Conner Ballew: Why would I recommend the NASA NPP Fellowship? Michael Holtz: Yeah. Conner Ballew: Yeah. For many, it's a foot in the door. Like if you want to work at NASA as a scientist or like a technologist, that's a really good way to get your foot in the door. Speaker 3: You're listening to Further Together, the ORAU podcast. Join Michael Holtz and his guests for conversations about all things ORAU. They'll talk about ORAU's storied history, our impact on an ever-changing world, our innovative scientific and technical solutions for our customers, and our commitment to the communities where we do business. Welcome to Further Together, the ORAU podcast. Michael Holtz: Welcome to Further Together, the ORAU podcast. The NASA National Postdoctoral Program gives scientists at any level the opportunity to help NASA pursue its mission while also experiencing the world's most diverse technology and expertise. I recently had the opportunity to talk to several NASA NPP fellows about their research, their personal stories, and what comes next in their careers. This episode features one of those conversations. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did. Conner Ballew, will you talk to me about who you are, your current role with the NASA NPP Fellows Program, and then just a little bit about how you got to where you are? Conner Ballew: Yeah, sure. Yeah, so my name's Conner. I grew up a little bit north of Seattle, Washington, Everett, Washington. I was there for a while, went to the University of Washington for college, did electrical engineering there. Then after college I moved down to where I am now which is Pasadena, California. That's where I am now because the JPL is here, but at the time I moved, about six years ago, was to go to Caltech, which is the school that manages the JPL for NASA. So yeah, I got my PhD also in electrical engineering from Caltech. During that, there was some collaboration with JPL because their two institutions are so close. That's what led to my current position as an NPP at JPL. So I was born through collaboration. The research area I'm in is something called Meta Optics. It's more of a technology development. I know a lot of NPPs, they're kind of on the science side of things, what we would call science because it's studying phenomenon in the universe and stuff. Me, I'm more kind of a lab grunt in their developing new technologies that can aid future science missions. So it's kind of merging algorithms that I developed with microfabrication techniques. Microfabrication being sort of the field that makes the chips in your phone, and the sensors in your phone, and stuff like that. Michael Holtz: So when you talk about optics, Conner, are you talking about camera lenses, telescope lenses, all of the above? Conner Ballew: Yeah, exactly. Like lenses, gradings, prisms, or something like that. It's sort of all of the above and none of the above because all of those have existed for hundreds of years, and what we're trying to do is make things like that. So in the sense that light comes in, it hits this thing that I'm making, and that thing does something to the light. But what it does is usually not quite what a lens does, not quite what a grading does. It's usually some combination of those things, and so it can really do anything you want it to. You specify an input, you specify an output, and then this computer algorithm churns for a week, and what it spits out is a device that I need to go into the clean room and make. And when I do that, I can go and put this into a test setup and see does it do what I wanted it to? So really the end goal for the research I'm doing as an NPP is to miniaturize things. Because if you can combine all these optical elements that make up a typical system and you can combine that into one very tiny cube, of course, you just miniaturized your system. Along with that you typically reduce power, the required power, and so reducing size and power requirements is pivotal for space applications. Michael Holtz: Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. Conner, has science always been something you've been interested in? Was it something you developed in childhood? Was it something that came later? Conner Ballew: No, I was not always interested in science. Yeah, I don't have a lot of scientists and engineers in my family. Most of my family are like teachers, and like lawyers, and that sort of stuff. Maybe the more social stuff. So I kind of had to find it myself, this interest in STEM. I'd say probably junior, senior year of high school taking physics. Because I think you start off with biology freshman year. I didn't like that very much. Then you do chemistry, and I was like, "This is neat stuff." And then I did physics and I was like, "All right [inaudible 00:05:53]- Michael Holtz: Here I am. I get this. Conner Ballew: Yeah. Even then I was relatively indecisive. I wanted to do history before I discovered STEM. And then in college, yeah, I pretty quickly went the route of engineering, sort of more applied sciences shall we say. Michael Holtz: Awesome. So tell me again where you are in your ... Are you first, second, third year? Conner Ballew: Early on in my second year in the NPP program. Michael Holtz: Your second year. How has the fellowship impacted your career? Conner Ballew: I think it's shaping up to be very big. I kind of view your goal in grad school, and it's to try to carve out an identity for yourself. You do research that's unique, and that comes to be your resume in a sense. And a five-year grad school where you start off kind of a newbie and then you end up somewhere, actually five years isn't quite enough, I think, to always fully define your research. So the NPP though, you know what you want to do, you hit the ground running, and you try to just push something to the finish line. And that I think will impact my career because that'll probably be the biggest part of my resume when I go do whatever I do next or something. Sort of my identity. So I think it'll be big. Michael Holtz: Well, and I have to imagine, and I know you're probably still imagining on some level, but as you're working with optics, and miniaturizing, and microfabricating optics for use in space with NASA's focus on a mission to Mars, and the Artemis, and going back to the moon, and I mean, we're going to be going into space for a while, right? Conner Ballew: Yes. Michael Holtz: Those optics are going to be needed. Conner Ballew: Exactly. And yeah, miniaturization is particularly important when you're going off to those far-off places like the moon and to Mars. Michael Holtz: Right, and as you said, because they take less power to operate, that becomes very important in terms of launch safety and- Conner Ballew: Absolutely. Michael Holtz: ... all of those things as well. Conner Ballew: Yeah. Michael Holtz: What element of science have you found to be most empowering? Conner Ballew: Empowering. For me, I feel like there's a lot of job opportunities out there. You're kind of in demand. You're in an in-demand field typically in your skillset, and so that gives you peace of mind. I feel like if the well ever dries up for my current research or something, I could pivot to something else. So there's not too much fear of being out of a job. Michael Holtz: Gotcha. Conner Ballew: But of course that's always there to some extent. But yeah, there's some peace of mind there. I'd say that's fairly empowering because it just makes your day to day a little bit more comfortable. Right? Michael Holtz: Right. Absolutely. Can you share a time, Conner, that you faced a sizable obstacle in your work, and how you overcame that obstacle? Conner Ballew: Yeah, there's plenty. Like every day you're kind of solving some technical hurdle. But yeah, some are bigger than others and especially more recent ones. I'm sure years ago I had plenty of sizable obstacles. But yeah, I'd say the biggest one for me right now is the one that popped up in my NPP. The way the NPP works, you go and you write a proposal, and that proposal, technology development proposal in particular, you'd say, "I want to develop this, and it's going to do this, this, and this with this efficiency," 80% efficiency or something. And that was kind of back of the envelope stuff when I wrote the proposal, but I was pretty confident in it, and I knew I could do it. I get the fellowship, I start the job, and the efficiencies were just horrible, horrible. And these are all in simulation. It was those algorithms I was talking about. Michael Holtz: Right. Right. Conner Ballew: The algorithms just weren't working. And to this day I actually don't know if it's because the algorithm's bad or if they're ... You know, the algorithm's trying to find solutions to a problem. And I don't know if it's unable to find the solutions or if those solutions simply don't exist. That's actually a very hard thing to know. So that was big. I needed to get it to the work, and so I was able to actually just change the fabrication. I made the fabrication much more difficult on myself, but I eased the algorithm side. And so I guess if there's any wisdom there it's to like try to understand your project from multiple angles, give you multiple angles of attack if you can [inaudible 00:11:21] sort of problem. It's relatively uncommon to do. But lots of times when you're doing technology development, you kind of have one role, design. Say you do design, fabrication, measurement. Usually you'll do maybe one of them. And so relatively few that do both the design and the fabrication, I think that really helped just being able to go back and forth between the two really fast. But if you don't do both and have good communication with the people you're working with is key in understanding what they do so that they might be able to tweak knobs in a different part of your project. Michael Holtz: Right. Well, and that leads me to my next question, because you talked about you're kind of a lab rat, right? Conner Ballew: Yeah. Michael Holtz: But you still work in collaboration with others. I mean, you are not siloed off doing your own thing over here. I mean, you've got your work, but you're working with others because that optic, that device that you create will fit in someone's something, right? Conner Ballew: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, collaboration, it's very, very important. Because yeah, you know for places like government work, oftentimes you're kind of understaffed, I'll say. So you are oftentimes on your own in the lab doing your thing. But if I were left purely to my own devices I would probably not work on the correct problems, useful problems, or something like that. So yeah, I think collaboration is very important for like ... Yeah, I do technology development, but for what purpose? I would have no idea without scientists out there calling the shots, what would they need? Michael Holtz: This is what we need. Conner Ballew: Yeah. Michael Holtz: Gotcha. Conner, I know the NPP Fellowship is a mentored experience. Talk about having a mentor and being a mentor to other people. Conner Ballew: Yeah. So my mentor, my advisor, A, he's very good at directing you to a useful application. Part of that is he also knows a lot of people. You know? Michael Holtz: Yeah. Yeah. Conner Ballew: If I were to just join JPL suddenly, just drop into JPL, I wouldn't know who to talk to or who does what. So it's very critical for your mentor to introduce you to these people who need your technology to guide your technology development in some useful direction. And yeah, I feel like a lot of academics tend to get sort of bogged down in the details of their work. Sometimes it's good to just get a nudge every once in a while to ... Michael Holtz: Hey, how's it going? Conner Ballew: Yeah, exactly. Stop focusing on this little minute detail, a bit of a bigger picture. Michael Holtz: Yeah. Have you had the opportunity to mentor other scientists? Conner Ballew: Yeah. Yeah, to an extent. In terms of like teaching, I tutored in college, all through college I tutored physics. In grad school, you TA. And then more on the mentorship side, there's some summer students that I've worked with through I think Caltech had something called the SURF program. JPL has something similar. And yeah, those are tough because students that come in, they have just like 10 weeks to do something. They always have to write a report, and there's usually some competition involved of who has the best report. So it's kind of this stressful thing and you got to help them through it. Kind of everything I said about a important mentor, you got to help them focus on an important direction, not get too bogged down in the details [inaudible 00:15:34]. Michael Holtz: Right. Is the question useful? Conner Ballew: Yeah, exactly. Michael Holtz: What advice would you give to someone who might be following in your footsteps, Conner? Conner Ballew: I would say, stay curious. You got to keep learning, got to keep up with ... You know, the technology is moving really fast. You got to keep up with it. So best way to do that is just stay genuinely interested if you can, and try to get a lot of sleep. I feel like a lot of people don't take that seriously enough. Yeah. Michael Holtz: Sleep is important, man. Conner Ballew: Yeah, it can be tough. There's a lot of stressors when you need to publish these things. It's a stressful job. But yeah, I'd say that's something that I was able to lean a bit more into in the NPP [inaudible 00:16:34], sleep a little bit more, work. Michael Holtz: Right. The money's there. Conner Ballew: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit of peace of mind. Michael Holtz: Right. Right. Why would you recommend the NASA NPP Fellowship? Conner Ballew: Why would I recommend the NASA NPP Fellowship? Michael Holtz: Yeah. Conner Ballew: Yeah. For many, it's a foot in the door. If you want to work at NASA as a scientist or a technologist, that's a really good way to get your foot in the door. I think it's relatively challenging sometimes to just apply for a job. It really just depends on the available funding at that time you're applying. And so you get a fellowship here, you have two or three years, and if you want to seek employment you start that conversation early and that will hopefully lead to you getting employed when the money's there and all that. Then, I kind of alluded to this before, I think it's, for me especially, it's been very important. I felt like the research I had at the end of grad school was sort of half-baked, half done, and this was just a bit more time to finish it up. And you're not guaranteed to be able to do what you want to do if you just get a job there. If you get a job, and say JPL's the one paying me, they can also probably tell you what to do, "Work on this project. Work on that." And you say, "No, I want to work on this." For the NPP you're a bit more insulated from the management of the institution. You have this flexibility. You can work on whatever you want, to a reasonable extent, and really try to solidify your identity as a researcher. Michael Holtz: Awesome. Yeah, we've heard that a lot. The sort of freedom to pursue your ideas and sort of seek after a question that you have, and try to find the answer. Conner Ballew: Yeah. And that question is sort of uniquely your question- Michael Holtz: Absolutely. Conner Ballew: ... your proposal, your application. Yeah. Michael Holtz: Absolutely. Conner, last question for you. What brings you joy? Conner Ballew: What brings me joy? Michael Holtz: Yes, sir. Conner Ballew: I'd say, yeah, these days, getting a lot of sleep, eating well, and just going and doing a job that I love pretty much every day. I love being in the lab and I love solving meaningful problems. Michael Holtz: Awesome. I love that answer. All right. Well, Conner, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it. Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to Further Together, the ORAU podcast. To learn more about any of the topics discussed by our experts, visit www.orau.org. 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