20: Space Life Science Research (with Dr. Gioia Massa)
1:22AM May 31, +0000
Speakers:
Lisa Shen
Farida Rahman
Gioia Massa
Keywords:
plants
research
nasa
space
space station
programme
centre
science
astronauts
opportunities
interested
area
scientists
biology
resume
important
grow
experiments
kennedy space
job
Hello, and welcome back to so you got to lifesite degree. We're your hosts for Rita and Lisa to lifestyle undergrad students trying to navigate our future careers. This is Episode 20. And we're talking to Dr. Joy Massa about plant research in states are you doing today, Lisa, I'm doing great, I finally moved into my new apartment. Very, very exciting. And I have so many stories, but I'm just going to pick one to tell, which is the story of the Wi Fi catastrophe. So as I kind of already told you, I moved in on May 2, and that was the day that the Rogers technician was supposed to come to instal our home internet, you know, like wire up the modem like all that stuff. So technician one comes, and he takes a long look. And he says, I need to call another tech to do this. And since that happened, over these long, long weeks, I have learned why that was the case, which is that our building because it's a brand new building, it was built using this new technology that Rogers has that seems that 95% of Rogers does not even know that this exists. And only maybe 1% of the technicians are actually trained in this technology interest. So he called a second technician. The second technician came a couple hours later technician over to spend 20 minutes to 30 minutes on the phone with Rogers customers.
That's right, our technician called Rogers customer support. He was walking around our living room like talking on the phone, I was trying to unpack my stuff. And then his conclusion was we're gonna have to send a note.
And we were like, Okay, and so that technician, it was scheduled for the day after around whatever time that guy was supposed to come 12pm whatever, I get a text that says Hi, I'm outside. So you know, because it's an apartment building. I say, Okay, I'm going to meet you down in the lobby, because I don't have the intercom set up yet. So I go down and he's not there. Oh, no, that was very confused by this. And so I luckily I was able to call the number back and I asked, Where are you at? I don't see you. He said, I'm outside the house. Oh, no. And I said, Where are you? And he said, some address? And my brain went? Oh, no. Because I don't know why Rogers I feel like this is like the principle of programme design, where it's like a programme should only be able to access the things that it needs to access. You know, like Facebook doesn't need to access your camera unless you're doing a video call. But But Rogers just goes for, for the strategy of we want to know everything. We want to know all the information, everyone using our accounts to the point where it's in excess that we don't know what to do. No. And one of those examples is that because my roommate who set up the account for our internet for the apartment, she also has services through Rogers for her personal home address, right. And so every time they send a technician, they send it over to her house, even if you are talking to someone and you tell them Hi, you know, this problem is with address x they will still send it's like they don't think anyways, and so clearly that did it. Random technician to avoid or outside their house in Markham. So, you know, okay, so we booked a fourth technician. technician for the technician actually figured out got the Wi Fi running. It broke down three days later after a power outage. And then I was out of Wi Fi for I believe something like 14 days. Oh, yeah. During a pandemic in which you cannot go to the library or cafes. And yeah, so it was it was not great. Yeah. But currently, I have Wi Fi. I don't know if that will continue and
knock on all the woods.
Yeah, luckily, you
have a lot around me.
But yeah, so that's a that has been an interesting and extremely frustrating. I think that if Rogers or to pay me $15 for every single hour that I've been on the phone with them. I would have made a few $100 from this.
But sadly, that is not the case. And they're not even compensating us because both accounts. Yeah, so sorry for this not very fun Wi Fi a journey. Yeah, well, I mean, I learned what a coax cable is. Something came out of it. How are you doing? Nice. Um, yeah, kind of similar, moved apartments living with a roommate now. But the more exciting thing that just happened in my life is that I got vaccinated. Well, we all use Yeah, so I was talking to my friend about this where it felt like the vaccine was never gonna come and then within a span of like, two weeks, it seemed like everyone got vaccinated. Yeah, it's I think it's because they suddenly got a huge shipment. My girlfriend works at a vaccine clinic and I remember her saying that they were doubling the number of people they were vaccinating. Yeah, I noticed this, particularly when I was actually at podcasts of when I was like so excited that I might be able to get vaccinated soon. And then within the week when I was editing it, it's like everyone already had gotten by. Yeah. Interesting. I quickly changed. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. hopefully things will start to get better. Yeah, exactly. Also, I feel like the lady who gave me a vaccine barely looked at me so like, I don't know if it went into me or not, but it was just like a job somewhere in my arm. Just vaccinated the air around right. Yeah, it was like it's close enough. Anyway, Lisa, what is this girl the week the squirrel of this week is donut squirrel. I've had him previously called Sarah squirrel, because Sarah is my friend who suggested the squirrel to me and clearly if you say donut squirrel that kind of reveals with the hole. But anyways, you are now permitted to click the link that is listed below. If you do this, you will see a squirrel sitting on a fence in Hamilton. He is a substantial fellow. And he is he is holding a doughnut and I want to say like a very cute way but also I feel like it's the only way a squirrel can have the donut on its side and hold it That's That's true. That's true. You can hold it the I suppose you could rotate it 90 degrees. But the way that he's holding it is if you were to search like a squirrel donut sticker. This is what you would get right and so it's just very cute. And he's holding on and I'm sure it's doing wonders for his. Also his donut looks completely whole, like not messed up at all. Like Where did Oh yeah, just get a fully fine donut. Maybe he's gonna carry it around and then leave it on someone's window. So yeah. Yeah, it's all come full circle. Right? Very cute.
Alright,
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This week's guest is Dr. Julia Massa. Julia is a project scientist at NASA Kennedy Space Centre. She has worked at NASA for the past 10 years improving the cultivation of crops and space for future missions. She holds a bachelor's in plant science from Cornell University, as well as a PhD in plant biology, space biology and geoscience from Penn State University. She received the Presidential Early Career Award for scientists and engineers in 2019, which is the highest honour given by the US government to scientists beginning their research careers. Thank you for joining us today. Julia. My pleasure. I am really excited to interview you because I'm currently studying molecular biology. One of my potential career interests is human space research. So we are so so excited to have someone on who who knows about space lifestyle research. And you know, with that being said, Could you let us know about what are the different branches of spaceflight science research? Sure, um, you know, there's kind of a spectrum. So, you know, we have space biology research there, specifically human research. And then there's, you know, the area of astrobiology research, which is fascinating, but I'm not very involved or knowledgeable about that area, within space biology, which is where most of my work is done. We have different folks I on on plant research on on animals, cells, micro organisms, I also work with the human research programme, and so there are different kind of centres that focus on this. So Kennedy Space Centre, you know, we're known for launching rockets, but we also are the plant Research Centre within NASA Ames Research Centre is the animal research centre, and we both do some microbial work. Ames also does a lot of cellular work. And then Johnson Space Centre in Houston in Houston is where the human research programme is located. And so, you know, I work closely
With different scientists at these different locations, there's also some work at the Jet Propulsion Lab, especially in terms of micro organisms. And so, you know, there's a lot of collaboration, a lot of interdependence of all these different areas, obviously, if we're growing plants, we're doing this, you know, in many times to support humans to produce food for the human. So we have to work closely with the human research programme to, to make sure that we're meeting the needs that they have, and the requirements that they have. astrobiology is primarily also located out at Ames Research Centre in California. And so they're doing you know, a lot of the really cool work on on the search for life, and also on the evolution of how life formed on Earth. So there's really, you know, a pretty broad spectrum of biology research at NASA planetary protection, it's something else your listeners may have heard of, and that's, you know, how do we ensure that as we go further away, that we keep life, Earth life basically away from from planetary surfaces like Mars, to be able to understand if we find life on Mars, where it came from? So so that's really important. And also, if we bring things back from other locations, how do we ensure that there's no contamination to life on earth? So? So there's, there's a lot of different important roles for life science and space research. Yeah, that all sounds really cool. Maybe this would be a good time for you to tell us what your own research is about and kind of what some of the goals are. Definitely. So the the research that I work on with some colleagues at Kennedy Space Centre is in the area of space crop production. So we, as I said, are the plant Centre for the agency and our team is focused on, you know, how do we grow crops grow plants, to support the astronauts to help provide nutrients, potentially, to help provide a psychological benefit to the crew. And also, you know, in the future, we're thinking of things like bio regenerative life support, which is essentially using biology to support the crew the way that Earth supports us here. So plants will help to recycle the atmosphere, they may help to recycle the water. And you may have other aspects of that system, where you have micro organisms helping to clean water, recycle wastes, etc. So starting to close the loop and be more sustainable. So that's really where our interests lie. My earlier research, you know, in graduate school was more on the the kind of fundamental side of the fundamental applied biology spectrum, where I looked more at how plants sense gravity and sense and respond to mechanical stimuli. And so there was more more cell biology. But since then, I've you know, migrated more, I should say, to the the applied side looking at agriculture and how to grow food. That's really cool. Um, yeah, like, kind of tangential, but yeah, I can imagine if I think it's called grabit tropism is really important for plants that might be kind of tricky. And space, if there's a minimal gravity, yes. So kind of like getting a bit more into your research. Could you let us know about some current or maybe past studies that you've worked on as an example? Well, I came to NASA in the NASA postdoctoral programme, which was an opportunity for for postdocs to work at NASA field centres on specific projects. And my project was to, to develop plans and procedures for growing crops in a new piece of hardware at the time, which was called veggie. So veggie is a small plant growth chamber. Yeah, it's a cute name. And it's a small plant growth chamber that's on the International Space Station. Now, it wasn't when I started, it's about the size of a small dormitory refrigerator. And we grow, you know, around six heads of lettuce in veggie or six different types of crop plants. So I came up with the methods for growing and tested a wide variety of different plants. So so when I came was hired on with NASA, I kind of continued that work. And I led the science team for the first tests of veggie when it was sent to the space station initially, which was in 2014. And we we've tested different crop types I'm still very involved with with that testing, we test, you know, a variety of different plants. Recently, I've had led a grant that was using veggie to test different red to blue light ratios and how the colour of the light you know impacts how well the plant grows, how nutritious the plant is, how delicious the plant is, we actually have astronauts doing taste tests. We're looking at microbial food safety, which is another really important aspect of growing plants. For humans. You want to make sure that they're safe to eat and then we're also
also starting to do the behavioural health benefits to see how plants impact the the astronauts well being while they're in space.
That's all super cool. Again, maybe a little bit off topic, but I actually took a plant biology course, for like, the first time last semester. And it's really cool hearing, you mentioned things like red and blue legs, I'm like, Oh, I know that. That's one of the ways they can initiate the shade response and all that stuff. So, yeah, really cool how that stuff can be applied to space research. And kind of along those lines, you know, we mentioned before how, obviously, there are challenges to growing plants in space, such as issues with gravity, what would you say are some of the main like challenges or obstacles to being able to successfully grow crops in space?
Now we like to think of these challenges as opportunities. And, you know, the, the main one, that that's been kind of plaguing us so far, or is really the challenge of watering plants in space, you know, behaviour of fluids is really strange without gravity, anyway, yeah, air and water don't mix well. So you know, a lot of your listeners have probably seen the videos of the astronauts, you know, playing with water, and whether they're, they're orange drink, or whatever. And you'll get these blobs. And it's really cool. And it looks like it's a lot of fun. But it's a challenge for biology. Because if you're trying to water your plants, plant roots, like us perspire, they need oxygen. And when you put bubbles of air in a blob of water floating in space, they basically coalesce into a giant bubble of air with a shell of water that air and water don't mix well. So it's hard to get the the oxygen dissolved in the water. So I tend to think of it as a bit of a tightrope that we walk in on one side is flood. And the other side is drought. And we kind of fall off on either side, watering your plants. So that's been one of the big challenges. But it's interesting, because we've actually had a lot of people trying to help us out with this challenge. And that's really great. And there's a lot of new innovations coming out. Because we have physicists, fluid physicists, we have, you know, horticulturalists and we have engineering, student design teams, all working on trying to come up with new and better ways to deliver water and nutrients to plants. So that's, that's really exciting. And I think we're gonna have a lot of great research on that in the future.
Yeah, definitely. That sounds super cool. And it's, it's something that you wouldn't really think about on Earth, you wouldn't think oh, watering is the issue, you would probably think gravity or maybe radiation. But right, that is super cool. Yeah, not stuff usually think about,
yeah, gravity, the plants sort of adjust to, you know, it's interesting, because on Earth, gravity is kind of a main director for plant growth. But in the absence of gravity on, you know, on the space station, plants just adapt, because they're so great at taking all these different, you know, environmental stimuli coming in, and then developing an integrated response. And so they just deal with it, there are a lot of changes in gene expression and things like that, that a lot of my colleagues have studied. But if you can get that environment for the plants, right, they'll grow pretty normally. But the other thing that you mentioned is radiation. And we do have, you know, scientists at Kennedy Space Centre that are working on radiation, one of my colleagues, Dr. Zhang, she's focused in that area. And, you know, that's a major concern, the space station is not getting a lot of the the dangerous space radiation. But when we go to the moon, or onto Mars, there will be those types of radiations. Right now, we're protected by B, Earth's magnetic field for most of the time, that the astronauts on the space station, but radiation is a very, very important concern for the future. And something we have to figure out.
Yeah, that's all super exciting stuff. You mentioned a little bit about, you know, understanding that when you're near Earth, you're under the protection of its magnetic fields. And so things like that, this is something that I've wondered for myself, if you if you're someone who is interested in working in space lifestyle research, how much knowledge Would you say that you need to have about non biology related matters? So things like engineering or orbital mechanics? How much of that? Do you feel that you yourself need to know to be able to do your job effectively?
That's a really interesting question. I think everything we do, obviously, is teamwork. But it's one of the things that that I've learned a fair amount, oh, along the way, you know, I learned how to talk with engineers and find common languages. I mean, we don't even measure things the same way. Right. And so we have to establish common language, you know, and what I've realised is that a lot of the really important and interesting challenges in science are not just in one field, they're in these intersections of multiple fields. So I think the more that you can explore other areas and learn and be able To communicate with experts in other areas, the better off your science will be. So you know, I never thought I would have a very good relationship with microgravity fluid physicists, but now these are some of my favourite people. And we talk all the time. You know, I work very closely with engineers, I I'm more of plant scientists more of a horticulturalists, you know, plant physiologist, but I work a lot with microbiology, you know, and with molecular biology, because we have to understand the food safety of the crops that we're growing. So I think in many ways, it helps to be interested in a lot of different areas and to be able to talk and to communicate, because everybody has their own, you know, skill sets and their own knowledge. But the more that you can get common languages, the better chance you have of solving the challenges.
Yeah, absolutely. Taking maybe a step back and going back to your what your what your job is, could you maybe let us know a bit about what your main responsibilities are as a lead project scientist,
so I wear my guess I would say about three different hats at NASA. So, you know, one of the hats is to conduct research or research that's being conducted. And so as I said, we're focusing in space crop production. The other hats that I wear or another hat that I wear is to work with external investigators. So NASA awards grants for for scientists that you know, universities around the United States, there are other external parties that are coming in. And they're interested in using, you know, some of the the hardware that we've developed like veggie or other plant growth chamber, which is the advanced plant habitat, or other hardware that NASA manages and support. And so we work very closely with these scientists to help their research be successful in space. So we'll meet with them, we'll explain to them you know, the challenges of doing science on the space station, come up with criteria that will be how you can define if they're sciences successful, we work with them through the pre flight verification tests. So we do a number of verification tests, before their experiments fly, testing out their science and our hardware, developing procedures for the astronauts to actually do the science because that's all you know, written in a certain way, we might film training videos. And so we'll run their verification tests at Kennedy Space Centre, in growth chambers, environmental chambers that simulate the atmosphere of the space station, so it's similar temperature, humidity, light, and of course, carbon dioxide, which is a really high, you know, concentration on Space Station. And so we work with these investigators to get their science done on Space Station. And then the third hat that I wear is I do a quite a lot of education and outreach. We have interns at Kennedy Space Centre, and postdocs that I mentor. But I also, you know, work with, with schools and students, whether they're, you know, engineering design teams at universities, or even middle schools and high schools, which we have working with us on different programmes to help us collect data for for NASA. So that's really one of my passions, and something that I think is really important.
Yeah, definitely. And maybe part of the reason why you're on this podcast today, and we really appreciate you being here. So yeah. And then the other question that we kind of wanted to know about maybe the nitty gritty details of your position, it's just kind of what your daily schedule usually looks like. I think this can be kind of obscure for when you're looking from the outside into a job. And so let's say this was before COVID, right, let's say just things like what time would you arrive at work? What time would you take your lunch break? How many hours would you work a week? That kind of thing?
Well, you know, if there is I am, you know, a federal employee, and it's a salaried position. So generally, we work a 40 Hour Work Week. But, you know, obviously, science doesn't always get done on a regular schedule, as we all know, generally, it's sort of an eight to 430 timeframe for most of my colleagues and myself at Kennedy Space Centre, but we also work with international partners and people throughout the United States. So often, that means we'll have to shift our schedule, the International Space Station is on Greenwich Mean Time. So if we have we have activities going on on the space station, you know, it starts really early in the morning. And of course, you know, we're always incredibly excited when we have those activities. So if you have to get up at two or three in the morning, you know, while it's a bit of a bummer is the the excitement far outweighs ways that also rockets don't launch you know, at any given hour. They launch all of the time. So, you know, my colleagues may be be supporting things at any hour of the day or night. But generally, we try to keep a fairly, you know, normal work schedule, we try to take lunch, but we don't usually do it, a lot of my lunches are sitting at my desk, I actually have a lot of meetings even before COVID. And now I have a lot of virtual meetings. But some days, I would have, you know, six or eight hours of meetings, and I would just be running from one to the next to the next, because it'll be everything from meeting, you know, with, with our programme managers to meeting with the investigators of our team to Skyping, with a classroom or whatever. And so, but a lot of meetings, we have a lot of project meetings, you know, when we're doing different experiments, we'll have teams that meet together to talk about the status of all the different experiments. So at this point in my career, I don't get to do as much hands on research. When I was a postdoc, I was much more in the lab, and I was doing a lot more of the hands on research. Yeah. And even when I started as a project scientist, I was doing that. But a couple of years ago, I became a senior project scientist. And so now it's more I do a lot of PowerPoint charts, a lot of documents and review things, but I do when we are actually working on site, I do try to go down and see the plants, you know, very regularly and check in with the scientists that are doing the experiment, just so that I know what's going on. And because we have, we have quite a lot of research, we have a pretty small team. But we actually have quite a lot of research. And so it's really important, you know, even in my current role, to be able to understand the different research that's going on and to start to see the big picture and to see how this research fits together to advance our needs in the area of space crop production. So I tried to think now more strategically, and and tactically, like what research needs to be done to move us forward, because there are so many challenges that that we have to solve before we can sustainably support humans on long duration missions. So keeping up with what the actual research is going on, is really important. And I'd love to help out if I can, I also usually, you know, will meet with my interns and postdocs, and we'll keep up with what they're doing as well. So you know, you don't want to you don't want to be ignorant or not really understand, and you want to be able to answer any questions that come up. So yeah, it changes a little bit every day, though, do new things happen. We talk about putting out fires, or, you know, because there'll be an urgent need for something or some experiment is not working. And so then we'll take time to troubleshoot. So I think we all you know, while we have all these great plans, we also tend to be very reactive to try to keep everything working in the way that it should work. So you know, space research is hard. And it can cause a lot of unexpected things, you know, when you're growing plants, without this buffer that we have on earth of this, you know, amazing resources and plentiful air and water and space that we have. And we're growing things in much more small, contained, controlled environment. If things get out of balance, then then you're going to have problems, your plants just won't grow well. And so we're constantly kind of assessing the environment and trying to identify challenges before they become limiting.
Thank you for the insight. And in some ways, it sounds very much like a pie job. Like in many of the ways like you're designing experiments, you're supervising people, which is you know, not surprising. It's it seems like the two worlds are kind of similar. We kind of wanted to also ask you about, like your educational journey and how you yourself got to where you are today. And so we were wondering if you could let us know how you got interested in space life science research, you did do your your undergrad degree in plant biology. But from there what got Yeah, like what got you interested in studying plants in space? And how exactly did you go about graduating from you know, like a bachelors of science to becoming a project scientist at NASA?
Yeah, well, it my journey actually started pretty young I, I was very fortunate to have a teacher when I was in seventh grade, who was actually invited to Kennedy Space Centre to learn about the work going on here, part of a teacher training experience that they had at the time. And he spent, I think, a week here and collected all this video and information about the work going on for life support and plant growth. And he brought this back to his agriculture class. And I was just fascinated by this. You know, I mean, I was 12 years old, and I just I decided that was what I wanted to. So it took a long time, obviously and a lot of years of going to school, but even at that time I worked with my junior high ag Teacher I continued to take agriculture classes in high school as well as my academic classes. And they were wonderfully supportive. I got to build hydroponic systems, you know, as a student and test and try different crops. And I even wrote a letter to NASA as a high school student. My now colleague answered that letter, which was amazing. That's so cool. It was really cool. And we're very fortunate because NASA has some really incredible educational opportunities. So you know, I decided that obviously, when I was pretty young, but then when I went to college, I did apply for a NASA internship in the summer. So even though I thought I wanted to do this, I was doing plant biology, plant science at Cornell. But I came to Kennedy Space Centre, in the summer of my junior year, junior year, senior year, I don't know, one of the summers, and I got to actually experience working at a NASA centre. And so it was sort of like, it's like those, those little plus up mushrooms and Super Mario Brothers or whatever, you know, it's, it's like, it gave me the little boost to be back, keep going in that direction. It was really impactful. And then as a graduate student, you know, I worked with an advisor who was was doing plant gravity research. Again, it was very more fundamental. We were looking at young plants, a lot of microscopy, but I also had an opportunity to work on a spaceflight experiment on a space shuttle experiment as a graduate student. And that one was interesting, because I got to work with engineers as well. So this was the first time I really started working with engineers, we built stuff, I got to do machining. And you know, and it was a lot of fun. So that was another sort of plus up. And then I started going to professional conferences that involve, you know, a lot of NASA science. So I started to go to a society, which at the time was called the American Society for gravitational and space biology as GSB. Now, we've actually merged the biology and the physical sciences. So the name of the society is American Society for gravitational and space research. But I started going to those meetings and meeting all of the scientific community working in this area as a grad student, and being able to present my research as a grad student was was really important. And that led to postdoctoral opportunity at Purdue University. So I knew that I love the space side of things. But I didn't really want to do the microscopy and the cell biology anymore. So I met you know, a professor at this conference, who was leading a NASA Centre in advanced life support, and he was leading it with the plants in the horticulture and LED lighting. So I went to Purdue and I worked with him on LED lighting for crop growth as a postdoc. And that was pretty much when the economy tanked.
There were no jobs, you know, I'd sort of started interviewing for jobs, but I still, you know, wanted to be here doing what I was doing. So he was wonderful. And he was able to keep me on as a research scientist, even when my postdoc ended. So it was kind of a soft money position, they call it but he had, he had grants, including NASA grants that were able to fund me, and then, you know, I continued to go to scientific meetings and learned about the community made lots of connections, so that when a NASA postdoctoral opportunity opened up here at Kennedy Space Centre, you know, I had a good feel for what type of research would be needed and how to do it. And so I applied for that, and I was accepted. And that's how I began to work with the veggie system. And then that opportunity, you know, I was fortunate enough to be hired on as a NASA civil servant when that opportunity, you know, was finishing up. So a lot of it was was luck, but it was also kind of stick to itiveness. I guess, you know, so I just I was I was fairly stubborn about what I wanted to do. And I just just kept doing it until I was really well qualified to do it fairly well. Yeah,
yeah, absolutely. We had a related question, which was, like, let's say, I, me, member recently graduated student who I have the bachelors in life sigh and I'm interested in spaceflight science research. I think you kind of encapsulated this when you were talking about your own experience. But if you were to say to this person, these are some steps that you can take education wise or work wise, that will kind of get you on that path. So one day having a similar position to me at NASA or the CSA, what would you recommend to them? Well,
I would say, you know, first of all, figure out what your happy environment is. You don't always have an opportunity to do that as an undergraduate or as a graduate student, but, you know, for me as a graduate student, you know, sitting in dark room, staring On a microscope, it wasn't my happy environment, working in growth chambers and greenhouses with large plants with crop plants where I could explain to my mom, I'm growing food, that was a more comfortable place for me. And so I was much happier when I was working in my happier environment, my more comfortable place. So I think that's a really important thing to start with, you know, whether you like working at a microbial level, or at the level of whole organisms, or at the level of ecosystems, trying to understand what your comfort zone is, is really important. So in addition to figuring out what your happy environment for work is, you know, the next advice I have is to go to the scientific meetings and to make connections with experts in the area that you're interested in working with, if you meet them as an undergraduate or a graduate student, then, you know, they'll let you know, oh, I have postdoctoral opportunities, or, you know, here's, here's a job opening. And so just being able to make the connections, volunteering in the lab, as an undergraduate student, for instance, and you know, trying things out to find, okay, what area of research Are you really interested in, because if you're really interested and passionate about it, you're going to be really good at it, you know, and if you're not that interested, it's never going to be what you want, even if it sounds great on paper. So it's really important to try these things out, doing internships, if you can, at a space agency, if you're interested in space Life Sciences, is a really great opportunity to see what it's actually like to work at the space agency. But a lot of the, you know, the really cool space Life Sciences is going on at universities around the world. So don't feel like you have to work at a Space Centre, you can also you know, intern or try out other laboratories. And then, you know, just making the connections, part of it's just keeping aware and current of where the research is going, looking for opportunities to do experiments, whether they're their space flight experiments, whether they're grant proposals, student team projects, engineering, design, challenges, whatever. And just getting as much experience as you can, in those areas, I think is really important.
That's great. Thanks for the advice. So you mentioned how not all space lifestyle research is done just at NASA or the CSA there were also other entities that do this research, could you let us know what those different categories of workplaces are, as well as what the job availability is like for each of those places?
Well, there there's, there's a whole spectrum. You know, so I think there's academia, obviously, and then there's industry and even within industry, there are small businesses that are developing tools, technologies, you know, conducting research in the space Life Sciences. And that's really exciting, because there are a lot of really innovative ideas coming from that community. There are also large businesses, you know, large companies that are doing research related to this off SpaceX. Well, you know, a whole number of them. And it's really interesting, there are some opportunities for public private partnerships. So for instance, NASA has opportunities for small businesses that we can put out topics where we need development of a specific technology or specific approach. and small businesses are able to apply and and write proposals to get funding to do this. And then when they do that, we at NASA get to be involved with them. So for instance, I'm the technical monitor or contracting officers representative, we have all these terms, to work with small businesses to develop different technologies. I'm working with a small business right now that's working on a Mars greenhouse, which is super exciting and cool. You know, I mean, we we want to have a greenhouse on Mars, and they're building one, we also have opportunities to work with larger businesses where, you know, if there's a specific technology or approach that we're mutually interested in, we can we can work with them, they can write a proposal to use some of NASA's time or resources or expertise to help them develop their technology. And so and, you know, there's there's amazing things going on in industry that are benefiting everybody. You know, we were just really grateful for all the efforts coming out in this area.
Yeah, absolutely. And kind of related to that, as an example, the field of environmental law, a lot of I would say there are more people vastly who want to be environmental lawyers and there are positions available. And so in your honest opinion, what does the field of space life side research look like in terms of job availability?
Well, you know, this is it the top of a lot of for Since companies, you know, hiring pools, right? You know, a lot of the companies are hiring engineers, or they're hiring people to build rockets. But I think everyone is starting to realise, okay, now that we're building rockets, or space stations or whatever, well, we need to have the ability to support the crew, we need to have the ability to do science. So there are more and more positions, I believe, opening up in these areas. It's not a huge community, you know, this space Life Sciences community in general is fairly small, we know each other pretty well. And, and so I think it's one of those things that when you are interested in this area, and you gain some experience and expertise, you can quickly meet the people that are interested in hiring those skills. So I do think there is demand for those skills. But obviously, for people who have specific training or you know, a lot of passion. So while while I don't think there are necessarily a tonne of jobs, I also don't see that many unemployed space biologists out there, I think there's, there's certainly opportunity and you know, more and more universities are getting interested in space Life Sciences. And so that also means that if you're, you know, perhaps interviewing for faculty positions, and this is an area that you want to get into, you can start to look at some of the early career grant opportunities, or start to look at some of the the partnerships with with industry and build a programme in this area. And, you know, I've known a number of faculty who've built really successful research programmes in the space Life Sciences.
That's really cool. Thanks for outlining that for us. And then the final question wanted to ask you was, in your opinion, how do you think space life science research on a whole has changed in the past couple decades? And how do you see it changing moving forward? What are some of the things you're really excited about?
Well, you know, I think we've been on the International Space Station for 20 years now. And we've had humans continuously living in space for 20 years, which is incredible. And the ISS, you know, it took quite a while to assemble, it's a very incredible resource. It's an orbiting laboratory. And we're testing kind of fundamental biological and physical, you know, sciences there. But we're also testing these more applied technologies for the future, like crop production technologies, or others. And so I think this is, you know, having this this amazing testbed has really opened up, you know, a tremendous amount of knowledge and an opportunity to do research. Now, with the Commercial Crew programme, and having more astronauts on the space station, all of a sudden, we have a lot more astronaut time to do science. So even, you know, just the last year, we've really opened up a lot more scientific potential of the Space Station. So it's really been very exciting to watch that go from, well, we don't have much crew time, you have to do a very minimal amount of science to being able to have, you know, more science being done. When we were flying the space shuttle, the the space shuttle had a pretty limited area. For Science, most of the time, you know, in the past, there were a few opportunities where the shuttle payload bay was turned into a laboratory. And that was really great for our scientific community. But on a standard shuttle flight, there wasn't a lot of room to do science. So the space station has given us enhanced capabilities, but also just much longer duration research, the space shuttle would only be up for, you know, days, or you know, a week or two, whereas the space station is permanently operated. So if we want to grow, you know, in my case, if we want to grow tomatoes, we need to over 100 days to grow and produce tomatoes. We couldn't have done that before. But now we can. So just the magnitude of research that we can do on the space station is huge. And so that's been great. And I hope we get to do a lot more research there. But then in the future, I mean, we're going to the moon, you know, and we're planning for Mars. And I mean, what could be more exciting than that, you know, we're going to be growing plants on other planets, we have a need to grow these plants to support the astronauts as they go on these amazing adventures of discovery. And, you know, I mean, just, I'm so honoured and thrilled to be a part of it, and I just can't wait to see the future.
Yeah, I agree. When you think about it in the way of, you know, like humanity and like 100 or 1000 or, you know, hopefully 5000 years, just looking back on this time. The thing this was kind of the seed of space exploration, which is just such an amazing time to be doing space research, just to know that you're part of like the very beginning of kind of humans going off into space. Yeah, I just think that's super cool.
It is. And I think it's going to benefit everybody. You know, that's the thing about space researchers, we learn things that have so many benefits for, you know, for for life on earth. And we don't even know often when when things are being developed, that this technology or tool or research result is going to have a huge impact on the quality of everybody's lives. But if we can become more sustainable with how we live and survive in space, I think it will really help us to become more sustainable for the future of earth as well.
Absolutely. All right. So that more or less wraps up the interview of before we finish off, is there anything else you would like to add?
Well, I you know, I would just like to add that, you know, one of the really cool things that we've been involved with is having students help out with NASA research. And so there are opportunities for citizen scientists around the world to help NASA advance the goals and to help you know CSA and other space agencies advance our goals for space exploration. So I think if you're interested, you know, look at citizen science opportunities to help space research, one of the things that's out right now is a joint challenge between NASA and CSA, called the Deep Space food challenge. And this is where these space agencies are actually seeking the help of people from around the world to help solve some of these really hard problems of how we support astronauts in the future. So if your listeners are interested, they can contribute. They can form teams, they can come up with ideas for food systems of the future, and they can also win some prizes.
Yeah, that's I think I've actually heard about that. One of my friends is in engineering, and he actually approached me about potentially working together on it. So I have actually heard of that. So yeah, definitely check that out. We will drop a link for both of those things in the show notes of the episode, so you can go click on those that to check that out. So for us
citizens who are at us accredited universities, NASA does have internship opportunities, and we have these for for undergraduate and graduate students. So if you're interested, you can learn more@intern.nasa.gov there's also postdoctoral opportunities I met as I mentioned, and those are both for for us citizens and non US citizen post PhD scientists. So you can look up the NASA postdoctoral programme and you can see which opportunities are available and these change all the time. And you can look at writing a proposal for those so those would be some ways to engage in space research as you develop your career.
All right, amazing. Well, thank you so so much for joining us this was it was so nice to talk to you. I'm really passionate about space and potentially spaceflight I research so this was an absolute like oh my god the best thing ever. So yeah, thank you so much for your time and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day. Thank you You too. Hello if you have made it all the way here congratulations it's time for a review the podcast review the podcast boom freedom. What does this week's review say? This week's review is from Hornet Hades, they write it's great passionate informative interviews geared towards career choices for life size students even though I don't fit in that bucket it's still interesting to hear what people do for a living Thank you Hornet Hades for that lovely review and for getting free to do sound like Tony the Tiger if you lovely listener would like to leave us a review perhaps make of say something that sounds a little ridiculous. You can do so on Apple podcasts link in the show notes. Feel free to include honest feedback about the podcast we would really love to hear your thoughts and we will almost definitely read your review on the show. I don't love this attempt to get me to say weird things. This has been another episode of so you got a lifestyle degree with Dr. Joy Massa about plant research in space. We want to give special thanks to our crew of lovely patrons including our little leaf patrons nyeem, the Neil Shafiq and Jemima and our fantastic foliage patrons Stephanie. If you would like to become a supporter of this podcast, you can visit our patreon@patreon.com slash so you got to lightside degree the music you're hearing is no regrets from audio hub.com Thanks for listening and see you next time.