Question One: What is or was your greatest challenge in doing your science?

Kristala Prather

My greatest challenge is always balance: balancing scientific endeavors with personal (especially family) responsibilities, balancing the highs of successful experiments with the lows of confounding ones, and balancing the quest for discovering something new with the need to fully understand what's considered old.

Alan H. Savitzky

The two greatest challenges have been finding the time and the funding (grant support) to conduct my research. University faculty have many obligations, of which teaching the most important, and good teaching takes more time than many people imagine. That can limit the time available for other activities. Research funding is always in limited supply, and it takes considerable time and energy to apply for research grants. My recent research involves extended field travel overseas, and such work requires both of these limiting resources, time and funding.

Miquel Daal

Throughout most of grade school, my math skills were below grade >level. There I was, aspiring to become a scientist, but hearing my teachers and classmates point out the gap between the track I was on and the track I ought to be on in order to achieve my aspiration. Though their remarks were discouraging, they provoked me to work hard to improve my math skills. By the time I graduated high school, I was performing well above grade level in math. The journey to this success is what I still consider the greatest challenge I've faced in doing my science.

Anne Egger

My greatest challenge was gaining the confidence to call myself a scientist. For many years, I felt like I didn't know enough, or wasn't good enough, or didn't have the right approach. None of that was true, but it took a long time to overcome those feelings and introduce myself as a geologist - and believe it.

Question Two: Why should people care about your research?

Kristala Prather

Our research is intended to produce "greener" processes for synthesizing chemicals, by using biomass instead of petroleum derived feedstocks. The chemicals we make can be used in a number of ways, from therapeutics to treat disease, to building blocks for novel materials, to biofuels to displace and augment petro-fuels.

Alan H. Savitzky

I believe that all knowledge is worthwhile, and that humans are intrinsically interested in understanding the natural world. My work addresses a little bit of that world. On a practical level, my recent work on the chemical ecology of toad-eating snakes has at least two important applied aspects. First, with the global decline of amphibian populations in recent years, snakes that rely on amphibians for nutrition and defense may be especially vulnerable to population declines and extinctions of their own. Second, toad-eating snakes consume quantities of toxins that would kill most other snakes (and us), and those chemicals act by disabling heart muscle and other tissues. Understanding the physiological mechanisms that allow toad-eating snakes to survive such toxins may lead to new treatments for certain cardiovascular diseases.

Miquel Daal

I study the universe. In particular, I am trying to answer the question: what is the universe made of. People should care about my research because it attempts to answer one of those questions which mankind has been asking as long as written memory. Though the dark matter we are looking for will probably not be of immediate direct use to people because it's so inert, the spin-off technologies which are developed in order to detect the dark matter are very useful. For example, lessons learned from the development of our highly sensitive dark matter detectors are applied to the design of weapons detectors. Additionally, understanding what the universe is made of will probably be like understanding why the sky is blue. It may not appear to be the most useful fact, however it is a benchmark of a much deeper understanding of our world which enables advancement in many other areas.

Anne Egger

This is a question I ask myself all the time. Where I currently work, people care about my research because it will help us understand two critical issues: the potential for development of a geothermal resource for generating energy locally and the regional seismic hazard. In the bigger picture, however, I believe people should care about my research because we only have one Earth. And every little thing we learn about the Earth and its past helps us understand our future on this planet.

Question Three: Who or what got you started in science?

Kristala Prather

My high school World History teacher. As a junior in high school, I told her that I needed to start thinking about college. She asked what subjects I liked. I told her I liked math but couldn't imagine studying it in the abstract. I also liked science. She said, "Great! You like math and science - you should be an engineer. What kind of science?" I replied, "I'm enjoying chemistry right now." And her response was, "Terrific! You'll be a chemical engineer, and you'll go to MIT." And that, as they say, is history!

Alan H. Savitzky

I've been interested in snakes since I was a child, and I credit my parents with encouraging that interest and helping me to channel it into a professional career. My father was a chemist and my mother a librarian, so research and the scientific literature were familiar elements of my experience. Becoming a scientist never seemed like an unusual or unattainable path for me (although it turned out to be a more difficult climb than I had anticipated). Later, as a beginning undergraduate student at the University of Colorado, I came under the influence to two outstanding herpetologists, who provided many opportunities for me to assist in their lab and field work. Their encouragement further strengthened my interest in research.

Miquel Daal

I don't remember who or what sparked my interest in science, unfortunately. I do recall the evolution of 'what I want to be when I grow up'.
2nd grade: a janitor or a geologist
4rd grade: a biologist
6th grade: a botanist
10th grade: a geneticist
End of 12th grade: a physicist
Everything after 2nd grade was inspired by good teachers.

Anne Egger

I started college thinking I would major in music, or maybe something that involved foreign language. I can't pinpoint exactly when the change happened, but I slowly realized that I wanted to know more about the natural, physical world around me, and I wanted to find out new stuff about it. That desire was tied to a commitment to environmental issues and a love for the outdoors, so I ended up in a scientific discipline that allowed me to spend a lot of time outside and learn about the world around me.

Question Four: What is one thing you hope to achieve in your career?

Kristala Prather

I hope to demonstrate the enormous potential of biological systems to perform chemical synthesis, and to do so while training a specialized group of individuals who share my excitement for and dedication to our chosen field of study.

Alan H. Savitzky

My most important goal is to leave behind a body of work, however modest in scope, that makes a lasting contribution to our knowledge of the natural world. If some of my findings are still regarded as worthwhile contributions many years from now (even if my conclusions ultimately prove to be incorrect, but they inspire others to find the answer), I will have met my goal.

Miquel Daal

I want to understand the nature of the dark matter which we think composes 23% of the mass of the universe. Hopefully, my experiment is on the right track for this discovery.

Anne Egger

I would like to help make Earth science become as fundamental a part of our high school and college curricula as math, physics, biology, and chemistry.