 This is ThinkTech, title of our show at this point here on Community Matters is Ocean Bottom Research in the Time of the COVID. Isn't that complex enough? This is Melody. Lindsay, hi Melody. Thank you for joining us today. Hi Jay. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. You're more than just a PhD. You're a PhD actively involved in postdoc research. So what was the subject of your PhD and what is the subject of your postdoc research? So my PhD, I just graduated just about a year ago at this point from Montana State University. And at Montana State, I was working on investigating the metabolisms of microorganisms that live in the hot springs and which do not use the sun as a source of energy. So most life on earth, including the algae that live in the ocean, plant from land, they get their energy from the sun. And then other animals consume that and therefore their energy also comes from the sun. But with these microorganisms that live in Yellowstone hot springs, they get their energy from chemicals, including things like a hydrogen gas, sulfuric acid, other chemicals like that. And so that's what I was focused on was, okay, do these organisms utilize hydrogen as a form of energy? And that kind of ties, it broadly ties into what I am now working on as a post PhD, but not quite of running my own lab yet as a postdoctoral scientist. And I am investigating microorganisms and their metabolisms. And in particular, I'm interested in looking at organisms that live in the subsurface and the marine subsurface. And those organisms do not have access, of course, to the sun because they're buried under layers of sediment and they're under several hundreds or thousands of feet of ocean. And so they also get their energy from chemicals. And so that's what I'm focused on. Okay, let me unpack a little of that. That's very interesting because we have a regular show about hydrogen and we care about hydrogen. We think that hydrogen is a fuel of the future, so to speak. Lots of positive things about hydrogen. And you're actually dealing with animals that use hydrogen for energy. That's so interesting. So what is the chemical process involved? Have you studied exactly what biochemical processes are taking place? Yes. So there are two options for a microbe with hydrogen. It can either use hydrogen as a form of energy or it can produce hydrogen as sort of a waste product. And a lot of the hydrogen that I think we think about in terms of, oh, this is going to be a new biofuel or a new fuel that's going to be a clean source of energy, cleaner source of energy, that is from microorganisms fermenting a product and then producing hydrogen that way. However, there are also microorganisms that can utilize hydrogen for energy. And so they intake hydrogen, they use it up instead of producing it. And it was thought that the usage of hydrogen as a form of energy for microbes is one of the earliest evolving metabolisms on planet earth. It's an easily accessible metabolism. A hydrogen was present on early earth. And so it's thought maybe that's a cool link to the past kind of. And so that's kind of why I was interested in it. But it's definitely a two-way street. They can either produce it or use it. Okay. Producing it. How do they, this is very interesting really. How do they produce it? What is the chemical biochemical process by which they produce the hydrogen? Yeah. So I'm not really an expert in all the ways that microorganisms can produce hydrogen. But it's sort of a, it's in a process called fermentation. So if you think of, like, oh, if you think fermentation, you might think of, say, yeast in your bread. It takes the starches or the sugars in that mixture and then it consumes them. And then it uses, it breaks those chemical bonds of those energetic molecules such as sugar. But then what it, what it then results in is you have all of these different other molecules such as water or carbon dioxide that it then needs to get rid of because that they can no longer use it. It's not this energetic form of sugar that it had before. So one of those products is hydrogen. Oh yeah. So theoretically then maybe this is really happening. Theoretically, I could have a bunch of these microbes and I could feed them whatever they need at a microbe level because they don't need that much. And they could generate hydrogen for me and I could use that hydrogen. I could put that in a tank. I could use it for fuel cells. I could have it run my electric hydrogen vehicle. I could have it run my generator station if I had enough of it. Yeah. Yeah, theoretically. Yeah, I am definitely not an expert in the production of hydrogen, but that is, I think the goal of many of these research projects is to get to a point with these microbes in a bioreactor, these giant tanks and to be able to produce useful fuel such as methane or hydrogen as well. Okay. And what about the other side of it, the microbes that use the hydrogen? What do they use it for their own metabolism? I mean, is there anything we can learn from what those microbes are doing that would help us, that would help us medically, you know, in our bodies that would help us mechanically and anything that humanity likes to do where we don't have a solution, but this would be a better solution. Yeah. So the reason why I was really excited about microbes that can utilize hydrogen is I mentioned briefly before, it's the utilization of hydrogen is something that that metabolism can be sort of hypothesized to be one of the earliest metabolisms on planet Earth. It's a very low energy metabolism. They don't need a lot of energy to then consume this or they don't, yeah, it doesn't take a lot for them to utilize this compound. And so it was really easy for the first forms of life on Earth to potentially be using these metabolisms. And so that's why I'm really interested in it. I don't know if at the moment there's anything to be said for within human health or anything like that, but on a general knowledge sort of scale and looking at early Earth or even in potentially extraterrestrial environments and other extreme environments that could be a really interesting way of looking for microbes there. Okay, I was telling you before the show that we had a woman on ThinkTech a couple years ago who was interestingly enough a lawyer and a geologist and she told us about manganese nodules. And she pointed out that manganese nodules were quite valuable and that in fact once the international maritime community sorted it out, this would be a real rush by various nations to mine manganese nodules, hopefully not disturbing the environment, and put them on a commercial market. And they, manganese nodules are on the surface, the floor, the ocean bottom. And that's where you know all of that the manganese nodules is happening. But at the Bigelow Institute you're not doing that. You're going below the floor of the ocean and you're looking for other things. So what are you looking for? Why are you looking for it and how do you actually find it? Yeah, that's a good question. So I just came into this position at Bigelow. I'm a really new, I'm a pretty new postdoc and so I'm definitely not that well versed in everything that people are doing, but I do have some sense of what, and I was very fortunate to be able to go on an expedition to the Pacific Ocean last year. So right now I live in Maine, but we went off of the coast of Oregon to the Wanda Fuca plate, kind of that junction there, so off the coast of Washington. And so these two images that are showing up now are of the remotely operated vehicle, Jason. And so that is hanging off of the side of the research vessel, Atlantis. And so that is what we use, we can use to go down to the bottom of the ocean because you need a lot of specialized equipment to go down 2,600 meters or feet to the bottom of the ocean. And so for the research that I have been involved with and that I'm hoping to continue to be involved with despite recent challenges due to COVID, is looking at the organisms that live in the largest aquifer on earth, which is the marine subsurface. You say aquifer, you mean water. Water under the water. Exactly. We didn't know that until now, Melody, thank you. It's hard for me to think about it too, but the senior research scientists that I'm working with at Bigelow has a good way of putting it and I'll just try to expound on it here, but the volume of earth's oceans will cycle through this aquifer of water in the crust of the ocean. And it's these very small pockets of water that down to the minuscule to very large. And it's this really large aquifer, but in that aquifer of the subsurface is the largest environment, subsurface environment because the world's oceans cover about 70% of the earth. And to go underneath it, we don't know a whole lot about it. And the only way we can study it is by taking these remote operated vehicles or human occupied submersibles down to the bottom. Wow, very exciting to hear about that. So is the aquifer, is it connected around the earth or is it only in pockets in some places? Yeah, so that's a good question. And so basically, I don't have an answer because we don't know enough about it. We know more about the surface of the moon than we do the surface of the ocean on earth. And how deep is it? I mean, how deep could it be? So let's assume that the floor you're working on, and I know it differs in from place to place, is like 2,500 meters below the surface of the ocean. Let's assume that. How much further do you have to go down to hit the aquifer? So there are some places where you have to go a couple of feet and there are some places where you'll have to drill through sediment that's been accumulating for eons, the millions and millions of years. So you'll drill through several hundred feet of sediment and then you'll have to drill through another 700 feet of rock. So it ranges from thousands of feet to very little. And when you get there, how deep could it be or shallow? I do not have an answer there. Geophysicist would have a much better idea. It's very interesting. Okay, so you get all these research ships right now. I mean, this is, I know you just started doing your postdoc in Maine at the Bigelow Institute. So you get on the research ships. What is the role of the young scientist, may I say, who is on a ship like that? What chores, what tasks, what questions are put to you? Yeah, that's a good question. So and this may not be reflective of every single ship, but I have so far kind of had like one and a half experiences. I say half very lightly. I was, I'll talk about the first one, which I was fortunate last year to go on a three-week expedition again to the Pacific Ocean right off the coast of Washington. And that was on the research vessel Atlantis. And that was part of a much larger project that was funded or that funded the ship to go. And so I played a minor role and I was just trying to get my project done and, you know, maybe help out some other people. But I was just basically like kind of concentrated in my one little area being like, okay, I need this. I need this. Thank you. All right, cool. But there are, you know, entire expeditions which are led by some really awesome people, including the scientist I work with, one of the scientists I work with here at Bigelow, and she was leading the whole expedition. So she, you know, she was organizing everything, kind of leading a bunch of the science happening on this whole boat. But as a, kind of a getting a more younger postdoc, I was just kind of focused on my own project. Which is what? Yeah, so I'm, we were, we were out there for three weeks and yeah, my project is basically developing new methods of measuring microbial activity. So how much oxygen is a microbe using or how much CO2 is a microbe using. We want to know how much nutrient turnover is occurring in these understudied environments, such as the deep subsurface, because we don't know what's happening and how do those metabolisms and how does that geochemical turnover impact, you know, the world's oceans, which is a huge environment. We would like to have a better idea of that. And that's what I'm working on now is new methods to measure activities. That's funny, your brother Christopher, who is just about to start an astronomy program in, I guess it's a PhD program, get that right? In Yale. He's looking at the stars, but his sister is looking, you know, at the bottom of the ocean. It's the opposite direction, Melody. You guys, you guys, coin one day early on and decide that Chris was going to go up and you were going to go down or vice versa. I, so I originally started by looking up. I was fortunate to get an REU, an NSF REU, a research experience for undergrads. I got that in my sophomore year at my undergrad institution, which was Princeton. And I did that for a summer and I spent the whole summer in like a darkened room on a computer. And I was like, I don't know if this is for me. And so I was, I'll then fortune enough to work with an astrobiologist or geomicrobiologist at Princeton, who was doing field work and he was working on subsurface microbes that live in terrestrial mines. And I was like, oh, this is the coolest thing. I can still kind of do this astrobiology related research, but not have to, I can go out to the site and, you know, dig up the microbes myself and go sampling. And the field work was definitely more my, my speed than, than a strict astronomy, which there's, I'm glad he's doing it. Sorry, sorry, bro. There's a lot of computer work, which is, yeah. So have you, have you settled down now? You're definitely an ocean person, a researcher who will dwell at the bottom and below the bottom of the ocean. Is that, can we say that that will be your research scientific research career? I mean, I think overall, like I mentioned, I had been working, I did a little bit of work in undergrad with a professor in the South African mines, which are on land. And then for my PhD, I worked on microbes in Yellowstone and also the Great Salt Lake. But now I'm hopefully going to work with microbes from the bottom of the ocean or below or other ocean environments, or at least ways to measure their activity. So my interests, I think lie heavily in astrobiology related. It doesn't matter if it's beneath the water or beneath the land or on top of the land. That's what I'm interested in. It's microbes. Yeah, it's microbes in general. Yeah. Okay. Well, microbes and biochemistry is really there together. And of course, biochemistry and disease and COVID-19 and the like, they're close to each other too, in terms of, you know, their mechanics. And I wonder if, you know, that's something that you're interested in. In other words, finding the link between something you're studying about microbes and something that is going to be relevant increasingly so in viruses today. Do you think about that? Is that a possible connection for you? Yeah, for sure. And the real, what I think about is, how I think about that is that we just don't know a whole lot about these difficult to access extreme environments. Like there's so much we could learn from that, whether it's, you know, new biomedical advances. And just in this example, if you've ever heard of TAC polymerase, that is used in a molecular technique, pretty much in any biomedical facility. If you want to be able to test for COVID-19, for example, you're going to take the swab, you're going to sequence what's on that swab in order to say, oh, is this COVID or is it not COVID? And to do that, you need an enzyme called TAC polymerase. Well, TAC polymerase, and that will replicate the DNA sequence or RNA sequence after it's been converted to DNA. That will replicate sequences enough so that you can tell, oh, yeah, that sequence was present. Yes, you do, you did have COVID. But that TAC polymerase, that enzyme was originally isolated from a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. So if there hadn't been this, you know, biological microbial focus in the environment, then that innovation would not have been possible. And so it's all linked together. And, you know, maybe that kind of finding will only come around once every so often. But those might then the health side of microbiology, as well as the environmental side of microbiology will always be intertwined in that way. Yeah. Are you familiar with Dr. Dave Carl, Professor Dave Carl at the Seymour Organization in microbial oceanography at UH? I've definitely heard of him. I've read a couple of his papers, but I'm new to the ocean. So it's... Well, he is the intersection, right, between microbial and oceanography. That's what he does. And he's been running this thing called a station aloha for many, many years, where they go out on a ship and they take samples of the water and the like and determine the microbial content. The reason I ask is that there is some action going on here in Hawaii in the School of Ocean Earth Science and Technology that is relevant to your work. And I guess the question I wanted to ask you, Melody, is what are the chances of you coming back here after you finish your postdoc work in Maine or in California, wherever it might be and bringing some of that research back home here? Yeah. I mean, it's a tough job market for academics and it was a tough job market and it is going to be an even tougher job market now. There's a lot of hiring freezes happening and a lot of people are kind of, you know, since they're not hiring now, they're going to be competing later on. And so I hope to work in an environment as cool as Hawaii. Like Hawaii has so many opportunities, especially for oceanography, but it really will depend on if I can get a job or not. But what about medical schools? I mean, for example, you know, there's research going on in the John A. Burns School of Medicine and the Cancer Research Center, which I have seen some of it and it's very impressive right here. I mean, could your interest and your experience here, you know, in school and in Maine, could they get you a job in a medical school, in a medical research facility or in this case a cancer research facility? I think it would depend on what the what the job was. I at this point, I'm pretty well enmeshed in the astrobiology, you know, environmental microbiology side. But I'll never say never, you know, you never know what can happen in someone's career. And it could be, you know, some sample that I have might have an incredible value to something in the medical field. And that's how that happens. Or just eventually, I, you know, have a new project with collaborators in schools of medicine and we work together on a project. And that would be amazing too. But yes, at this point, as opposed to I guess it would be hard to tell. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, there's a whole philosophy involved, isn't there? I mean, you're in science, you have your mainstream of research activity, but you have to be flexible, you have to be nimble, you have to look for opportunities. You have to write your stuff up so that people can see what you're doing. And you can, you know, have a curriculum VTI that makes some sense to, you know, some other research facility. This takes me to a question. I was holding back on this question till the right time. And I think it's the right time. Thank you to the viewer who left this question with us. And I read the question, what is Dr. Lindsey's prediction for science careers for future American students when the president doesn't seem, I like this question, when the president doesn't seem to respect our leading scientists? Okay, that doesn't intimidate you. You can answer that question, Ryan. Yeah, well, I mean, there is a disconnect between the president and any science, unfortunately, which should not be the case. He can't even listen to his own advisors when it comes to it. I don't know if I have a prediction about students. I think, you know, COVID is limiting and the actions they're in is limiting students at this point. A lot of students are not going to go back for on in-person teaching. They're going to be limited in their career. You're not limited in career options, but it's going to, for me personally, it's going to be difficult. So I'm just projecting that onto them. But my hope is that, you know, if you go out and vote, maybe we'll have some better policy makers. And that will definitely improve education and science overall, especially, yeah, especially. Well, yeah, but I want to walk that back a little bit to ask you about the scientific community in general. How do they feel? You know, you've been in school for pretty much all of this Trump administration, and you've been walking and talking with people and, you know, trying to get an understanding of where this administration is going. How do people feel about this? You've rubbed elbows with a ton of scientists. How does the science community feel about it? There must be a reaction of some kind. What is it? Horror would be the reaction. It's just at every turn, it's pretty much disbelief. And I'm speaking personally here, not on behalf of anyone else. It's just, I cannot believe this is what is actually happening. I cannot believe this funding is getting cut to this, you know, to the pandemic response team or, you know, to healthcare. It's the same reaction. It's almost inhumane what's happening on all fronts and not just science, but definitely from a science point of view. Are we losing talent? Is the country losing talent? You know, people who can't get jobs, can't get funding, and so they go and do something else? I would say most likely. I can't think of anyone personally, but, you know, even with, you know, especially under this administration, but even before that, things like, you know, systemic racism are definitely limiting the diversity in science, and that is cutting our, you know, the things that we could achieve as, you know, as humans and as a society. And the administration is definitely not helping with that at all. Yeah. Yeah, just a short distance away is the whole question of the environment. I mean, part of your motivation must be environmental motivation because your research is environmental, I think. And so the question I asked you is, what about the, what about the group that wants to save the environment, save the planet? I mean, we were not involved in the COP conferences over the past, over the Trump years. We have not collaborated with other scientists and activists around the world in dealing with climate change. And here we are. And I wonder, you know, from your point of view in school and undergraduate, graduate, and now, you know, are we losing momentum in dealing with climate change? Are we losing momentum in training people to do environmental research? I feel like if on a non-funding level, it is not losing momentum. If anything, it is kind of encouraging people to speak up more and hopefully vote more for policymakers that will actually listen to scientists and hopefully improve the future for all life on the planet. But in terms of, you know, things like EPA funding getting cut, yeah, that is going to cause some people to be like, oh, well, if I can't put in a proposal to do this particular work on, you know, water health or anything like that, then they are not, they are going to turn their attention to other research projects and that really important work on, you know, environmental protection and human health and planetary health is going to get lost for sure. Very troubling because if you don't do any work in that area, then we don't have as robust a response to climate change, then climate change becomes all the more threatening. That's what I think that's where we are. So what about Hawaii, Mel, you know, so I hope you can come back to Hawaii, but it sounds like it's not a sure thing. And Hawaii could be a great place for you. We do have an ocean, by the way, if I hadn't mentioned it. Does Hawaii have a value on science? I mean, I really wonder about that sometimes. There have been indications over the years that I've watched say that state government doesn't really care that much about science or technology. Do you think there's enough of a, I call it a cloth mother back here that would be a welcoming, encouraging environment, political environment for you to come and be invested in science in Hawaii? Yeah, I think that Hawaii and oceanography in particular have always had a good relationship. You know, I watched your shows with my brother and the 30 meter telescope and all that discussion, but in particular with ocean health and oceanography and that and more of the, you know, direct field that that represents to Hawaii, I think the state government and the policymakers are always kind of have that as a something that they would like to support and fund. That's the sense I get, but I am not an expert in that. No, but you're from Hawaii and you've lived here most of your life, at least before school. And I just wonder how you feel about, you know, coming home to Hawaii when there's, there are issues about its support of science. So, you know, if you come back or when you come back, what would your, what would your plan be? I mean, let me ask you this way, what is your plan from this point forward to, you know, to develop and build your career in science? And remember too that we should talk about science as an element of diversification in Hawaii. So it's a moving target. Hopefully there'll be visionary people in Hawaii who will see that we needed to first fire economy. And one of the obvious ways to do that is in science and technology. But what is your plan? And what, what are the influences on your plan that call it the variables that you would consider going forward? Yeah, I think so. So my, my personal goal is kind of like a job interview now, not really, that kind of, but where I see myself in, you know, five to 10 years hopefully is I want to be able to run my own lab. I want to be able to do really cool and interesting innovative research on these like kind of extreme environments and, you know, bottom of the ocean, within the ocean, above the ocean, any, any of those. And so a lot of that does interact with kind of the government agencies like the NSF, National Science Foundation, or NASA, or other, or NOAA and those kinds of funding agencies, maybe even Department of Energy. So that would be an important thing to consider is how those agencies are funding science and hopefully I can get, you know, the experience and the knowledge enough to apply for those kinds of funding. But then once that happens, then the goal is to be able to kind of do research that you want to do. And a lot of the times that's going to involve the local, at the local level. And so, you know, if hopefully I could get a job, that will allow me to put forward proposals for funding. But then even if I'm not in Hawaii, it's at the national level. And you can, you could be like, oh, okay, I have this money to go answer the question of this microbe is doing what where, and that can really be anywhere in the world, as long as you follow the, you know, Nagoya protocols and all that. But if it's in the same country, so Hawaii's in the same country, so you can kind of take your research and apply it to anywhere you want, you, I would want to do research. And that could include Hawaii, of course. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why Hawaii has to take this opportunity to build a scientific sector, a body of people and knowledge of institutional knowledge so that it can compete on a global level. Otherwise, if you're interested in a given science and there are 27 places, all of which are not Hawaii, and those are the places competing for your attention. Those are the places that are offering you the jobs. So Hawaii has to be very conscious of this. And it has to, you know, compete. It has to build. It has to build a reputation. Am I right about this? Otherwise, it falls behind environment or no environment? I mean, it's a two-way street, especially with field scientists. We want to go where there's cool environments, but we also really want to involve the local community and what we do. And so to bring those dollars of funding, I guess, to important questions, but also those that are going to help the community in some way or at least inform the community about the natural world that they live in is very important. And so it definitely is this kind of two-way street. And it would be great to be able to get a job in Hawaii, but also it would be with the goal that I would also be, you know, not giving back, so to speak, but not doing this helicopter science and just like coming in, landing and flying away with all this knowledge. I would want to involve people, local people and, you know, people of all different cultures and see how that could, how that knowledge could improve humanity as a whole, hopefully, and the future for all life. One last question, Melody, and that is this. There are a lot of kids out there in school. They may get to see this tape and no pressure. And, you know, I think it's important for you to tell them what you think about what they should be doing and thinking about in terms of developing, you know, investing in, investing their time and academic energy in science. Is it worthwhile these days? How important is it? What should they be thinking about and doing to, you know, express that desire? Yeah, so not to sit on my ivory tower and be like, science is the best. You should only do science, but you should really, you know, think about what interests you as a student. Like, is it going to be science? Is it going to be, you know, social science? Is it going to be education? How can you, I think it's very important to think of how you can use your personal talents to help the world. And right now, science is very important. It is one of the things that is going to improve life for everyone on the planet, hopefully, in terms of climate change and public health. But there, you know, there are other ways to get into, you know, user talents as well. So whatever that may be, a science is a great option. I encourage you to reach out to, you know, your teachers or to professors at the local college, they would love to have a student come and be like, hey, I'm interested in what you do. Like, can you, you know, tell me what you do or, you know, something like that? Like, I would love that for anybody to contact me and be like, hey, I want to hear more about, like, what you do and how you got there and what could I possibly do to do that? And so long story short, I guess it's do what you love, first of all. But think about how that might, you know, help everybody. That's an important thing in this day and age where we all need to care for each other. And then thirdly, you know, reach out to scientists. They love, you know, we sit at our desks and in our labs and we're all alone all the time. So, so reach out because we love having students. I'm really sad that this summer I couldn't have a student in the lab because of coronavirus. And so, yeah, reach out to people. All right, Melody. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, reach out to scientists. We'd love to hear from you. All right, Melody and Lindsay, thank you so much for coming around. Thank you for talking to us about your career aspirations and your science. Thank you for having me.