- One of my favorite parts about science and being a scientist is, you know, if you're interested in something, you can go explore it. And like, so you can study what you want to study, and of course, with funding, that can be even more free. But the fact you can study whatever you want and then, you know, any question you have, you can go explore it. And the other really wonderful, amazing part to me is, you can collaborate with other fantastic scientists. And I think that's one of the most exciting parts to me is, not only am I in this by myself, I'm in this with all of these other amazing people who have the same passion and drive. And that, I think, is my favorite part, is the fact that, and also the most empowering part for me is, you know, I'm getting to meet all these other scientists, including scientists that look like me, and, you know, are part of the same groups that I identify with and we're able to kind of explore and broaden our understanding of the universe together. And so, I think that's my favorite part. - [Announcer] 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 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." - 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. Taylor Hutchison welcome to "Further Together The ORAU Podcast." And thank you so much for spending this time with me. If you would, tell me a little bit about who you are, what your NPP fellowship entails, and kind of how you got to where you are. - Yeah, thanks for having me. I am a JWST NPP fellow. I'm working with Dr. Jane Rigby, who's the operations project scientist for JWST and also just, you know, all around amazing scientist. So my role as a NPP fellow is primarily what I work with are, you know, really incredibly distant galaxies, like some of the first galaxies we've ever found in the early universe. But now that I've come into this Post-Doc position with Dr. Jane Rigby, I'm kind of extending my reach to cover, you know, a big chunk of the history of the universe and trying to study galaxies from the peak of cosmic star formation all the way to the early universe. And so my background kind of, I come from Texas. - Okay. - And, this is actually my first time leaving Texas, which was fun. But my undergrad education was at this small liberal arts university where there were like three physics faculty. And then I went to graduate school at Texas A and M University, which was really fun. That's where I got obsessed with incredibly high redshifts. And so that's kind of been like a natural progression of continuing to expand the kinds of things I'm interested in studying. And that's kind of where I came from. - So like, the history of the universe is like a giant topic, right? So are you looking for something specific, or is it, you know, just trying to figure out the timeline, the genesis, all of those things. - Yeah, that's a great question. So what one of my biggest interests is just the early universe. Like we know next to nothing about the galaxies, some of the first galaxies that ever formed. Thanks to, you know, the James Webb Space Telescope or JWST that launched, you know, last December, we're now starting to uncover things that we never even imagined were possible to find. And it's really exciting. But some of the things that I was interested in, even before this telescope launched, was, first of all, where are they? Again, we just don't know where, they're so far away and they're so faint. We'd use these 30 foot wide telescopes on Hawaii to maybe get like a hint of light from them. - Right, Okay. - Now that the space telescope is launched, we have a better chances and it's incredibly sensitive to these faint distant galaxies. But just trying to find them. And then what's going on inside of them. Like what's the makeup of the stars that power these galaxies? You know, are they massive? How much more times massive are they than the sun? You know, 'cause these galaxies are expected to be possibly even 300 times the size of our sun, which is incredibly massive. - Right. - And then what kind of elements are in them? You know, if we're talking about the early universe, you know, maybe just hydrogen and helium and like trace amounts of elements that are heavier than that. And that's really important in the chemical evolution of the universe. And so trying to pick that apart and actually conclusively get answers from that is really challenging, but also really rewarding when you get it. - Very cool. And I know, just speaking as a non-scientist and you know, the photos, the first photos, from the JWTS, you know, from a pop culture perspective, were so incredible to look at and people were just amazed, right? - Yes. - Did you have that same sense of awe and just? - Yeah, I was actually- - Oh my gosh, that's really what it looks like. - Right? For most of the press release, where they were sharing all the photos, I was actually driving my cat to the vet. So I had like, I had my phone propped up and it was like playing and I'd like be driving and like occasionally glance at it when I could. I definitely started crying a lot during that entire press, because gorgeous, beautiful. And one of my favorite parts is not only are we getting, you know, these like Hubble like quality, you know, HST like quality of these images at redder wavelengths or larger wavelengths, that was kind of impossible before at that resolution. We're also getting, you know, one of my favorite things is spectroscopy, which is kind of, I like to describe it like, the Pink Floyd album where you have light coming into a prism and then like rainbow on the other side. - Right. - Able to get like, a light fingerprint essentially of anything in the sky in the universe. And the fact that they showed that one particular spectrum of a galaxy Arochef 8, which for context of the universe is about 13, 14 billion years old, that galaxy, that light has traveled over 12 billion years to get to us. - Oh my gosh. - It's ridiculous. - Yes. - And the fact that, like, we saw that light and that so many different fascinating nebular physics that came out of that from just looking at that spectrum, my entire dissertation for my PhD was blown away by this. Took me six years to get like a hint of the amount of information we got from that one spectrum from JWST. It's just beautiful. It's- - Oh my gosh. - Yeah, world ending. - Incredible. So, Taylor, have you always been interested in science? Was that something that you, were you interested in science from an early age as a kid? Or was that something that sort of came along later? - Yeah, so I've always broadly been in love with science. - Okay. - Like, from a very young age. Well, from a very young age, like in kindergarten for some reason I wanted to be an Egyptian mummy. Like with the full knowledge that meant that you'd be embalmed and not alive. I don't know, you know, it was a weird time. - But there's a whole scientific process there. - Yeah. No, I think that's probably why I think I found it fascinating, that whole process. But I've always loved just science in general, and I would try and do any science camps that I could or, you know, read all the books I could. I didn't actually fall in love with astronomy and astrophysics in particular until I got to college. - Okay. - Kinda like a natural progression. Like I was really interested in math because it's a lot of like logic things, right. And it was really fun and rewarding to solve a math equation. And so when I was in middle school, I thought that meant I needed to be mathematician. And so then when I got to high school, I was like, okay, math. But then I was introduced to physics and physics used all my favorite parts of math, and also it helps explain how the world works, which was cool. And so then I was like, all right, physics. And then I went to college and the tiny liberal arts university I was at, there were three physics faculty. And one of them happened to do astrophysics. - Wow. - And so he was like, "Hey, you wanna come work with the observatory with me?" I was like, "Ah, yes." - Sure. - So in college is when I actually got introduced to the way of doing science and astronomy and astrophysics and have not looked back since. So it was kind of like a natural progression, but I've always loved science. - Okay. Awesome. Where are you in your fellowship? Are you first year, second year? - Yeah, I'm like three months in, so I'm in my first- - Okay, so brand spanking new. How has your fellowship impacted your career? - Yeah, so even though I've only been here for a few months as a fellow, it's already remarkable to me and incredibly exciting the opportunities that are available as an NPP fellow. Like even just the fact that as an NPP fellow, I have my own funding to travel to work with collaborators and pay publication fees and go to conferences to talk about my science. Like, it's kind of, it's a little silly, but that's, like, your funding sources are incredibly important. And having the money to be able to go do your science and collaborate free science and share your science is sometimes the biggest driver in whether or not you can proceed as a scientist. And so the fact that that's not something I have to worry about and I can just focus solely on doing my cool science is really exciting. And then having access to a NASA facility is really cool because all the scientists here are amazing and there's just such a beautiful pool of knowledge that I can learn from and pull from. And so it's been wonderful already, even just three months in. - That's awesome. I get what you're saying about the dollars to pay for publications and travel and conferences. A friend of mine, who's a scientist, was just lamenting on social media about, you know, the access to getting work published because you have to pay a fee to get your work, you know, it may get accepted, it may get peer reviewed, but then you have to pay to also have it published. So to have those dollars to be able to make that happen is pretty astounding. Plus, as you said, you know, to go to conferences and to travel to collaborators and meet other people has to be really gratifying. And makes not only the work that you're doing worthwhile, but puts it in context with everything that NASA's doing. - Yeah, I know, 100%. And it's also, I come from a background of like a very massive family, like four siblings or three siblings. But, so I paid my way through college. Like I supported myself and at one point I had to work four jobs and student and so like, money's always also been really important to me for the reasons you've also just described. You know, it's the fiscal stress and knowing how you're gonna be able to support yourself and support your science is super important. And I think, I was a NSF fellow during graduate school. I'm very fortunate to have that. And same thing with the NPP, it's you get a lot more freedom as well, because if you fund yourself and if you support yourself, you're answerable to certain people of course. And the people who are paying you. But to some degree, especially with the NPP for example, where you have your own funding to travel and to write your papers, you have way more freedom and the kinds of science that you can explore. And I think that's also really exciting. And so I can do kind of whatever I want when it comes to the science that I'm exploring. - That's really cool 'cause as you said, you have the freedom to sort of, I have this idea. - Yeah. - Go down that rabbit hole and see, you know, where does it go? - Yeah, exactly. - I love it. Is there an element of STEM that you have found particularly to be most empowering? And maybe it's what we were just talking about, the fact that you have resources, you know, is certainly very empowering, but are there other elements? - Yeah, I think more broadly speaking to some degree, you know, one of my favorite parts about science and being a scientist is, you know, if you're interested in something, you can go explore it. And like, so you can study what you want to study and of course with funding you that can be even more free. But the fact that you can study whatever you want and then you know, any question you have, you can go explore it. And the other really wonderful, amazing part to me is you can collaborate with other fantastic scientists. And I think that's one of the most exciting parts to me is not only am I in this by myself, I'm in this with all of these other amazing people who have the same passion and drive. And that I think is my favorite part, is the fact that, and also the most empowering part for me is, you know, I'm getting to meet all these other scientists, including scientists that look like me and you know, are part of the same groups that I identify with. And- - Right. - Are able to kind of explore and broaden our understanding of universe together. And so I think that's my favorite part. - I love it. I love talking about the collaborative process 'cause science, you know, we have this image of, or this old image, you know, scientists working alone in the lab. - Yes, yes. - And having this eureka moment, right, of like, "Oh, I figured it out." When the reality is how you figure it out is in collaboration with other scientists and bouncing around ideas and talking through, you know- - Exactly. - This guy's doing this and Taylor's doing this and this lady's doing, you know? - Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely like science is better when it's done together. - I love that. - Good catch phrase. - There's the quote right there. So the NPP fellowship, and I'm sure your NSF fellowship was the same, it's a mentored experience. Talk about the importance of working with your mentor and also have you had the opportunity to mentor young scientists as well? - Yeah, mentorship is incredibly important. Not only for myself, but then also the way that I approach mentoring other people. And so for myself, I think, I kind of, I don't know if anyone ever told me this, I think I just kind of developed this thought in my own. But you know, sometimes the idea is, you know, your direct superior, like the person who's in charge of you essentially, is your mentor as well as your advisor. And that often is how it goes through graduate school. But that's not the most sustainable because that's like one person and they have a lot more on their plate. And that's not necessarily the only relationship you should have as far as mentorship is concerned. And so I think at some point during graduate school, I kind of got this understanding. And so I started intentionally collecting people essentially. And making like a network of mentors. And then also I pull from people in my own peer group as well, because I think peer mentoring is also really important. And I think that having that network of mentors is really helped sustain me through the hardest parts of graduate school because they all were addressing different parts of what I needed. You know, like, some of them are giving me professional advice, some of them are giving me advice on how to work through a problem with my science. And some were more personal advice. And I think that mentorship in that way is, I wish this was possible for everyone 'cause I think everyone should have this, this kind of network of mentors. - Yeah, yeah. - It is the best way to survive and thrive as a person. Not only that, but then also as a scientist. And so I also try and approach this when it comes to mentoring other people. - Okay. - And so during graduate school for example, I am really passionate about the service that I can provide. I have this philosophy that the service that you provide to your community, both local and scientific, should be equally as important as the science that you accomplish. And so in graduate school, I helped co-found this mentoring group that essentially in our graduate program, when you have a new graduate student come in, the playing field is not necessarily level, right? Like people have different experiences, they have different levels of privilege coming in, and so some might have a big understanding of what graduate school entails, while others like me had no idea. And were like working from the ground and didn't even know the tools that they're supposed to be using, you know. And so our mentoring program essentially paired older graduate students with these first year grad students in kind of like a handpicked mentoring network. And so they're able from the get-go to have a support system. And so they have three graduate students, who've been there for a while, who they can always talk to you and they can always reach out to you, who are guiding them through this process. And so by the end of their first year, they feel very welcomed and they feel like they belong and they know that they belong. You know, all these great things. And then starts them off on their path of graduate school and building their own mentoring network. And so that's some of the things that I've been doing to try and mentor my own peer group and then, you know, younger people as well. - Right. No, I love that. Sticking with a theme of up and coming scientists, what advice would you give someone who may be following in your footsteps? - First, I'd be very excited because I think, you know, I'm always really happy to see younger people be interested in science. It's very, it reminds me of how cool this is. - Right. - So I think that, first thing I'd probably say is like, you know, you belong, which might seem like a simple sentence, but often the subliminal and also explicit messaging that something is put toward people is that, you know, only certain people belong in science. And this definitely also comes with representation, right? Like if you see like a, you know, like we were just talking about. Like the old idea of a scientist, just like this, you know, old white man with like crazy Einstein hair. - Yes. - Like with the beacon that just exploded, which is not good lab safety protocol. You know, this- Right. - That, you know, people are gonna maybe second guess themselves if they're interested in science. So my first thing would to say, you know, is that they absolutely belong here. And if they're at all passionate about science, they deserve to be here and they should be here. And then honestly, my next advice probably would be to start, you know, exploring what you want to explore and build your network of mentors to help you learn to grow and evolve as a scientist. And it's okay to ask questions. I think that's a really big one 'cause I know that that often, the kids who ask a lot of questions sometimes, especially depending on the intersections of, you know, marginalization that they face could be told to be quiet or you're annoying, you know, sit down. But that's how you learn, you know, asking questions. - Right. - And then in the same vein, it's okay to make mistakes because mistakes are also how you grow and learn and evolve as a person. And so I think all of those together would be my first tips. But really just like, don't give up and you absolutely belong would be the biggest message. - Well, and you know, what you said about mistakes, I mean, that's how science evolves, right? - Yes, that's also how you find some really cool stuff. - Figure out what doesn't work. - Exactly. I mean, that's actually a really big thing in science. When you're, you know, as an observational astronomer, for example, I go to telescopes all the time and I take data, but sometimes the science school that you had doesn't pan out and whatever you're looking for, you know, be it that really faint, faraway galaxy or something else, you might not get anything. It might just be too faint for that telescope. And so then you have a null result, essentially. And a lot of scientists hate null results, understandably. But then they don't do anything with it and they don't care. And then when papers come out that share null results, they're like, "Oh, this isn't important." But I think that's really important 'cause not only, you know, okay, you tried this and it didn't work, that's important to share with the community. What do we need to do to make it work? You know, like what steps would we change? What telescope should we use? Like how could we change this, learn from this null result and make it an actual result? You know, like a scientific answer. - Right. - So I think that even there, which would be classified as a mistake or as a non-answer, I think those are valuable to learn from. And so I wish more scientists had that opinion. I think that's- - Right, . Taylor, can you give an example, here's the job interview question, of a time when you faced a sizable obstacle and how you overcame that? - Yeah. One of the biggest ones that comes to mind is, so I, during grad school had gone to this, you know, telescope in Hawaii. It's a 30 foot wide telescope, very massive, to get, you know, my faint detections of these very distant galaxies. And I got one which was really exciting. So I was going through the analysis of, you know, what can I learn from this galaxy? And I reached a point where my supervisor and I decided that we need to compare this to some kind of physical context, like some kind of modeling to understand what we've learned from this galaxy and what can this tell us about the early universe. But the issue was, is I would need to use this photoization micro physical code called Cloudy, which has like a documentation notebook that is 300 pages. And no one in my institution knew how to do it. - Oh no. - And none of my collaborators had ever used it. So, it was very daunting, a huge learning curve. And I was trying to for a little bit at the beginning explore other options, like, what else could I do? Because this seems like an impossible thing, like to learn how to use this code that looks incredibly complex and no one I know knows how to use it. - No one knows how to use it, yeah. - Yeah. But I ended up just sitting down and I started reading through all the papers that have ever used this code and I started trying to replicate their work. - Cool. - So like, you know, if they used a model and they made a plot showing that model, I would try and recreate that model exactly, following the steps that they outlined in their paper. And after six months, essentially, of only reproducing papers, I learned those papers really well. But after six months of only reproducing these papers, I had actually gotten a really good understanding of how to use this code. And then what's funny is, you know, after, you know, you go through that trial, right after that I met new people who became new collaborators that had used this code before. - Of course, of course. - Of course, right. But it was actually really nice because I was able to have, I'm glad it happened in the end because I was able to have like, good conversations with them and learn the things that were missing in my understanding of this code. And so I think if I had started out learning from them, I wouldn't have developed the understanding that I have. And so- - That makes perfect sense. - Not only was I able to overcome that initial roadblock of, oh my goodness, this whole new thing. It helped me get a deeper understanding of how this works and I was able to be a better collaborator. And so now I run models for a ton of my collaborators and I've taught a few other people how to use it. So it's giving back. - Awesome. Right, absolutely. I love it. So I know you've only been in your fellowship for three months, but why would you recommend a NASA NPP fellowship to others? - Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's a fantastic opportunity. I think kinda like some of the things I was saying before, you know, it's the opportunity to come work in a NASA facility. Like for example, I'm at Goddard's Space Flight Center. And having access to all of these amazing scientists who work here, both, you know, the other PostDocs or the contractors or the civil servants and just have this amazing like, seemingly infinite pool of knowledge that you can learn from and pull from is fantastic. And I think it's even more possible when you have your own funding stream, because that just enables you to remove that stressor from your life, which, you know, can impact a lot of, you know, not only your personal life but your science. And then also the NPP Program offers a really amazing range of resources. I keep getting emails every day of like these different, you know, seminars that are getting put up or, you know, these different opportunities. Even even just this NPP Symposium where you get to- - Right. - Meet other NPP fellows and network and broaden your understanding of the science that's done. One of my favorite parts is that the NPP isn't just in my field. - Awesome. - So I'm able to meet NPPs that are, or other NPP fellows that are from other branches of science. You know, like tons of biologists and geologists and, you know, it's just the people you wouldn't really interact with normally if you're working at a regular institution. - Right. - And so it's been fantastic for me and I'm only three months in, so I absolutely would recommend it to other people. - Awesome. So, apply, apply, apply. - Apply, apply. - Last question. Taylor, what brings you joy? - Oh, it's a great question. You know, a lot of things. I think one that really brings me joy right now is I have two cats. - Okay. - And they're incredibly fluffy. I get a lot of joy from annoying them. But what actually really brings me joy right now is living far away from all of my family, 'cause they're all in Texas. Every time I can video call with them and talk to them and my new niece, she's like two months old right now, so every time I see her chubby cheeks, that's, you know, we have like weekly calls, that brings me a lot of joy right now. And so I kind of, I look forward to the evenings when I have like FaceTimes with all of my family. And so I think that's probably the biggest thing right now that gives you lots of joy. - I love it. Love that answer. Taylor, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I really appreciate it. - Thank you. This was so fun. - Good, I'm glad. I'm so glad. Thank you very much. Have a great day. - Thanks. - [Announcer] 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. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn @ORAU. 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