Trying to document my work, here is a belated recap of 3 of my projects from June 2025!
NASA SCoPE Symposium
NASA SCoPE is a mini funding agency that gives early career subject matter experts a chance to work with a NASA science activation team on a project.
AKA – they help fund cool science communication projects!
This was their first symposium, bringing together participants from the last few years to show off their work! SCoPE is based at Arizona State University, so we all flew into Pheonix/Tempe and braved the dry heat!
I got to talk about my first SCoPEs funded project – putting my PhD research on stellar ages into the (free and opensource) Open Space planetarium software. The guide for that show is still being worked on!
I also got to meet some other online sci-com buds, such as Joshua and Skylar!
SCoPE pt 2
Before I left for the trip, my collaborator Iman Behbehani and I were working on my (our) second SCoPE grant project, creating science enrichment videos for middle school and high school students. Here you can see us story boarding out a few episodes!
Yesterday’s Horoscope
I also took part in the show “Yesterday Horoscope“, run by my collaborator Kristina Gustovich and her friend (and mine now) Jane Mitchell!
The conceit of the show is that Kristina and Jane are “the Skies”, the ethereal forces that are behind horoscopes. It quickly takes a hard turn away from astrology and gives the two of them every excuse to show off their talent on stage including dance, song, improv and a dizzying number of costumes changes.
I love it! So when they asked me to give them a ~5 minute story about a Cancer sign in my life, I jumped at the chance to play with them.
That said, my story wasn’t exactly light-hearted. In fact it was as heavy-hearted as it can get! I spoke about a past relationship that made me who I am.
I was proud of taking the opportunity to push the boundaries of my performances to beyond just science, and while I hope to release a version of the work widely soon, I’ll leave the opening and closing lines here.
“I’m an astronomer, but at a deeper level, I’m a romantic. Two years ago, as I was finishing my PhD, I embraced an opportunity for love that made me who I am today.
… (5 minutes of love and loss, failure and fufilment )
My star sign was the same before I met her, but my life completely changed since.”
Science Tonight Ep1 Prep
Finally, June was a very exciting month because I was preparing for the first episode of my own show, the science comedy late-night talk show Science, TONIGHT!
This is a project I had been tinkering along in my mind for over a year, and I finally got the venue, time, and team together! Along with Iman and Kristina, Noah Guiberson was part of the original cast. We all have advanced degrees in science, and are theater kids at heart!
The last week of June was spent running around getting it to happen, but we do have a nice tradition of having our production meetings over happy hours.
How did it go?! Well it was on July 1st, you’ll have to wait for the next update!