Hello.

Nice to meet you.
I'm a scientist.
I am an artist.
I am a vocalist.
I am #steamma.

And together with my family, #WeAreProblemSolvers.

I make up songs, games, and art projects to teach even very young children scientific concepts. I am part of the STEAM movement: people who are passionate about teaching Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics through the Arts.

Here's a link to the facebook page where you can follow along with all the fun: https://www.facebook.com/edusteamma/

Here's a link to the YouTube video about the game of Solar System Hopscotch that you see in the cover photo of this blog: &nsp;https://youtu.be/q_dAAAUBl7E

Here is more than you ever wanted to know about me:

I grew up surrounded by plants, and spent every spare moment outside with my father's fruit trees and our vegetable garden. I loved it so much, I decided to study it in school. So I did. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Genetics and Plant Biology. I walked on May 15, 2008.

(While I was an undergraduate, I also took drawing, painting, and sculpture courses on the side, along with working a job doing theatrical lighting, singing in a chorale, working as a barista at Starbucks on Shattuck, a produce deliverer and a garden manager for our student cooperative)

Then I went on to graduate school at Miami University, Ohio. My PhD studies were in Botany, which included courses in molecular and cell biology, microscopy, and plant physiology, ecology, etc. (I also taught undergraduate lab courses, field botany, was a cantor/ vocalist at St. Gabriel, and was student president of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research).

In 2010 I was part of a team that sent plants up into orbit on the Space Shuttle Discovery, and even better - they landed safely.


Here's a picture of us handing the samples over to load onto the Shuttle.

Here's photographic evidence of the landing.

For nearly a decade of my life I found myself fixated on how plants grow and develop differently in spaceflight, from their genetics to their overall structural differences and their nutritional content. I have a passion for space plants. In 2011 I published my first scientific paper on the topic, then another in 2015 and again in 2017.
Here is a delightful photo of my super mentor, Dr. John Z. Kiss (he really liked the Tesla launch).

In June of 2017 I put those publications together in a completed dissertation, defended it, then spent a semester with Dr. Gioia Massa and the team at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where I was an intern for my final semester of my PhD.
Here's my superb mentor Dr. Gioia Massa:

On December 15, 2017 I watched a Falcon 9 launch in Florida while my friends were handed their degrees and hooded by their mentors at a fancy ceremony in Ohio. I eventually received a package in the mail with my degree and my hood. When I received it, I held my degree as my then 4-year old daughter put my hood over my head and told me I looked like a princess.

As you can tell from the previous sentence, I am also a Mom.
In 2008, I married Tom. We had been friends since high school.

In 2013, our first child was born.

In 2015, our second child was born.

And in 2018 I jumped full time into this #steamma thing. I found myself immersed in life with my children, and finding great ways to share science with them.
(Oh, and I also spent some time as a Biology instructor at University of the People.)

My friends who saw the things that I did with my children asked me to share it more. So I started a hashtag, a youtube, a facebook page, and a public instagram account to share our fun and silly moments. My target audience was friends and relatives, but interest has grown. It was so well received that I have decided to also start this blog where I will share reflections as I develop lesson plans.

Update as of June 2021 - in 2019 my youngest daughter was born. Now she's 2. She loves gardening, too.

On the same day she was born, I learned that I was accepted to the NASA Postdoctoral Program to do research with Dr. Ray Wheeler in the Space Crop Production team at Kennedy Space Center. 

Here's a photo of the legendary Dr. Ray Wheeler, tending to hydroponically grown radishes (from the NASA image archives). 

We moved to Florida and I started back into space plant research full time!

-Update October 2023-

This year I finished up my postdoctoral research at Kennedy Space Center and began a new role as a Plant Data Curator for NASA's Open Science Data Repository. 

I still live in Florida near Kennedy Space Center, but the rest of my team is scattered across the United States, and our home base is in Moffett Field, California. In my work I have the very humbling honor of interacting with project scientists of past spaceflight studies and curating their data for public release. Our database is set up with FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. 

-Update September 2024-

In just a few days I will be finishing up my time with NASA's Open Science Data Repository. I am looking forward to spending more time with the family, developing my lessons and making more music. 

- Family Life -

I'm super thankful for Tom. He has encouraged me through every step of my scientific journey. Here's a photo of him working hard at the school fair.

We call our 3 children our "Little Moons". They're all in school now, between K and 6th grade. Our oldest homeschools.

-Band-

In our excitement over the Artemis 1 launch, my friend Brooks and I started a folk band called Artemisia. Here's a photo of me with my mandolin. 

In 2017 I ditched graduation in Ohio to watch a rocket launch with my family in Florida. I October 2023 we watched two rocket launches in 12 hours. Here's some smoke in the clouds for the sunset launch from that evening.

I still snag a little time here and there to develop lessons and share them here to my blog.

Thank you for joining us!