ever has before. Everyone in scientific history is standing on the shoulders of someone else who worked with someone else, who worked with someone else, right? So building up that community around you and connecting with the students and the professors is really what it's all about.

Briley Lewis: I was telling my students this. I was teaching during the quarter that I graduated, so I was teaching Summer Session C at UCLA this summer. I kept telling them that it's not that I just know things. It's that I, one, worked a long time for this and I've been in school simply longer than they have. They were incoming freshmen, so they were all like, "This is my first week of college. I'm terrified." I kept trying to remind them like, "I'm not doing this alone. This is not just me. There are all of these other people that were involved. And also if this is something you want to do, you can do it." Even them, even though they only met me two weeks before my defense, they were so sweet and so supportive. They were so excited to call me doctor when my defense was done, which I just thought was the most precious thing.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What would you say are some of the most helpful things that people can do to support grad students when they're mid-journey, mid-stress?

Briley Lewis: I feel like the most important thing that someone can do to support a PhD student, even if they are not familiar with academia, is checking in on them, asking how they're doing, if they need anything, like how it's going. My grandma, for example, if she hadn't heard from me in a bit, would just text me and be like, "I'm thinking about you. How's it going?" And that especially was useful in the last few months of the degree. The first five years of the degree are a marathon, where you have to live your life during it, otherwise you're just going to put everything off for five years. But the last few months, the last nine months of it, honestly for me, were a sprint, where I was like, "I'm doing my best, but I'm underwater." In that time in particular, having my grandma just say, "I know you're busy, but I wanted you to know I'm thinking about you. And if you want to do something, I'm around." That was really helpful when I didn't have the brain space to be as good about reaching out to people. Having the other people pick up some of that slack, I think that's one of the things that I've found the most helpful, honestly, in life in general is if one person's going through a busier time, then the person who's not can pick up some of that slack in terms of making that connection and support them.

And then the other most important thing is just showing an interest in it or at the very least understanding that we talk about it because it is a big part of our lives and we love it. You don't have to want every single detail, but just any amount of curiosity of what I've been working on means so much, because it feels like everyone wants people to be interested in their lives. That's how we feel connected. So people asking questions like, "Oh, okay, so what is it that you have to do next for this to be closer to done?" Or my grandma trying to understand what I was working on and asking questions so that she could try to get it.

Or one of my good friends on my volleyball team, same one that hosted the party, they're so interested in space. Actually, one of the best pictures that I've ever seen is I took them with my class. I was teaching on a field trip to JPL because I had an extra spot, and there's this picture of them just absolutely mouth wide open, staring in awe at one of the rover models. It's hilarious and wonderful. They would want to know what was going on and ask me questions about my thesis work and were really trying to understand. They were always like, "If you don't want to talk about work, that's okay, but also I'm so curious." That interest means a lot. I don't need everyone to want to hear the details of my research, but just knowing that it's a big part of my life and that I care about my work a lot.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What encouragement would you give people who are considering going into this field, given that they're going to have to climb the mountain of physics and mathematics in order to do it?

Briley Lewis: You're not going through this alone. If you think that you are uniquely bad at everything, that's probably false. The people around you are your community, not your competition, and it really is more about who can get to the finish line. You just got to go through the journey. Honestly, the cliche advice that is really true is it's about the journey, not the destination. The destination is big and important, don't get me wrong, but for most of that six years, I wasn't thinking about my defense. I was thinking about all the small steps in between and how to start knowing the things I needed to know, learning things I needed to learn.

You got to pace yourself. You got to try to have work-life balance. Definitely important. It's very easy in the beginning to feel like, "Oh, my God, if I don't work all the time, I'm going to be the one that's behind and I'm going to be the one that doesn't know things." That's just simply false. No human can sustain working 24/7 for six years. It's impossible. That's a marathon. Rely on the people around you. Whatever time your degree takes is the time your degree takes. There might be a nominal time to degree according to your university like, "Oh, people take six years on average," but there's nothing inherently better about finishing faster. Some people do and that's what works for them, but I know plenty of people who are very successful in astronomy and took more than the average time to degree.

A thing my advisor says all the time... Or former advisor now. Oh, my God, that's terrifying. He always said, "You just can't compare yourself to other people," and that's especially true in grad school. Unlike in earlier career stages where there are these numbers placed upon you to judge your performance like GPA or SAT scores, that does not exist anymore. There is no, "You got 100% on your thesis." That doesn't happen, so you can't compare yourself to other people. What counts as success in the PhD is very personal. It's like, "What did you want to get out of it? Did you do the things that you wanted to do to set yourself up for the career you wanted to have?" PhD is really about what is it that you want to do, you know?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There are so many opportunities that are only opening up for the first time now that we're advancing our technology to this point. There are so many people who have no idea the opportunities they're about to get themselves into and what's out there, but they have to be aware of the amount of work it's going to take and try to lay the foundation for the safety net and the people that are going to help support them so that they can get through this kind of work, because it is a lot, and you're going to have to balance both academia and life and being a human in order to be whole and healthy and happy as you go through it.

Briley Lewis: The being a human part is often the hardest.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah.

Briley Lewis: I think so, but I think, if I remember statistics correctly, there's more grad students now than ever, which also makes sense because there's so much work to be done. There's truly so much work to be done and this is only in my small corner of astronomy.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There are so many realms of science where there are these huge questions facing humanity, but there's something so hopeful and curiosity peeking about space science in particular because the issues we're grappling with are, "Are we alone in the universe and why are we here? And what even is the fate of all of this? And how did the universe progress over time?" [inaudible 00:47:51] such large questions and it's going to take maybe even hundreds, if not thousands of years, for humanity to fully grapple with all of it. But we now have the opportunity to really dig into it now that we have these foundational bits of physics figured out and all these new technologies. This is the beginning of some of the greatest discoveries in the history of history.

Briley Lewis: Oh, yeah. That actually remind me of something else, which is I think one of the things that's really cool about astronomy in particular is that the people that are attracted to working in this field are people that are interested by those big questions and that are thinking about our role in the universe and how small and fragile Earth is. That is a really good perspective to convince you to be nice to other people and take care of the planet. At least in my experience, astronomy is just a field that is filled with so many good people. I feel like astronomy is a great place to work. I mean, there are also so many people involved in this field that are just excited about sharing things with other people like you, trying to get out all of this cool information that's going on. There's definitely something about the fact that we consider those big cosmic questions all the time that, I think, helps make this a good place to work is that we all have that perspective.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, have seriously the best time doing your next steps and going on this journey. You've been through things, so have a cake, go throw a party, go sit on a beach and watch our star set.

Briley Lewis: Thank you so much. Yeah, it's fun to be having this conversation with you at the end of my first week as a postdoc. there's so many things to look forward to and it's just so much possibility. It's a little overwhelming but in a good way.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, seriously, thank you so much, Briley, and good luck on everything that comes next.

Remember, space friends, you're not alone. You're not an imposter and you don't need to be a genius to love and study space. Just because something is challenging does not mean that you are failing. Finding a community that can help you on your path is just as important as studying hard and seeking out career opportunities. Remember that it's okay to ask for help. We're all in this together and I know, because I wish desperately that someone had sat me down and said all of this to me years ago.

If you need to hear it or someone you love needs to hear it, let them know that it's okay and that you're there for them. Now it's time for What's Up? With Dr. Bruce Betts, the chief scientist at The Planetary Society. He's written a new children's book series from The Planetary Society to help inspire the next generation of space fans. Hey, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Top of the morning to you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And the morning right after Europa Clipper launched. I was on the edge of my seat.

Bruce Betts: It launched. It's on its way. It's so awesome. That's really cool. Always love it.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. After all the tension of not knowing whether or not it was going to launch or when it was going to launch and the shrinking time window, finally seeing it on its way is very relieving.

Bruce Betts: Yes, for a lot of people.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah.

Bruce Betts: Especially the ones who have spent many years of their lives getting that ready to go and ready to do some great science a few years from now.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. Think about all the kids out there that are just now learning about Europa because of this mission or all of the other students that are just starting out on their education process for getting into space science. They might be the ones that get to do all this Europa science and this mission is going to completely change their lives and they don't even know it yet.

Bruce Betts: It's exciting that that will happen for them and for a bunch of other scientists sitting around, waiting for Europa data for a very, very long time.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: But this week we spoke with a bunch of different people about different ways to support students that are going into space science and how to survive grad school and find conferences and internships. But something else that we do here is we have our Planetary Academy, which is the membership program for kids, and you've also done a large amount of writing for kids around space to try to give them educational resources. I understand you have a whole new book series out.

Bruce Betts: I do indeed. With Planetary Society partnering with Lerner Publications has a set of... Well, we issued one book a while ago for eclipses called Casting Shadows, and then now we put out eight books tied to eight planets, one per planet that are targeted at second, third grade level, but are applicable... Well, I've met adults who are enjoying them, but they're targeted for elementary school level, and they have lots of pretty but very scientifically accurate imagery and hopefully language that gets kids excited. I mean, the pictures alone got me excited when I was a kid, so throw in a few words and it's groovy. Go to planetary.org/radio and find the wonderful links to the wonderful books to get kids going, excited, and learning about space.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What I really like about this is that even if you don't have kids yourself or if they're past that age, there's still opportunities to help get these books into the hands of students by trying to request that they can put them in libraries.

Bruce Betts: Yeah. A lot of it's designed to go into school libraries so lots of kids can get access to them for free. If you can encourage your school library to pick up this series eight or nine, that would be great. It comes in two forms. One is a paperback, one is a hardcover, which looks a little more expensive than usual because it's a library binding. Apparently, it's particularly tough. I haven't actually thrown it to the dogs yet to find out how tough but it is quite sturdy.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, before we move on to the random space fact, I wanted to acknowledge a massive amount of emails I've gotten this week from people who listened to our show last week.

Bruce Betts: Oh, it must be an important topic.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Casey Dreier and I had a conversation about Europa as when does the week before Europa Clipper launch. We were talking about sci-fi things set on Europa and how we wanted to see more of them. Neither one of us was super familiar with the movie Europa Report and it fired people up because Casey said, "Wasn't there a bad movie about Europa at some point?" I just wanted to promise everyone, Casey and I are going to re-watch that movie and we will give some extra thought to whether or not it is a good one and let you know. Because even if it isn't the best movie in the world, or as one person said, "Even if it's not Oppenheimer, it's important to have these bits of sci-fi, even if they're not optimal, just to give visibility to these worlds." I hereby promise that I will re-watch Europa Report for you guys.

Bruce Betts: Enjoy.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I'd ask you about it, Bruce, but I don't think you've seen it.

Bruce Betts: No, I have not. I've read some Europa reports.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right. Now, I'm sure I get it all confused with the video game, Callisto Protocol. Europa Report, Callisto Protocol, they're confusing my brain.

Bruce Betts: They're practically identical.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Practically. Well, anyway, what is our random space fact this week?

Bruce Betts: Random space fact.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Goat simulator now in high definition.

Bruce Betts: This is one that maybe a lot of people know, but I think it's super interesting in case you don't. Speaking of that Europa, Io, Europa, and Ganymede are in an orbital residence. Every time Ganymede goes around Jupiter once, Europa goes around twice, and Io goes around four times. They're in a 1-2-4 so-called residence with about one and a half days for Io, and three days for Europa, and about seven days for Ganymede. And you may ask, "What about Callisto?" Callisto's a rebel. Not in the orbital residence, although it may have been once upon a time, I think around 17 days.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I was going to ask... I mean, how do you get a scenario like that where you've got all these big moons all in residence and then one that's just doing something random?

Bruce Betts: Bad attitude.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, that makes sense.

Bruce Betts: What was the Callisto game?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Protocol?

Bruce Betts: Yeah, it's the Callisto Protocol. That's what results in it being a rebel. Now, just to farther out, it's all tied to the different moons interacting with each other and then interacting with Jupiter. The farther out you get, like with Callisto, it's harder to establish that loving relationship.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, I wonder, we're just learning more about these. We see them in the moons in our own solar system, but I wonder how it impacts larger scale systems like planetary systems that are all in resonance with each other because they're really close to each other or to their star. There's got to be some really cool things that happen there just on the sky or who even knows? Who even knows? That's just really cool.

Bruce Betts: I think they're all discussed in Europa Report.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, we'll find out next week here on Planetary Radio.

Bruce Betts: Nice. All right, everybody. Go out there, look on the night sky, and think about your nose because it's right there as you're looking at the night sky. Thank you and goodnight.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week to celebrate the launch of Europa Clipper. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio T-shirts at planetary.org/shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise.

Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving a review or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcast and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day but helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. And, hey, if you know any space students that might need this episode, send it their way. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email at [email protected]. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment in the Planetary Radio space in our member community app.

Planetary Radio is produced by The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by our members all around the world. You can join us and help support students and space fans as they chase their dreams at planetary.org/join. Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. And until next week, ad astra.