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Dr. Emma Louise Spanswick is an Associate Professor and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Tier II Canada Research Chair in Geospace Dynamics and Space Plasma Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary. She completed her undergraduate studies in physics and was awarded her PhD in physics from the University of Calgary. Next, she worked at Los Alamos National Lab as a Visiting Scientist. Afterwards, she returned to the University of Calgary as a Research Scientist, and subsequently the Associate Director of the Auroral Imaging Group, before joining the faculty there in 2019. Emma was among researchers who received the 2018 Robert H. Goddard Award for Exceptional Achievement in Science, and she has been named among Avenue Magazine Calgary’s Top 40 Under 40. In this interview, she shares more about her life and science.
People Behind the Science Podcast Show Notes
Life Outside of Science (2:21)
Outside of science, Emma spends much of her time with her family, including her two sons. They enjoy hiking, mountain biking, and being outdoors together. Emma’s hobbies also include boxing and going to the gym for a good workout.
The Scientific Side (3:45)
Emma studies the Earth’s natural space environment, which is connected to our upper atmosphere and extends into the region around the Earth. Emma’s research examines this environment using remote sensing to examine the physics of the dynamics of the space environment, and they also investigate space weather, which encompasses all phenomena in space that can impact systems and technologies that are in orbit and on Earth. As part of her work, Emma also develops and designs remote sensing instruments and deploys them in the field to collect data.
A Dose of Motivation (5:46)
“Now is the time to go big or go home.”
What Got You Hooked on Science? (7:00)
When she was in high school, Emma had an awe-inspiring physics teacher, and her interest in physics quickly grew. With a family full of medical doctors, Emma faced some hurdles in convincing her family that she wanted to pursue a career in physics. However, Emma’s family was ultimately supportive of her career aspirations. As an undergraduate student in physics at the University of Calgary, Emma happened to strike up a conversation with a faculty member in the hall one day. She mentioned that she was looking for a summer job, and the professor hired Emma on the spot. This summer job was Emma’s introduction to space physics, and she was hooked. She loved the computer programming aspects of the research, the analysis of large volumes of data, remote sensing, and the idea of connecting with the space environment. The work was inspiring, and Emma has found the field as a whole to be really supportive and collegial.
The Low Points: Failures and Challenges (22:21)
Troubleshooting the code for data analyses can be challenging and frustrating. During her graduate training, Emma sometimes left the lab at the end of the day feeling like her code was in worse shape than when the day started. Fixing one problem often created others, and this was demoralizing. More recently, Emma and her team designed a new camera that allowed them to capture the first images of gray/white emissions which appeared to be connected to the aurora borealis. The camera development process was not easy. After a full year of trying, they still had not come up with a design that could get them the results they needed. Emma had to take a step back from the project, reset, and approach from a different angle. She happened to see an article online for a commercially available camera that could record remarkable video footage, even at night. The detector for this camera was the breakthrough they needed. Over the course of the next year, she and her team worked through some technical challenges, and then they were ready to start collecting the data that was ultimately published this year in an article in the journal Nature.
A Shining Success! (25:09)
One huge win recently was the receipt of a large grant from the Innovation Fund of the Canada Foundation for Innovation. The total project cost for this grant is $15 million, and it will support infrastructure advances across Canada to take ground-based remote sensing of the space environment to the next level. The goal is for the Geospace Dynamics Constellation-Ground sensor network to collect the best possible ground-based data to be combined with the highest quality satellite data from upcoming NASA space missions. This will open the door for major scientific breakthroughs in our understanding of the interconnected processes in the space environment that we are not able to detect right now with the current instruments. Winning this grant award has been a huge vote of confidence in Emma’s team’s ability to develop the necessary instruments and deliver the scientific results.
Resource Recommendations (29:54)
The Alberta Aurora Chasers Community Group often posts interesting articles about space weather and space science. The NASA Heliophysics Division, the ESA Space Weather Service Network, and the Canadian Space Agency are also great resources.
Most Treasured Travel (32:33)
Emma’s research involves a lot of travel, including trips to visit the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, attend scientific meetings in places like San Francisco, and deploy instruments in remote areas in northern Canada for field research. A few months ago, Emma had the opportunity to travel to Madrid for a conference on data and software in heliophysics (the study of the sun and how it influences Earth, space, and planets in our solar system). She was invited to give a keynote address on the challenges and triumphs of building one of their networks, focusing on the software. It was a fantastic visit. Space physics is an interdisciplinary field with physicists, geophysicists, electrical engineers, and others, and the meeting brought together a great group of researchers at the European Space Agency to talk in-depth about data and software relevant to the field. While in Madrid, Emma went to two soccer games and spent an afternoon touring the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Spanish national art museum. She’s also looking forward to visiting Switzerland later this year!
Quirky Traditions and Funny Memories (36:18)
No matter what scientific field or career path you choose, you are going to run into grumpy people. When Emma was a master’s student, she gave a presentation at a scientific meeting in Northern Finland. After her presentation, one of these grumpy scientists started asking a lot of really hard questions and trying to trivialize her research. The session was chaired by a prominent scientist in the field, and the chairperson stopped Emma’s interrogator and started asking her more basic questions that she was able to answer. Afterwards, while Emma was sitting in a chair with her head in her hands, trying to come to terms with what had just happened, another prominent scientist in the field sat down with her. He complimented her research, and shared his own story of having a similar experience when he was an early-career scientist. This was a really important moment that showed Emma how supportive her field truly was. Two of the biggest names in the field stepped up to assist her during a difficult situation and helped re-build her confidence afterwards.
Advice For Us All (41:13)
Find what you enjoy, and keep doing it. If you’re having fun, you’re in the right field. Identify the problems you really want to solve and find it fun to engage with. If you do this, then doing your job won’t feel like work. Also, be tenacious. If things aren’t going your way, just keep going, because there will be a turning point.
Guest Bio
Emma is an award-winning physicist and a leader in space science and space physics instrumentation at the University of Calgary. She and her team design, build and operate a collection of ground-based instruments that sense the near-Earth space environment and space weather. By doing so, they can monitor, advise on, and predict events like solar storms which impact important technologies and systems. Emma’s international research has advanced the field by enabling a better understanding of space weather phenomena, leading to the improvement of space-dependent technologies like communication and security infrastructure and GPS. When she’s not at work, Emma is often out hiking and biking in the mountains with her family. When she has some time to herself, she likes to hit the gym to hone her boxing skills, get a good workout, and relieve stress.
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