In this episode, we’re hearing from Dr. Gonzalo Giribet, who is a Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Curator of Invertebrates and Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Gonzalo received his bachelor’s degree and his PhD from the University of Barcelona, then did his postdoc at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. While there, his postdoc advisor convinced him to apply for a faculty position at Harvard, which he got, and he has been at Harvard ever since. Gonzalo was an early adopter of the idea of molecular phylogenetics, which he has used to help clarify our understanding of the invertebrate tree of life.

In this episode, we chat about:

• What a postdoc at a museum is like and the types of research you can do at a museum
• What a science museum curator does (and doesn’t do)
• Underrated invertebrates, including velvet worms
• How studying rare animals has enabled Gonzalo to travel the world
• Gonzalo’s vision for the future of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology
• Some of the pros and cons of studying non-model organisms
• The value of being disciplined with how you use your time
• Finding a project you’re really passionate about
• Windsurfing!

Get in touch with Steph:

• Twitter

Get in touch with the podcast:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Email: rootstostempodcast@gmail.com
• Website: rootstostempodcast.com

In today’s episode we’re talking to Dr. Paula Welander, an Associate Professor in the Earth Systems Science Department at Stanford University. Although she is now a tenured professor at Stanford, this certainly wasn’t the plan from the start. Paula’s parents immigrated from Mexico in the hopes of giving their family a better life, and they really encouraged her to go to college and to pursue one of two careers, medicine or law. So Paula went to Occidental College with medicine in mind, however that path shifted when she worked in a microbiology lab and realized that research like that could actually be a career. Paula has been working with microbes more or less ever since (although with a short hiatus that we talk about in the episode). After getting her undergrad at Occidental College, Paula worked for a few years (this is where the non-microbial work comes in) and then got her PhD in microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Bill Metcalf. She then did a postdoc at MIT, where she was co-advised by Dianne Newman (who later moved to CalTech) and Roger Summons. After going through three cycles of faculty applications during her postdoc, Paula got her current position at Stanford Earth, where she studies geologically relevant microbes.

Some of the things we cover in this episode:

• How can you use molecular biology and microbiology to understand geology and the earth’s history?
• What are archaea?
• The two body problem (aka having a partner who is also an academic)
• Having kids in grad school
• Some pros and cons of taking time off after undergrad
• How to come up with good questions
• Practicing for faculty interviews
• The best and worst parts of Paula’s PhD
• The excitement of adding new knowledge to the world

Get in touch with Paula:

• Twitter
• Welander Lab Website
• email: welander@stanford.edu

Get in touch with Steph:

• Twitter

Get in touch with the podcast:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Email: rootstostempodcast@gmail.com
• Website: rootstostempodcast.podbean.com

In this week’s episode, we’re hearing from Dr. Rebecca Shaw, the Chief Scientist at the World Wildlife Fund. Rebecca received her MA in environmental policy and her PhD in energy and resources from UC Berkeley. After finishing her PhD, Rebecca did a postdoc at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford, and then worked at the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund before moving to her current role at WWF.

Some of the things we talk about in this episode include:

• Rebecca’s decision to turn down a faculty position and instead pursue a career that enabled her to combine her interests in climate change science and non-profit work
• How PhD training equips you to be successful at all sorts of other careers
• What gives Rebecca hope when it comes to climate change (including the wonderful poem Earthrise by Amanda Gorman)
• Rebecca’s advice for women in science
• Why staying positive has been a key part of what has made Rebecca successful, and how she takes care of herself to be able to stay positive
• The importance of constantly improving both your hard skills and your soft skills

Get in touch with Rebecca:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Get in touch with Steph:

• Twitter

Get in touch with the podcast:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Email: rootstostempodcast@gmail.com
• Website: rootstostempodcast.podbean.com