October Women in STEM Panel

Women face unique challenges in STEM fields.  This month's Women in STEM panelists from NASA & PPG Aerospace will share their knowledge and experience with you.  Learn about their journey, successes, and struggles of being a female in a STEM field.

Some of our panelists this month are:

• Jazsmin Washington, she is a senior at the University of Wisconsin - Madison Pursuing a Chemical Engineering Degree with a Certificate in International Engineering. She was recruited for an internship with PPG her freshman year and has completed two internship rotations with the company. Her first rotation was summer 2019 in East Point, GA where she was an Architectural Coatings Engineering Intern. For her second rotation in summer 2020 she was an Optical Physics intern at the CIC in Allison Park, PA.
• Monica Nicola, her background is in chemical engineering. She attended college at the University of Pittsburgh and completed a few internships that helped her learn that she wanted to pursue a career with a manufacturing company.  PPG hired her as a resin engineer in Milwaukee WI where she was responsible for the chemistry and equipment involved with two reactor systems in a production environment.  From there, she worked in PPG’s research and development group in Springdale PA.  This job allowed her to learn more about the paints that they invent to solve specific customer and industry needs.  She decided to go back to school for her master’s degree in business, which she just finished this year (her graduation ceremony was held via Zoom!).  This higher education was helpful for her to put her specific work experience into the language and context of all businesses. In 2019, she joined PPG’s commercial team and is now a sales representative, responsible for managing relationships and growing coatings business with both new and current customers.  She currently resides in Minneapolis MN and is sure she will move again someday. She really appreciated the variety in the career path that she's taken, which was all possible because she stared in a STEM field.
• Morgan Cable, is a Research Scientist and Supervisor of the Astrobiology and Ocean Worlds Group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2010, where she designed lanthanide-based receptor sites for the detection of bacterial spores (the toughest form of life) in extreme environments. Her work as a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow involved the development of ultrasensitive micro-total analysis systems for the detection of organics on Mars and Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. Currently, Morgan is lead of the Astrobiology and Ocean Worlds Group in the Planetary Science Section, where she studies the properties of Titan's hydrocarbon lakes and shores, as well as how to extract organics from ice grains in the plume of Enceladus. She is a Co-Investigator of the Dragonfly Mission, a rotorcraft recently selected to explore the surface of Titan. She is also a Collaborator on the Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE), an instrument selected for NASA's next mission to Jupiter's icy moon Europa. This spectrometer will map Europa's surface and search for organics, salts and minerals. Morgan also conducts fieldwork in extreme environments on Earth, searching for life in places such as the Atacama Desert, the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro and various lava fields in Iceland.  Morgan hails from Cape Canaveral, Florida, where she gained an early love of planetary science watching rockets launch into orbit. She enjoys surfing, soccer, flying Cessna 172s, caving, mountain unicycling and teaching at a space camp in Seoul, Korea. She aspires to continue working through NASA to discover more about the universe and our place in it.
• Dr. Rosaly M. C. Lopes, is a Senior Research Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Editor-in-Chief for the planetary science journal Icarus (Elsevier). Dr. Lopes was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and moved to London, England, to study Astronomy at the University of London (University College). For her doctoral studies, she specialized in planetary geology and volcanology and completed her Ph. D. in Planetary Science in 1986. Her major research interests are in planetary and terrestrial geology and volcanology. After postdoctoral studies, she became a JPL employee and a member of the Galileo Flight Project, a mission to Jupiter. She was responsible for observations of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io from 1996 to 2001, using Galileo's Near-infrared Mapping Spectrometer. During this exciting period of her career, she discovered 71 active volcanoes on Io, for which she was honored in the 2006 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records as the discoverer of the most active volcanoes anywhere. Dr. Lopes worked on the Cassini mission to Saturn from 2002 until 2018. She is currently studying data acquired by Cassini, in particular, the geology and potential habitability of Saturn's largest moon, Titan as a Principal Investigator in NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, leading an international team. She has received many honors for her contributions to the studies of volcanism on Earth and the planets, including Fellow of the AAAS, GSA, and AGU, elected member of the International Academy of Astronautics, two NASA Exceptional Public Service medals, the Adler Planetarium’s Women in Science award, the Antarctica Medal from the NSF, Lowell Thomas medal from the Explorers Club, Wings Women of Discovery Air and Space award (2009), the American Astronomical Society's Carl Sagan medal, and Asteroid (22454) Rosalylopes. Dr Lopes has taken many leadership roles in the scientific community. She currently serves as President of the American Geophysical Union’s Planetary Science Section. Dr. Lopes has written 135 peer-reviewed scientific publications and published eight books. She is a strong supporter of education, diversity, and outreach, nationally and internationally. She has given numerous public lectures in the US and abroad, on every continent including Antarctica. She has been active in the media, giving hundreds of interviews, and has been featured on over twenty TV documentaries.
• Amy Hoffmann, Scientist NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Research Scientist, Planetary Sciences Section, with a focus on isotope geochemistry problems related to Titan and Mars mineralogy. SPECIALTIES Analytical: secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS 50L; SIMS 7f GEO); electron microprobe analysis; Orbitrap mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS); gas-source IRMS; TIMS; GC-MS; ICP-OES; ICP-MS; RGA-MS; FE-SEM (imaging, EDS, EBSD, cathodoluminescence); FTIR spectroscopy (including ATR); Raman spectroscopy; UV-vis spectroscopy; NMR spectroscopy; XRD; XRF; TGA; NMR; XPS [limited]; petrographic and binocular microscopy. Laboratory: clean lab proficiency (including ion-separation column chemistry); solid-state materials synthesis and reactions; solution-based reactions and preparation / wet chemistry; organic and organometallic compound synthesis and separation; low-temperature, aqueous-based mineral syntheses; high-temperature, low-pressure mineral syntheses (1-atm, Lindbergh furnaces); high-temperature, high-pressure mineral syntheses (piston cylinder apparati); Karl Fischer titration (operated within Ar-purged glove box); gas-phase reactions / vacuum line construction and operation; laser fluorination of mineral separates for O-isotope analyses; mineral separation from whole-rock samples and micro-sample preparation and mounting; use of slab, trim, and lapidary saws for rock cutting; jaw crushers, mullite grinders, and shatterboxes for rock crushing; arc-welding, machining (lathes), use of drill and hydraulic presses, autoclaves, and laminar flow hoods; limited experience with DNA amplification and expression using PCR as well as microbiological and plant-tissue culturing. Computational: MATLAB, Visual BASIC; elementary UNIX, LAMMPS & Moldy (molecular dynamics), GAUSSIAN (DFT), ArcGIS, and MELTS (petrologic thermodynamic modelling); PHREEQC (aqueous geochemistry) [limited].