Date
STEM SPEAKER SERIES
From the Community to the Stars - A woman's Journey!
Thursday, March 18, 2021
3:40 pm — 5 pm
Join a panel of three amazing female scientists who started their scholarly journeys at community colleges and UC Santa Cruz before launching their career trajectories in STEM at NASA. This event is open to students in COM’s STEM Learning Community.
About Dr. Ariadne Murguia Berthier
I was born and raised in Mexico City and Cuernavaca (near Mexico City). At a young age, I discovered that I was very interested in all things science. My father saw that, and took me to astronomy conferences, and got me astronomy books, fostering my interest. During my middle and high school, I went to science summer camps where I even got to go to Mexico's big observatory at San Pedro Mártir!
I decided to attend UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) to study physics as a major. During my time at UNAM, I met Prof. Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, at UCSC. I spent two summers working with him on simulating the most powerful explosions in the universe: gamma-ray bursts. I was forever hooked. I followed that passion and went to UCSC for my graduate school. I'm currently studying what happens when gas falls into a black hole, and how gold is created when two neutron stars collide. I also love outreach, and mentoring students, especially teaching them computing skills. I'll be graduating with my Ph.D. this year, and I will go to CIERA at Northwestern with the NASA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow.
About Dr. Melinda Soares-Furtado
I began my career in astrophysics at Gavilan Community College in Gilroy, California. I cannot speak highly enough regarding the quality of instruction and student support services that were available to me at this community college in my hometown. Given that I was the first in my family to attend college, my teachers played an instrumental role in helping me build a vision for my future as a research scientist. In fact, these relationships are still a major part of my life today. As a single mother, I worked entry-level jobs throughout this period of my life to make ends meet (Walmart, Starbucks, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, etc.). Three years later, I transferred to the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC) as a Regents Scholar. I lived in the Family Student Housing complex at UCSC, networking with other mothers to establish our own mini childcare coop — childcare is expensive and waitlists are long! I became well-acquainted with student support programs like Lamat, MARC, MBRS, and ACE. I also got involved in research right away and worked on a number of projects. My first research project was with the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics. I analyzed very-high-energy emission (TeV) from active galactic nuclei using Cerenkov telescope arrays. Later, I joined the Fermi collaboration group, working on the detection of gamma-ray emission from radio-quiet pulsars. I also worked closely with Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz's research team, analyzing supernova remnant morphology and building hydrodynamical simulations to probe the evolution of gas in stellar cluster cores. Before heading off to graduate school, I worked as a high school instructor (AP Calculus and AP Physics) at a private school in Santa Cruz, California. For graduate school, I attended Princeton University, where I earned a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. I worked on a myriad of projects there, as project rotations are part of the graduate program infrastructure. I eventually teamed up with Gaspar Bakos and Joel Hartman for my thesis. I worked on the photometric analysis of open cluster variable stars using data from the Kepler space telescope. During that time, I became increasingly interested in the rapidly-rotating, chemically peculiar stars that can be found in these systems. I am currently investigating one pathway to produce such stars: the ingestion of planetary companions. I graduated from Princeton in June 2020, which meant for a remote, pandemic-friendly defense. Just a few days after my defense, I moved my family to Madison, Wisconsin where I began a postdoctoral fellowship. I recently was awarded the NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship, which will support my investigation of planetary ingestion events at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When not thinking about astronomy or ways to support student researchers, I enjoy being with my family. Lately, we have been spending a lot of time at the dog park with Murphy, our golden retriever pup.
About Dr. Anna Rosen
NASA Einstein and ITC Postdoctoral Fellow
Anna was born in Los Angeles, California. While working a full-time office job after high school she attended night courses at community college at Los Angeles Pierce College to complete her transfer requirements to pursue a physics degree. She then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley where she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Astronomy in 2009. Afterward, she attended the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where she received her Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2017 working with advisors Mark Krumholz and Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz. During her time at UCSC, she received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, an ARCS Foundation Fellowship, and an American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Dissertation Year Fellowship. From 2017-2020 she was a NASA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA). She is now currently an ITC Postdoctoral Fellow at the CFA. When not doing science or living through a pandemic Anna enjoys Crossfit, (indoor) rock climbing, and hiking. She is also an advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in astronomy and academia and has participated in many outreach programs such as the Lamat Program at UCSC and the Banneker Institute at Harvard that provides summer astronomy undergraduate students from non-traditional backgrounds.