- So I think mentoring is probably one of the most important aspects for a career in science. I mean, courses really only get you so far in understanding the culture and nuance of the field. I think having a personal connection with someone who's invested in your future, it really brings along an important sense of belonging in the field.

- [Narrator] 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".

- Welcome to "Further Together The ORAU Podcast". Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with several NASA national Postdoctoral Program Research Fellows about the amazing work that they're doing. And I gotta tell you, I think you'll agree with me, their work is amazing and it's very interesting. If you're a space junkie like I am, you're gonna nerd out on these conversations, enjoy. Dr. Lewis let's start, if you would, talking about who you are, what's your current role with the NASA NPP Fellows Program and tell me a little bit about your background.

- Sure, so my name is Tiffany Lewis. I grew up in Southern California. I went to college at George Washington University in Washington DC and at that time, I was sort of thinking I was interested in science policy but I really loved my research project. So I ended up getting my PhD in Physics from George Mason University in Virginia. I've been a NASA Post-Doctoral Program Fellow for two years. I work in The Astroparticle Physics Laboratory on theoretical modeling of jets in active galaxies, especially blazars. And I've had the opportunity to consult on some exciting projects here. So I worked on the science case for the AMEGO-X mission concept, and I led a lot of the involvement in the Snowmass process from the high energy astrophysics and multi-messenger communities.

- Wow, so it sounds like you've done some really exciting and interesting things. Has science always been an interest for you? I guess, how did you get to the point that you are now?

- So I didn't always have a strong interest in science. I mean, I always enjoyed the classes but that... I enjoyed all of my classes when I was a kid so I was a bit of a nerd. So when I was really young I wanted to be a teacher, and then sort of around middle school I wanted to be a historian. In high school I looked a little bit at aerospace engineering but it didn't really keep my attention.

- Okay.

- So by the time I graduated high school I had been doing Model United Nations for four years and I really wanted to be a science policy advisor. So I was working towards that in college, I took courses in modern world history, the foundations of politics, journalism and journalistic statistics and that was all in addition to my physics major because I wanted to have like a really strong foundation in science if I was going to be advising other people on it.

- Right.

- But I had this really amazing mentor during my undergraduate research project, and I really fell in love with the activity of research, coding, math, problem solving at its most fundamental. So I was starting to see open questions in the universe and I ended up pivoting to a more standard science career track. And gosh, it must have been after I submitted my intent to graduate paperwork, and then I started applying to graduate schools for physics.

- Very cool so very unorthodox sort of track to get where you are. What was it about, just going back to your interest in science policy, what was it about that, that stoked your interest?

- So science policy sort of brought together the two things that I was most interested in at the time. I found that I had sort of a talent for science and I took a lot of science classes when I was in high school and I wanted to continue that in college. But I guess I just never really fully considered a scientific career at that point in my life.

- Okay.

- I didn't know what that looked like, I didn't know anyone who had had a scientific career. But I had, had a lot of experience in Model UN and so I had sort of mapped out, what is the career trajectory of somebody who works in policy. And I had identified that I could combine those two things as a science policy advisor.

- Gotcha and then you found a mentor who really sort of changed the trajectory. Talk about that experience a little bit being mentored. And I know in the NASA NPP Fellows Program, that's a mentored experience as well, how important... I mean, obviously you had a mentor that sort or changed the trajectory of your work, career, and your focus but how important have mentors been to you?

- So, I think mentoring is probably one of the most important aspects for a career in science. I mean, courses really only get you so far in understanding the culture and nuance of the field. I think having a personal connection with someone who's invested in your future, it really brings along an important sense of belonging in the field.

- Okay, and have you had the opportunity to mentor others?

- Yeah, so when I was in grad school I had the opportunity to mentor actually a lot of students in both research and outreach through the campus observatory when I was managing that facility. So I taught them to use the telescopes, I taught them how to analyze data, and I've tried to connect them with collaborators both inside the university and outside the university so that they could work with those people to further their careers. I've also mentored through the Fermi Collaboration, I've served two terms as a Career Mentor and Counselor and I've mentored other PostDocs through sort of career oriented conversations in a a STEM wide organization.

- Okay so making those connections and working with others is really important. I know that science is a very collaborative process, talk a little bit about that as well. I know you're working on sort of your own research but you're also doing it in collaboration with other scientists. Talk about the importance of that process for your work but in science generally.

- Sure so I mean, teamwork, collaboration those things can come together in a few different ways. So I think one of the best things as a scientist is to recognize that everyone in this sphere has a distinct area of expertise and so it's less about competition, and it's more about drawing on each others' strengths. So when I was coordinating an observing campaign to measure the size of the accretion disks in the active galaxies, I was actually working on the planning portion. So I had a sense of how to prioritize the observations, how to distribute them over the course of a year, and what needed to be done in any given night. We had another scientist who was responsible for creating the analysis pipelines and actually analyzing the data, and getting into the nitty gritty of that. And we hired a student to take on shifts in monitoring the telescope overnight. And he was responsible for making sure that all of the automated processes were running correctly or redistributing the observations to prioritize complete data sets especially, if you've ever done optical observing from the ground, you know that weather is a huge thing that will come to play in really unexpected ways.

- Sure.

- So we each had a role and we were each crucial to the final outcome, estimating the size of that accretion disk but none of our work actually overlapped that much. We each had distinct areas of expertise and I think that's really important to recognize in science work more broadly. So I've also worked inside of formal collaborations that center around NASA missions or mission concepts. The Fermi collaboration is an international working group that centers around the Fermi mission. My roles within the collaboration are as a consultant on theoretical problems, someone who analyzes blazar data. And I've also been a mentor to students and an instructor at the summer school, and I've contributed to publications. I'm also involved in advocacy and public outreach for gamma ray science through the Fermi mission.

- Wow, you have a lot going on for sure. How has the NASA NPP Fellowship program impacted your career? Obviously, you've done some amazing work through the program. Do you see yourself continuing in that vein? Doing other work? I guess where do you see yourself headed from here?

- Yeah so I mean, I am on the job market right now, so where I'm headed sort of depends on the offers that I get. But in my NPP Fellowship, I feel like this opportunity has really deepened my expertise in blazar theory through the work with my mentor and sort of incorporating some particle physics into my models of jets for blazars. Working at NASA has allowed me to collaborate with observers, consult on mission concepts, that's not something that people really get to do very often outside of NASA. And to really deepen my connections within the active astronomical community. It gave me the freedom to advise the astrophysics communications office at NASA, to advocate for not just a mission but a method for the structure of future mission selection processes through the Snowmass process, and working with people that are advising the time domain and multi-messenger astrophysics component of interpreting the decadal right now. So I've also been working with a team to create structures and policies to affect research-based permanent changes in the diversity and inclusion culture of our lab. And as one of the foremost organizations in astrophysics, and a driver for innovation and a funding agency, NASA is really in a unique position to set trends to define culture for the field. So it's been especially meaningful to work on these types of projects from here.

- Very cool. Here's a... Since you're on the job market, here's a job interview type question. Can you share a time that you faced a sizable obstacle in your work and how you overcame that?

- I don't know if this is an interesting answer but it's sort of a matter of course in cutting edge research that one will encounter problems. When that happens, it's mostly a matter of checking everything up to that point. This is especially in the context of theoretical research, you wanna kind of poke around the edges of the problem to verify the extent of it, and then you're probably gonna go and consult with the literature, talk to some other experts in the area to kind of generate ideas for a direction to go. And then it's really just chipping away at it. I mean, when you're dealing with mathematical and computational problems, there is... You're doing some checking to make sure that you're on the right track but it's mostly just slowing down, making sure that everything is right, verifying step by step.

- Okay.

- That's how you get-

- That's how you get it done, right? What advice would you give to an up and coming scientist who may wanna follow in your footsteps?

- So, coming from the perspective of practical skills, what I use most often is gonna be math and coding. So I pursued math sort of along the standard track, algebra, geometry to calculus, and then differential equations. I took some computer science classes in college. I actually learned to code more from my undergraduate research project. So I had a very patient mentor who would really walked me through some of that more advanced scientific coding. So I took, several courses in computational physics at the graduate level and those are all things that I still use to this day. I still use most of the math that I learned, I still use most of the coding that I learned. Those computational physics courses were really something that helped to set up my career. I also have built a broad expertise in research. I've taken on a variety of projects in different sub-fields. I've done exoplanet microlensing and transit observations all the way through cataclysmic variables, photometric observations of galaxies. And then also, of course, my core work is a theorist in blazar work. So a large part of the value that I bring to a project is the physical intuition and that can really only be acquired through time and experience. So I would suggest, set yourself up with those broad foundations, don't be afraid to dabble, and after that it's really all about persistence.

- Very nice. Why would you recommend a NASA NPP Fellowship to others?

- So, something that I really enjoy in my work is a variety of tasks, I feel like the NPP Fellowship really facilitates that. It gives you sort of the independence to work on things that are with your mentor, if you would like to do things that are a little bit adjacent to what your mentor might be doing. And I get to learn a lot about the most powerful objects in the universe and to advance knowledge along that track. So I get to talk to other people about science and advocacy. I mean, one of the great things about working at NASA is that there's such a concentration of people who do similar work and it's really great to be able to have those hallway conversations. I also love that I get to travel to conferences and meet with scientists around the world. So those are also things that NASA through the NPP Fellowship facilitates.

- That's awesome and who doesn't wanna work with the most powerful objects in the universe, right? Last question for you, Dr. Lewis. What brings you joy?

- So, I mean, if you wanna separate it a little bit from the work that I do, I love taking care of my plants.

- Okay. That's awesome so what kind of plants?

- So I really like things that have large leaves and very green foliage. I like to keep them indoors so that they filter the air in my house and I get to look at them even through the winter when everything is kind of brown outside.

- Right. Life is still green on the inside.

- Mm hmm.

- I love it. Dr. Tiffany Lewis, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation, I really appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- Thank you and have a great rest of your day.

- You too, bye.

- [Narrator] 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 at OARU, and on Instagram at ORAUTOGETHER. If you like "Further Together The ORAU Podcast", we would appreciate you giving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews will help more people find the podcast.