Full transcript below
Meet Dr Genevieve Schroeder, a fabulous astrophysicist who does exciting research into GRBs … Gamma Ray Bursts. A Gamma Ray Burst is the undisputed brightest-ever radiation coming from the most extreme events in the universe … Specifically, Genevieve hunts down and understands how Gamma-ray Bursts are generated by the most cataclysmic events in our universe
TRANSCRIPT:
INTRO: < Chirp of Gravitational Wave – brief Morse Code sound >
Brendan: Welcome to the Astrophiz Podcasts. My name is Brendan O’Brien … and first of all, we would like to acknowledge Australia’s first astronomers, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the traditional owners and custodians of the land we are on.
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We are now in our ninth year of production with over 200 fabulous interviews with top scientists from all over the world.
Each month, we produce two fabulous episodes. On the first of each month, Dr. Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave gives us his monthly SkyGuide, plus a unique astrophotography challenge. Then, on the 15th of each month, we publish an interview with a leading astronomer, astrophysicist, space scientist, data scientist, telescope engineer, project manager or particle physicist, and we discover their science journey and rare insights into how they think and conduct their amazing research into exactly how our universe works.
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And today we’re about to burst over 14 time zones from rural Australia to New York State to speak with a most amazing researcher at Cornell University who is doing beautiful research … Dr. Genevieve Schroeder.
< brief Morse Code >
Brendan: Hello Genevieve.
Genevieve: Hi Brendan.
Brendan: Today listeners, I’m bursting with excitement to introduce you to Dr. Genevieve Schroeder who is an astrophysicist who does exciting research into GRB’s … Gamma Ray Bursts.
A gamma ray burst is the undisputed brightest ever radiation coming from the most extreme events in the universe, and specifically, Genevieve hunts down and understands how gamma ray bursts are generated by the most cataclysmic events in our universe.
Now, first of all, congratulations on recently being awarded your PhD and your new appointment to your research postdoc position at Cornell … And thanks for speaking with us today, Genevieve.
Genevieve: Thank you so much for having me here.
Brendan: It’s a real pleasure. That’s great. So before we talk about these massive explosions, your GRB work and your Cornell posting, can you tell us where you grew up please Genevieve,and could you tell us how you first became interested in science and space?
Genevieve: Yeah, so I am actually from the Finger Lakes region of New York,a small town called Waterloo, and I was always really interested in math and science. It was these subjects that came really naturally to me. So I knew that I wanted to pursue something sciencey as a career path, but I wasn’t really sure what that something sciencey was. And in high school, I took a physics class.
And I think contrary to what a lot of people that might do physics and astronomy would tell you, I actually hated physics class. I did not enjoy the subject at all, except for the few days that we focused on astronomy.
So when it came time to apply for undergraduate degrees, I guess I really liked those few days that we focused on astronomy. So maybe I want to do astronomy as a career path. And I was willing to change that if I decided astronomy wasn’t something that I was interested in.
But that was my first inkling of like, maybe astronomy is the right path for me.
Brendan: Excellent. Cool. Okay, let’s go back a little bit. And could you tell us a little about those school days and your earliest ambitions and how they changed and evolved over time.
Genevieve: Yeah, so at my undergrad at the University of Rochester in Rochester,New York, … my first semester I took astronomy class that actually was not for my degree at all. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was astronomy for non-science majors.
But since it was such a general astronomy class, it was really exciting … and I thought really well taught. So it really solidified that astronomy was the type of career path that I wanted to go down. And because of that career path,I still had to take a lot of physics classes.
And again, physics still was just not something that clicked with me but I got A’s in all of my astronomy classes and undergrad so that really gave me the motivation to continue to pursue this and then I thought that maybe I should look into a summer research positions in astronomy to help understand if I liked learning about astronomy versus like researching astronomy … and so I did a summer research opportunity at Boston University and I realized I really liked that as well.
So then the next step was to apply to PhD positions in astronomy research.
Brendan: Fantastic! And to do that you went from Rochester over to Northwestern University. Can you tell us how you made that big move over to Northwestern?
Genevieve: Yeah, so to be completely honest,Northwestern was the only university that accepted me for a PhD program. But I was willing to do a gap year between undergrad and a PhD if I did not think that Northwestern was right for me.
But when I did my open house visit, I really enjoyed the energy of the department, everyone seemed really nice and encouraging and they were all doing really cool research. So I decided that it was a good opportunity for me. And honestly, moving to North, to Illinois was fantastic.
Northwestern is right near Chicago and I lived in Chicago for half of my PhD career. And it’s an incredible city that I adore very much. So it was, in retrospect, a really easy choice to make.
Brendan: Fantastic it worked out so well for you. Now, you have mentioned the support of people there. We know how important it is to have those supportive supervisors and mentors.
Would you like to tell us about some of those people who have inspired and supported you as a scientist as a PhD researcher and now also probably supporting you in your postdoc research position at Cornell.
Genevieve: Yeah, so my PhD advisor, Professor Wen-fei Fong, is truly incredible.
I went to Northwestern with the intention of working on star formation research, because that was similar to the research that I did at Boston University for a summer. But Wen-fei reached out to me and asked if I wanted to work on a project with her and get a feel for her group and transients, which are these explosions that I study.
So I gave it a shot and I realized in working with her that she was a really incredible mentor and supervisor. She was really supportive and understanding and provided me all the resources I need to become a great scientist.
And so I decided to do my full PhD with her because I had realized that a good advisor can make you love almost any kind of research, whereas a bad advisor could potentially make you hate the research you once loved. So when I found a good advisor, I said, “Okay, great, we’re sticking with her”.
And then she also introduced me to Professor Tanmoy Lasker at the University of Utah. And he has been working with me almost my whole PhD. He was practically a second advisor, and he taught me a lot of what I know about radio observations and GRBs and the physics that happen with them.
And then in addition to that, there’s been a ton of fantastic women astronomers that I have met throughout my PhD experience, both on a peer level, so other grad students in one phase research group, but also postdocs and professors who are just really great role models for what awesome woman in astronomy could be.
Brendan: Fantastic, thanks, Genevieve. Okay, look, you mentioned Transients. The plan for today is to lay out gamma ray bursts on the table before you dissect them. And then we’ll have a quick look at your PhD thesis and then we’ll zoom in on your research that you’re doing at Cornell. Does that sound okay to you?
Genevieve: Yeah, that sounds great.
Brendan: Let’s dig in then. First, let’s get the big picture on GRB science please.
First of all, what are gamma rays and then, what are gamma ray bursts and what causes GRBs and where are they commonly found and when and how were GRBs first detected and just how powerful are they?
Genevieve: Yeah, so gamma rays are a form of electromagnetic radiation, so they’re a type of light, and they are the shortest wavelength of light, which means they also are the highest energy form of light. And it’s a really good thing that our atmosphere protects us from gamma rays, because there’s such high energy that we really don’t wanna interact with them on a day -to -day basis.
And then gamma ray bursts are sort of what the name implies … these are bursts of gamma rays. And, you know, they’re named after the observation that we saw, which was a burst of gamma rays.
But what causes them are explosions throughout the universe.
So, GRBs are caused by two main types of explosions, either one massive star collapsing and dying, or two neutron stars colliding and they’re commonly found kind of all throughout the universe, but in particular, the ones that come from massive stars dying are found in galaxies that produce a lot of stars, so they are highly-star forming galaxies, which makes sense because if you’re producing a lot of stars, a lot of your stars are dying, so some of them might be GRBs.
And then, the ones that come from neutron star mergers. We were informed of their detection in the 1970s.
So the way that we detected them was we had some satellites that were orbiting Earth, specifically looking for signs of nuclear weapons testing. So, you know, the 1960s was around the time of the Cold War, when we’re really concerned about nuclear weapons.
And so we put these satellites up there, the Vela satellites, to search for someone producing nuclear weapons, but instead we’re seeing all of these, what seem to be nuclear bombs exploding away from the Earth, not near the Earth.
So that clued us in that these were not actual nuclear bombs and the kinds that we would create, but rather very energetic explosions that are occurring in other galaxies.
Brendan: Wow!
Genevieve: And hopefully the fact that I’ve compared them to nuclear bombs sort of gives you the understanding of just how powerful these explosions are. They are truly the most explosive events that occur throughout our universe.
Brendan: Fantastic! From a cold war to hot science! That is awesome! Okay, look, let’s hope we don’t get GRBs popping in our Milky Way galaxy. It sounds like they could zap us back to another extinction event.
Okay … look … a quick follow -up. The events that cause GRBs … you’ve described them, they’re so powerful … we can get them when neutron stars collide … we can get gravitational waves being produced, radiation across a whole heap of wavelengths from radio to millimeter, optical through to X -rays.
And now we’re going to hear about gamma rays. I did see that in your published papers that you use data from some fabulous instruments to study your GRB afterglows, and you often use radio telescopes to follow up on GRB discoveries to understand that production of GRBs.
Could you tell us what jets and afterglows are and what do they tell us about these GRB events? Please, Genevieve.
Genevieve: Yeah, so when a GRB occurs, it will produce this beamed radiation that is moving at relativistic speeds. So this is what the jet is, and you can kind of think of it as a laser pointer facing directly at Earth from another galaxy.
So it’s very tight cone of radiation … and because there’s so much energy involved in this jet, it will sort of plow through the stuff surrounding the GRB.
So you can think of it like a snowplow. It’s going to start pushing all of that stuff away. And that will actually excite some of the electrons in all of the matter that is surrounding this GRB.
And so when these electrons get excited, they produce synchrotron radiation. And this is known as the afterglow. So the afterglow is this light that is produced from the jet interacting with the surrounding medium. And we can detect the afterglow from the X -rays down to radiobands. So really across the electromagnetic spectrum. And so like you said, gamma ray bursts, they actually produce not only the gamma rays, but light all throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. And studying their afterglows can actually tell us a lot about the GRB itself.
It can clue us into just how energetic these events are, and it can also tell us about the environment that these events occur in.
So specifically, the radio side of the synchrotron radiation spectrum, it is very sensitive to just how much stuff was around the GRB, and when there’s more stuff around the GRB, the radio afterglow will be brighter.
Brendan: Fantastic … real diagnostic science. Thank you. I will make a point of staying away from those jets. They sound very dangerous. Now, could we have a quick look at your PhD research to help us understand your personal research trajectory?
You were focused on GRBs, obviously, and I had a good look at your thesis.
It’s actually four papers in one. Thanks for sending them through to me.
So perhaps you could tell us about short and long GRBs which feature in your thesis and what big questions were you asking for your PhD and what main problems were you working on that you had to strive to overcome?
Genevieve: Yeah, so long and short GRBs are a way that we classify the progenitors of these events. So like I said, GRBs come from either a core collapse of massive star or two neutron stars that merge. And we can sort of dissect which channel they came from based on how long we detect their gamma ray radiation.
So typically, if we see gamma rays for less than two seconds, we call that a short GRB, and we assume it came from a neutron star merger.
And if we see gamma rays for longer than two seconds, we call that a long GRB, and we assume that it came from the core collapse of massive stars. And my thesis focused on what we can learn about GRBs through radio observations.
So on the long GRB side of things, I specifically looked at long GRBs that were hiding behind some amount of dust.
So if a long GRB is hiding behind dust, then we’re not seeing the optical or the visible light afterglow, but we can still see X-rays from this event, and we can also still see the radio afterglow. And so when we take the radio and X–ray observations, we can sort of piece together what the optical afterglow should have looked like, and then we can use that to determine just how much dust was in between us and that long GRB.
And so I looked at sort of whether or not the dust-obscured long GRBs were intrinsically different from unobscured long GRBs or if they truly were just long GRBs hiding behind dust.
And my main conclusion was that they are just long GRBs hiding behind dust, but because they occur in galaxies that have more mass and more dust, it means that we are more likely to intersect some amount of dust along the line of sight. And that’s why these long GRBs end up being dusty.
And then on the short GRB side of thing, one of the main questions I had is what determines the radio detectability of short GRBs.
So to put this into context, before I started my PhD in 2018, we had only detected eight radio afterglows from short GRBs. So that’s a detection rate of about 10, 11%.
And throughout the course of my PhD, we actually ended up detecting another eight.
So we doubled the sample over the six years that I was doing my PhD. And with a sample of 16 short GRBs, we can start to look at larger properties of these radio-detected short GRBs versus individual events. And so what I found was that we do typically detect short GRBs at radio wavelengths when they’re closer to us.
So when they have a lower red-shift, which makes sense, because things that are closer will end up being brighter. And also we detect short GRBs that occur in denser environments. So like I said, the radio afterglow is really dependent on how much stuff is around the short GRB. And I have demonstrated that it does directly connect to whether or not we’re going to detect the radio afterglow of a short GRB.
Brendan: Cool.
Genevieve: But another thing that I looked at was the observing strategies that we had been using to search for these radio afterglows.
Typically, when we’re looking at short GRBs, what we would do is we would look at it maybe within one day after we had detected the GRB and then maybe around five-ish days after with radio telescopes. And then if we didn’t detect anything, we’d just kind of give up. But back in 2021, I had detected short GRB 210726A with the Very Large Array. And with that, what we had done is we looked at 1 day, we looked at 5 days, we didn’t see anything, but then we looked again at 11 days and that was actually the first time that we had seen any radio emission from this GRB and from there the radio emission actually brightened very quickly and faded very quickly. So what this sort of showed us is that observations out to later times can actually be very fruitful and can lead to detections … and not only just detections, but also may reveal unexpected behavior that we might have missed had we given up on observing earlier on.
Brendan: Fantastic strategy …and that’s turning out to be very productive. Thank you, Genevieve. Okay, that brings us up to your new post.. your position at Cornell University.
Could I ask a couple of questions here? I seem to have a bad habit of asking multi-part questions. I should apologize for that. Firstly, for our early career astronomers listening, how did you line up your postdoc position? And secondly, what is your role? And what are your responsibilities at Cornell and thirdly and hopefully finally, is it good to be back in your home state?
Genevieve: Yeah, so my postdoc position at Cornell is working with Professor Anna Ho, who is rising star in terms of transient astronomy.
So I had mentioned transients before. This is just anything that changes in the night, typically explosions. And so when I saw that she was looking for somebody to do follow-up on these explosions, I jumped at the opportunity to apply for it. And I’d met Anna at a couple of different instances throughout my PhD career, but one that I do think was useful was the summer before I applied to her position. I saw her at a GRB conference and I flagged her down and I told her about my most recent paper, which was on 210726A and I think that helps her realize when I applied for her position that I could be somebody that she was interested in working with.
So at Cornell, I am still interested in GRBs, but I’m also broadening my scope to sort of any transients that occurs that Anna is also interested in, and I specifically still look at the radio follow -up of these transients.
So here, my first project is … I explained how GRBs have jets and also may come from the core collapse of massive stars. Well, in addition to seeing the GRB for these events, we would also see a specific type of supernova … a type 1c broad-line supernova. But the interesting thing is we also detect type 1c broad-line supernova without detecting a GRB. And so one idea is that these jets might be facing not directly at us, and so there could still be a GRB associated with it, but we just don’t detect the gamma rays, and so we’re using radio observations to see if we can detect this off-axis jet at later times, specifically looking at this class of supernova.
To answer the third part of the question, it is nice to be back in my home state. I’m actually only an hour away from my mom and two hours away from my sister and nephews. So it’s nice to be home and the Finger Lakes region is unmatched in the fall time.
So I’m really enjoying all of the Apple-themed events and products that exist right now and I’m excited to not spend money on a plane trips.
Brendan: Fantastic …Thanks, Genevieve. That brings us up to date now.
Can you tell us a little bit about the latest techniques you’ve hinted at these and the different technologies that you’re using to detect and identify and characterize GRBs.
What’s exciting for GRB scientists right now?
Genevieve: Yeah, so some of the latest and greatest technologies are actually two new satellites that have been launched really recently. So there’s SVOM that’s S -V -O -M,
I don’t remember what that stands for … and the Einstein Probe … and SVOM, specifically looks for gamma-ray bursts, and then the Einstein probe looks for X ray transients, but some of those X-ray transients do end up being associated with GRBs.
It’s great to have these two new instruments up and running, because our typical really good Gamma-ray burst detector, SWIFT, is 20 years old now,
So it’s unclear how much longer it will be able to detect gamma ray bursts and follow them up in the X-rays. So I’m very excited that we have a couple … not replacements … but alternatives to SWIFT.
And then in terms of radio follow-up of GRBs, the exciting stuff for me is MeerKAT, which is a radio telescope in South Africa. It typically operates at lower frequencies than the VLA is optimized at, so we can get some of this lower frequency information about GRB afterglows.
And we’ve detected a handful of long GRB afterglows with it and now two short GRB afterglows with MeerKAT. And then, of course, my bread and butter is the Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico. It’s the most sensitive radio telescope right now that can detect radio afterglows. But then a recent gap that we have been filling is in the millimeter realm afterglows. We’ve been using ALMA to follow up GRBs.
And ALMA has been detecting long GRB afterglows for a few years now, but as of 2021, it’s detected its first short GRB afterglow.
It was the first time we tried and we detected the afterglow, and then just this past November, we detected our second short GRB afterglow with ALMA.
So it’s really filling in this gap of data that we didn’t really have before.
So it’s very exciting time to be a radio astronomer. And there’s quite a few things on the horizon that I’ll mention later that I’m also very excited about.
Brendan: Yes, there’s some beautiful instrumentation coming. We’re very excited here in Australia to be part of the SKA and that South African facility, MeerKAT is also going to be part of the SKA. It’s really exciting times.
Fantastic! Now we know very well that research doesn’t always sail smoothly and we’re happy to put our propeller heads on for a short time. Is GRB 210726A still on your radar?
And could you share with us some details of a particular part of your GRB research that you’re working on right now that is really driving you crazy or astonishingly exciting or possibly both?
Genevieve: Yeah, so GRB 210726A is not necessarily on my radar in terms of follow-up still because it’s Radio Afterglow did fade, although I would love to figure out what its redshift is.
we think its got redshift is 2.4, but we need a spectral confirmation from … basically JWST is the only telescope that would be able to get the actual redshift for us.
So what is on my radar is events like 210726A, which are these late-rising radio afterglows.
Like I said before, we realize that our observing strategies are maybe not optimized for some of the more weirdly behaving short -tier B afterglows.
So I would be very excited to see something similar to this past event. And sort of along those lines, something that drives me absolutely crazy in the GRB Afterglow world is that there’s both never enough data, and also the more data you have, the less it makes sense.
So, like I mentioned earlier with 210726A, we saw this rapidly rising and falling radio afterglow, and that was not what was expected from the standard afterglow behavior. So we had to, sort of, invoke some other emission mechanisms to explain why we saw this ‘radio flares’ … what we called it.
So early back in November, we detected this other short GRB at radio wavelengths … GRB 231117a. And I recently submitted a paper on it.
And again, the radio afterglow, but also the optical and X-ray afterglow, they all have some weird features to them that are not part of the standard model.
And so again, we have to invoke these additional things to try and explain what we’re seeing from them. So in both cases of both GRBs that I saw, we played around with ‘energy injection’ and also ‘reverse shocks’, which are just different processes that can happen and can change the way that the afterglow evolves.
So that’s something that just always drives me wild. I just want a really well-behaved afterglow, and I never get one, but it’s also really exciting to sort of see that the more data we
get, the more clear it is that none of these behave in the standard way, and we should maybe stop assuming that they do behave in the standard way.
Brendan: Wow! It must be fantastic to be in those communities where is share all of those concerns and discoveries. Exciting times for you, Genevieve.
Genevieve: Yeah … it’s really cool and it’s fun to bounce ideas off of people.
Brendan: Awesome, okay. Look, we’ll just change tack a little bit. What about the nature of your non-research work at Cornell?
Genevieve: Yeah, So I just started working at Cornell like less than a month ago, so I’m still sort of getting my footing. But on the non-research side of things …things that I would like to get involved in is … it would be great to be able to mentor a student on some type of research project.
I have some experience with mentoring in the past. I helped an undergrad with their senior thesis and there’s an opportunity for me to maybe have a Summer Research Student next summer, which I think would be really cool .. and I’d also really like to get involved in some of the logistics of the department. I know that a lot of postdocs that end up having a little bit more push into the type of scientist that we invite to give talks.
So it’d be cool to be able to, you know, put names down on lists that I think would give cool talks and also help organize meetings or conferences even and just sort of get experience on the like broader scope of things that can be done within an astronomy department.
Brendan: Well, that sounds like you’re diving in the deep end there, Genevieve. Okay, I see you were studying at Northwestern throughout the height of the COVID pandemic. It seems to have faded a little bit now. How did COVID affect you at a time in your family, and what was the impact on your astrophysics research, for example, and what lessons were learned through COVID?
Genevieve: Yeah, so I struggled a good amount with COVID. For context, I do not work very well from home. I actually thrive in an office environment. I find it holds me accountable so that I actually do work and I don’t just end up getting distracted. And prior to the COVID pandemic, I did not even have a desk at my home to work from home for.
So I really had to adjust when everything got switched to virtual.
And you know, I’ve gotten a little bit better now, but I still limit myself to one work from home day a week just because I know I’m not very good at being productive at home. Thankfully, the telescopes that I used weren’t the most affected, so a lot of telescopes did end up turning offline for a while because the operators were social distancing, and trying to keep themselves safe, but I think because the VLA is in a small town, and you can have it operating with just a few people … They were able to get it back up and running pretty quickly.
I know there was a GRB that occurred in May of 2020 that we managed to get VLA data for.
So they really figured out something very quickly. So that part of my research was not affected, but I was not the most productive because I was struggling so much with the work from home aspect, but in terms of lessons learned … again personally it demonstrated for me that like working from home was difficult … but I think overall as a community it showed us that you know virtual collaboration is very possible.
I think a lot more people are collaborating across the country and worlds than they did prior to the COVID pandemic, and then also sort of a personal and as a whole lesson … is I personally find that virtual conferences do not work very well with my personality. I was not able to forge any new connections through the virtual conferences … and I found with In-person conferences, I was able to like create new friends and collaborations pretty easily.
But I do think overall having a virtual option is really important from an accessibility standpoint because sometimes people don’t have the funding or just the time to really go to a conference … or they might be trying to protect their health, or they might just actually be sick and it’s best for them to attend virtually.
So I think we should still have virtual options … and like sometimes Slack channels just to allow people to participate in some way even if they can’t be there in person.
Brendan: Excellent. Yeah very true accessibility is really important. Okay look let’s sum up. You’ve painted the big picture of GRB research. We’ve had a look at your PhD and your workload at Cornell and we’ve gone all sciencey for a little while, and we’ve heard how you thrive in that face-to-face environment. Would you like to tell us about some of the things outside of your GRB research that regularly brings you great joy?
Genevieve: Yeah, so I think it’s really important for one to find a way to be creative.
I was really into traditional like art, just like drawing, painting, etc. from when I was a child. And I’ve sort of transitioned that into like fun, colorful makeup as a researcher. So that’s like my opportunity to be a little creative each day, as I typically have some type of fun makeup going on. And then I really love just walking around, going to a thrift store and exploring my environment. So back in Chicago, a pretty regular weekend activity would be me walking to a thrift store, enjoying some of the like outside time enjoying some of the unique finds that you could discover within the store.
And now here in Ithaca, there’s a lot of natural beauty. We have one of the Finger Lakes nearby.
There’s a ton of gorges and waterfalls, and therefore there’s some light hiking around. So that’s something I am hoping to get into here is to explore the nature of a smaller town and just enjoy all of the beauty that comes with it.
Brendan: Yeah, beautiful. Okay, thanks, Genevieve. Now, you hinted earlier that you had plans to do some mentoring and perhaps have summer students. What about outreach? They’re good examples of particular styles of outreach.
Has outreach an important part of being an astrophysicist?
Genevieve: Absolutely! I think one of the great parts of astronomy is that it is relatively accessible to most people. A lot of people have the ability to at least go outside and stare at maybe one star, or the moon, depending on how big the city you live in. So as an astronomer, I think it’s like really easy to connect with almost anyone on your research in some way. And so like what I’ve done for outreach is at Northwestern, I was heavily involved in the Chicago branch of ‘Astronomy on TAP’, which is an organization that brings Science talks and sometimes trivia to local bars to try and engage people above the drinking age in astronomy.
I also think it’s really important to bring astronomy to kids in Elementary, Middle and High School. I actually have an interview with a Middle Schooler tomorrow to talk about my career path.
Brendan: Cool.
Genevieve: So I think outreach is super important and a great way to get your community involved in astronomy. And that can also help get funding through National Services. If you get enough community members to care about it, you can get your political leaders to care about it, and then you can get more money. So outreach is very important.
Brendan: Excellent. Yes, we have a thing over here called Science in the Pub, which does exactly the same thing. Thank you very much.
Look, we’ve reached the point where now the microphone is all yours, and you’ve got the opportunity to give us your favorite rant or rave about one of the challenges that we humans face in science, in equity, in representations of diversity and perhaps science denialism … that’s my bugbear … or science career paths, or your own passion for research, or perhaps even our human quest for new knowledge. The microphone is all yours.
Genevieve: Thanks. I appreciate this opportunity. One thing that I’m really passionate about is the financial inequity that occurs within astronomy and also within academia as a whole. So as you or your listeners may or may not be aware, PhD students don’t make a ton of money. Depending on your university, you make somewhere between ‘not livable’ and ‘barely livable’. And so that can be very difficult for a lot of people to financially support themselves through a PhD.
And then in addition to that, at least in the US, we have a really bad student loan crisis.
I myself racked up $60 ,000 worth of student loans for my undergrad education. And that was with about 75 % of my tuition being covered by grants and scholarships, and I find that in academia there’s a lot of people that either have some type of generational wealth or academic family members that help funnel them into it, which I think is great, and I think that they all deserve to be there, but if we want to care about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, we have to think about the people that come from lower-income backgrounds, that maybe can’t afford to take what is, in theory, a pay-cut to do a PhD and then to go into academia, which is also a lower-income career path for a lot of people.
And on top of that, even just applying to grad schools can be very expensive. When I was applying, I think it was about somewhere between $60 and $100 per school application.
So that meant that I had to limit the number of places I applied to. And there’s fee waivers, but sometimes it was ambiguous about how, or whether you would be able to get a fee waiver, which I think can be very difficult for people that want to pursue a career in academia. So I think that’s something that we should really think about as we’re trying to recruit people from different backgrounds.
Like we need to make sure it’s actually accessible for them to get to the point of doing a PhD.
Brendan: Exactly! Equity is essential. Thank you Genevieve. There’s a powerful argument for treating our research scientists much better than we do. Okay. Look, what else should we keep our eye on in the near future?
What are you keeping your eye on, Genevieve?
Genevieve: Yeah. I sort of hinted about this earlier, but the things that I’m really excited about in the next couple of years … We’re currently in the middle of LIGO Observing Run 4. It’s supposed to go until I think about June of 2025, and so what I’m hoping for is another binary neutron star merger detected through LIGO with gravitational waves that is also coincident with a GRB.
We’ve had one of those so far back in 2017 and we haven’t seen anything yet and anything since … and what the event in 2017 taught us was that we were not quite prepared to observe it … and so I think a lot of people have really honed in on their observing strategies, and it would be exciting to attempt to use those observing strategies to observe another multi -messenger event like that.
And then also along the realms of things that are coming online is the Rubin Observatory, which will be doing a optical survey of the night sky to really good depth … it is supposed to be coming online in the next couple of years, according to their website. I don’t know, it’s been pushed back quite a bit similar to JWST. And then the DSA 2000, which is a 2000 dish radio array that is being built in … I want to say Nevada … That is slated to come online sometime in the late 2020s as well. And the DSA 2000 will give us really deep snapshots of the radio sky and it has a decently fast cadence for a radio survey and really good depth. So I’m really excited to see what they discover as well.
Brendan: Fantastic! So many good things coming online. It’s really exciting time for all sorts
of us at every wavelength, starting with LIGO and finishing up with GRBs.
Thank you Genevieve. Well, thank you so much Dr Genevieve Schroeder on behalf of all of our listeners and especially from me. It’s been a blast! It’s been really exciting to be speaking with you way over there in New York State 14 time zones away. And thank you especially for your time in your huge research schedule. And good luck with your next adventures and your next data streams and all of your future travels. And I’ll look forward to reading all about your next discoveries and hopefully see you over in Australia for the next Transients Down Under Conference. Thank you, Genevieve! Bye now.
Genevieve: Yeah, thank you so much … Bye!
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Brendan: Remember, Astrophiz is free, no ads, and unsponsored.But we always recommend that you check out Dr Ian Musgrave’s AstroBlogger website to find out what’s up in the night sky. So we’ll see you in two weeks for Ian’s November Sky Guide. Keep looking up.
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