Focus 580; Federal Science Policy: A Perspective from Inside the Beltway

In this part of focus 580 we will continue to take advantage of a series of talks that's been going on here on this campus going back to last year looking at the changing role of the university sponsored in part by the Center for Advanced Study but also many other departments and the guest in this series today is Dr. Kathy Olson She is chief scientist at NASA's she is in fact the highest ranking woman at Nassa. She has been working as a relatively short period of time she came to Nassau from the National Science Foundation where she worked in several capacities over a number of years. And we'll be talking about some about her work at NASA's and also about the some of the things that happened at NASA's That wouldn't be the kinds of research that you would automatically think of because she is by training a biologist. Brain research is her area of specialty and she's particularly interested in things like the studies that they have done and ass and will continue to do dealing with human biology human psychology. She'll also be talking about federal science

policy in her talk today on the campus and will try to talk a little bit about that too. If you'd like to attend by the way that's at four o'clock this afternoon at the auditorium of the Beckman Institute and all of these programs of course free and open to anyone who would like to attend. As we talk with Dr. Olson your questions and comments are welcome. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 WRAL or 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us and daddy's 800 1:58 wy aloud and at any point here if you have questions you can give us a call. Well thanks very much for being here. It's great being here handspring in Champaign-Urbana. Well you know from one day to the next year this year we don't really quite know what season it is. It's the you know the meteorologist say this is a transitional time. So where one day it's winter one day it's spring one day it's summer. But that's why Gnatho had the Earth Science program so we can do better prediction. Oh good. Very good NASA's going to help us with that. Well first let me first see

if I can get an understanding of what it is that you do at NASA's. It's as in your capacity as apparently being the the senior scientific advisor to the head of the agency. What exactly does that mean. Basically what it means is that in the administrators office they have a person that's representing the science issues and science problems to make sure that they're always there at all the key meetings. One of my major responsibilities is really to ensure the high quality of peer review science is supported by Gnatho. I work closely with the Office of Management Budget. I work closely with Congress in terms of really advocating our science and the importance of our science not only to NASA's mission for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit but also to have those benefits back to earth so that anything that we do like our earth science program we're going to understand earth but really it's to

understand it so would be able to predict and then forecast events. So in part is this is part of your role in fact justifying the amount of money that we spend so that the that we can say. We here is what we're trying to do here. Here's what we're hoping to accomplish here is what we have accomplished to demonstrate that it is solid science what we have done what we will do. Yeah. Actually part of my role is to make sure as I say that what we are developing is basically solid science that addresses problems are challenges that are basically important for our mission and what we try to do is work with all the other federal agencies. If the problem is important for example one of things that we're doing right now is NASA's working with the National Cancer Institute and we're developing a peer review program that brings an

engine nears clinicians biologist engineers to develop technology that can actually detect diagnose and treat disease noninvasive technology think about taking a contact pill and having some kind of. Monitor or censor. They can go in and look to see a change within the cell before it becomes a cancer. That's why the Cancer Institute is interested in that. We're interested in that because on Mars are a comet or Europa or wherever we go. We're not going to have an emergency rooms. And so we're really going to have to have different ways to revolutionize medical care so that they would have the astronauts will be safe and healthy. Will that see you answer the next question that I was going to ask and that is making the connection because I'm sure some people say well that's very interesting but isn't the mission of Nassa the exploration of space. What's that. What's that got to do with detecting cancer before symptoms might occur.

So but you know it's interesting because health and safety is the number one value I have now. An interesting fact in terms of shuttle launches the risk factor is one out of two hundred and fifty. And Mr. Golden who's the administrator likes to say it's not propulsion that's going to keep us from Mars. It's going to be a health and safety of the astronauts. And there are some major. Medical challenges that we face for example Astronauts lose 1 percent bone loss per month Aust year process is actually the number two killer of women over like 50 years of age number one is heart attack. Number two is osteoporosis. And number three is heart disease. And so the research that we do to prevent bone loss in our astronauts which is a very healthy population hopefully will then translate into ways to prevent or treat osteoporosis here on Earth. We also have muscle atrophy the muscles weekend a lot of the

changes that we see in the astronauts are changes that are associated with aging and aging injured individuals. You know that's interesting because I did and had indeed read in some of the things that I looked at that one of the things that you were interested in the agency was interested in was aging for that very reason that in astronauts because of the conditions under which they have to live. You see some of these same sorts of things that you see people experiencing here on Earth as they age. So there again be one of those things people would say well that's interesting why would NASA's be studying aging and in fact we came up with the National Institutes of aging. So that we actually work together so we're not doing it independently. Nassa has over 20. These are memorandums of understanding with NIH. We have some with the Department of Energy because radiation again a major challenge and deal he is a leader in radiation research and so we work with them so that we actually are complementary

to our goals. You know as I mentioned beginning the program your background is in biology and in brain research and again that might be the initial reste reaction of someone knowing that you were the chief scientist at NSA might say well that's surprising they would they might think that this person would be in an astro physicist or some kind of engineer and not new props wouldn't think of. Someone who's done neurobiology the way that you have as being the person that you would find in a job like this. How how did you come to have this job. Actually I think it's hilarious when Nassa first called me. My comment was Houston what's up Houston. Because I said the same thing. I am a biologist and actually all the previous chief scientists have been astro physicists astronomers and I took the same thing I said look you know and I hate to admit this you know I really I've never taken an astronomy course and but my sort of answer to that

is I've got great astronomers at numbers at now who are can answer some of those questions basically. Now so I wanted a biologist and this is again Mr. Gold and his vision. He looks at the 21st century as the century for biology like last century was really physics was the leader. We now have the human genome. And I know that the Center for Advanced Study is actually doing a whole special on sort of the new biology. And if you think about now some and you think about the programs. First of all we do have the biomedical program. Again biology also one of our major questions is how did we get here where are we going and are we alone. If we're going to find life elsewhere OK and if there is I swear again that's biology and we've actually started a major activity in astrobiology. In terms of our technology we want our technologies to be molded after biological systems. We want them evolve A-ball

adaptable. That's what biology again Mother Nature holds all the best patents and our technology needs to sort of evolve in terms of that direction. And they've actually a recent research is they had materials. And what happened is part of the material broke and the technology that they had in actually was able to fix that area just like when you cut yourself. You don't have a total response throughout your body. It's very selective in terms of fixing that. That's the kind of technology that we want to develop in terms of our aeronautics and space program. So if you think about it biology does make sense. Let me introduce Again our guest for this part of focus 580 We're speaking with Dr. Kathy Olson She's chief scientist at NASA's And she is here to talk about federal science policy as part of a series on the changing role of the university we've had a lot of these folks here on this program to bring them to a little wider audience. But she'll be giving her talk today at

4 in the auditorium of the Backman Institute for people in and around Champaign-Urbana if you'd like to hear her. You can certainly go and questions on this program are welcome to 3 3 3 W I L L toll free 800 to 2 to W while I'm probably. When people think about living in space and I think we're expecting that in the future humans will spend more time in places like the space station and eventually I think I still think there are people that are expecting that there will be some continuing human presence. First probably on the moon and then some time Mars your arms your brain on who knows. Elsewhere in our solar system when you think about the challenges of living in space immediately you think of the fact that people have to be able to breathe so we've got to provide them with the right the right mix of gases and they're going to have to feed themselves and there they'll need water they'll need an environment that will protect them from cosmic

radiation and all those sorts of things. So those are the things that you think about right away. Past that when you think about the challenges of living in space the ones we take care of people's immediate needs for shelter for air for water for food what are the next sorts of things that you think about particularly as a as a biologist or as someone who's also had some experience and in psychology. Well it's very interesting because the social factors the human factors is going to be a major player in terms of our success. Think about a trip to Mars. It will take nine months to get there you're on Mars for a year and a half and then come back to Earth. In that nine months you'll be traveling on something that we hope would be the size of a 747. It may be less. Let's say our mission has three

individuals three individuals are there in a very harsh stressful environment. Going to some place that no person has ever gone before we've sent our robots first and sort of camped it out. But in terms of that and they're on their way spaceflight sleep patterns are disrupted. They only sleep on average about six hours a night. Think about if you were spending nine months with six hours a night sleep in terms of what it would do to your human performance and your cognitive abilities not to mention your mood and not mention your mood in terms of boredom. You're basically going there you're going to be bored. You're going to be with three people. And so NASS has just really recognized in the last year and a half that we are going to have to invest in these areas. We're studying projects like what made expeditions successful or failure

but I like to tell a story that doesn't like me tell the story but I'll tell it anyway. In terms the Apollo astronauts and one of the Apollo astronauts a 30th anniversary came up to me and he said Kathy he said you're in a whole new realm. He said people like me can't go on the International Space Station. I go crazy. I said on one of the Apollo missions it was five days myself and my two colleagues we didn't even speak to each other. Basically all of us wanted to fly. We were you know fighter pilots were very you know sir where this this kind of personality on there an International Space Station. He said you need boring people like you scientist. I informed them I was not boring but. But you know what he said but it's a different type of person. How do you select these teams. The question is that a single sex. Is it one nationality. You know we have cultural differences in terms of language differences. All the stuff we really need to study

again. Health and safety number one value. We want to be sure that we land on Mars successfully. And three people. Nine months in a place where they don't have any privacy. These are going to be major issues you know. Do you have any answers to these questions yet. Well we're looking at again people wintering in the Antarctic submarine people that live in submarines and using that as a basis. But now what we're planning to do is try to start a very robust program. We're going to be setting up a series of workshops in terms of identifying what are the issues what are the science that we need to go forward in terms of selecting really the right team. And you know the expectation would be that you could come up with some battery of tests and personality characteristics checklists and

all of that sorts of things other than prospective candidates you would put them through all of this and hope that at the end you got if you were choosing three people that you got three people that not only had the technical expertise but had these other aspects of their personality that would mean they could handle the experience they could all get along. Having to spend that time in the cramped space and that once they got to Mars I guess maybe they could go out for a walk if they needed to but it's still sort of the same sort of issue they're going to have to be able to put up with each other for this this period of time. Now exactly and also in terms of what kind of activities that we need to do on the way to Mars in terms of cognitive stimulation and exercise. You know except that is going to be keeping your mind alert learning exactly. Because Boredom is a major issue another one is loneliness in terms away from home. What kind of you know e-mail communication

those kind of stuff that we're also looking at to make that journey one that hopefully would avoid any kind of it. Personnel issues and problems. I think that the the possibility of going for of human beings going to Mars and having some sort of extended presence there. Some people are going to find that very very exciting. I think others particularly looking at the price tag would say why do we need to do that. It probably the same argument that people at NASA have been hearing for a long time from those people who say they're pressing issues here on the earth. Why are we spending money to go into space I'm not going to talk that. I want to set that aside for just a moment. But given the fact that it is a very significant technical challenge we know that it's going to cost a lot of money. It's not probably not something that any one nation even the United States can do by itself.

So if it's going to require international cooperation and it's something that's going to take some time to solve all of the various sorts of problems. This is this is a distant goal maybe not even in our lifetimes. Given all that do you feel confident. Do you think other people now also feel confident that in fact one day human beings will set foot on Mars. Yes I really do. And it's we're all explorers by nature. We have explored most of our world. There are places like the deep sea vents in the ocean where we still are learning things there are places in Australia there's places even the United States but we're explorers. And if you think about how we sort of evolved you know we went from lack of oxygen to oxygen from the sea

to the land. And now I'm looking at sort of the new era and the International Space Station is really going to provide us the laboratory too. Ask a lot of these questions but how do we sort of move off Earth and evolve off of Earth. And I actually do see it and I figure you know I've got another 50 years of my life time that we would be going to Europa are our Mars or our the place that we decide to select. I mean I think one of the major feats on February 13th was landing on the meteorite. I mean that was really cool and actually was another failure. Now the cars were supposed to crash on the meteorite we actually landed. So we took that as you just you know get it right can you get it right. But but I do but we are you know we explore by nature. And I think it's just we must actually another thing is in terms of you don't want to be earthbound in terms of again survival long

term. You want to be able to basically be able to continue and it will be international and I think the International Space Station just shows we're partners can work together for basically. One it's to me I'm looking as chief scientist is this a major science laboratory. But it's sort of a major international partnership for the first time in the history of this world. We're just about at our midpoint here in this part of focus. We have a caller we'll get right to and I want to introduce Again our guest was speaking with Dr. Kathy Olson She's chief scientist at NASA's before that was a science adviser at the National Science Foundation. She'll be talking about federal science policy on the campus today 4:00 o'clock at the auditorium of the Backman Institute as part of a year long series looking at the changing role of the university. So if you're going around Champaign-Urbana you can go in here. Also if you have questions you'd like to call in this morning you can do that. All you have to do is pick up the telephone and call

3 3 3 9 4 5 5 here in Champaign Urbana. Also we do have a toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us. 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have a caller but you're going to have to put those on there so you can hear. And they are in southeastern Illinois right here London before a year said I understand you to say that there would be three people going to Mars. Well I'm that was a hypothetical number. Basically what we're thinking is that eventually we will go beyond lower Earth orbit. Whether or not it's 10 years 20 years are you know 50 years and that was just a hypothetical number that I chose. Well I was wondering because I thought of you if that is the number you've got a built in problem right there because when you have three people to row came up against me either when I used to strongly dislike three and I'm going to ask them because

I did ride and free and can as they do up you might get the first news I had and I didn't like to be beat up on by the other two and I did not beat up on. Somebody out to beat up on third person but you know. It's interesting because I'm saying we're going to develop a major research program. And so those are the pros and cons and those are the issues that we will address and I will guarantee that when Gnatho actually establishes that mission that they will have the right number. That makes sense for success. Yeah. Well I just wondered I sounded as though that had been you know that was a no no in fact I'm going to change it now and I'll say a different number when I talk about it. OK. Thank you. Things are. I'm I'm also certain that there would be very strong interest in having this be a mixed gender team. Any any thought right now about whether that would be appropriate or difficult or or whether in fact you could you could even now at this date say

well we think for a variety of reasons it should be for example all mail now. I think I would probably say for variety reasons it should be all female because I am a female. Actually right now in the International Space Station we have a female astronaut along with her two male one cosmonaut another astronaut and so we do do the mixed groups. I'm sort of laughing because I'm waiting for that question which is the number one question that I'm asked and being a reproductive normal chronology. As you know when I say when they called me I said Well Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus maybe that's why they chose me. But I do get asked that a lot. Has there ever been or will there be in space. Blank blank blank and I want you to know that we have a pollinator flower a plant and had flowers. We've had the Japanese scientists in Mir

had a fish that actually mated in space and produced offspring that are still producing offspring here on Earth. Very successful in terms of humans. It remains to be seen that's right. I don't know why that fascinates people so. Maybe it's just the you know the opportunity to do it someplace that's where it's never been done before. Are there other in fact reasons why are there actually some complications to to reproduce for human beings to reproduce. Say let's say that to successfully reproduce in space that have to do with the conditions there. There is there any reason why we know that it should be problematic. No there isn't any reasons and in fact the International Space Station for the first time is going to allow us to do multi generations in space and it's interesting out of the 40 years in the NASA's space program

we've only had a total of one year of actual experience in space and that's with Skylab and and free flyers and shot all except. And if you think about it if you had a career in science and only worked in the lab one year you would not be tenured at the University of Illinois I guarantee you. But the International Space Station is going to allow us to do those studies and we're going to start out with I was actually talking to Dr. Susan Farr Bach and Dr. Robinson here and they do a major project looking at actually beats and the bee brain. And we're actually going to have an insect habitat cage to look at again how insects evolve in space moving it up to mice and rats and questions as a brain scientist that I'm very interested in is how is the brain going to evolve in an environment which doesn't have gravity. And if you think about the brain. OK the brain is involved in terms of genetics and

experience and it follows a very structured pattering in terms of the development. And here you're not going to have the experience of the gravity what is the motor cortex going to look like. What is the sensory motor integration in a rodent brain going to be looking like when you're basically floating in space. When your experience is Modine the synapses and the connections in terms of your development how is the brain going to develop in space the International Space Station is going to allow us to ask those questions and really learn about neuroplasticity. And so I'm very very excited about those opportunities. Well it raises the interesting possibility that if for example you had a human being that was conceived and developed in space would this be it would still be Homo sapiens but would this be a different creature then we are. We don't know you would have a different experience. And so the role that that the experience plays in terms of the space environment

you're having an experience where you're not going to have the gravity where you're basically vision is not going to be up and down. It's going to be three dimensional. So it's going to be very very interesting. Let's talk with someone else in her Bana 1 1 so I want to go back to what you were talking about with the male crew. I thought now I can try to put up some all female. Cruel cruel. Basically it's still being considered no decision has been made. But it's interesting it received a lot of attention which sort of you know I was kind of taken back because when it's an all male crew no one blinks an eye. And so I would actually like to get to the stage where an all female crew basically wouldn't cause any kind of well it's an all female crew.

Basically it was something that we have done our report. It's not anything in the near future. It may happen by selection but it's not anything that we are now in the process of saying you know in 2004 that crew will be all female. But we do have Eileen Collins was the first female commander. We have female pilots as well as payload specialists. Scientists etc. so we could. Down the line actually do have an all female crew. One of the reasons why we wanted it is because we do use the astronauts to understand some of the biological changes that occur in space and males and females do show the differences and we don't have enough in on our males. But we even have less than on our females. So by having a crew of seven all females would be able to do some

experiments with a large enough that we could get meaningful results. And that was the real reason. I guess the reason they were there'd be almost no possibility of a violent push. But whatever happened to the real problem with health. I mean I heard people saying that way. Nearing min a pause wouldn't be very good and it is better to be excluded because I mean they're already undergoing health law. Therefore I'm like man woman of a certain age wouldn't be able to go on long trips with a real problem by dividing up the British banks. OK I basically as I indicated earlier 1 percent bone loss per month in space and so and that occurs for both males and females and so it is a

major challenge that we're addressing. We have we're funding a lot of research in terms of trying to develop countermeasures one is in terms of exercise the bone loss occurred because we don't have any weight bearing way of getting the weight bearing onto the muscles and the bones and the exercise that we have in space just isn't. Successful as we want we require we have three different kinds of exercise equipment. We're require the astronauts to do all three in fact on the International Space Station. If one is broke we consider that if we can't get it fixed in a short period of time we consider that emergency to bring the crew back because it's that serious. Well what what are these different kinds of exercises. This one is a bicycle one stationary bike a stationary bike. But what they're doing is putting weight on trying to do it.

Another one is I don't remember the third one. I can get back to you on that one. Another one again is trying to get the weight against the side but it all deals with sort of the exercising it's actually it's a different ways of doing weight bearing exercises and making sure I guess the joint you're getting all the muscles exactly working OK. Other questions here are welcome we got somebody else next in Champaign this line too. Hello. With respect to the question of human beings reproducing in space. Wouldn't the ionizing radiation be a problem. Well hopefully again NASA's. We are looking at that is that we would have shielding on the spacecraft that would be a counter measure against the radiation. We actually consider radiation. Our number one challenge. We have a major program called Living with the star and

living with the star actually will enhance our better prediction of coronal mass ejections from our sun so that we can predict them and in fact in the first month on the space station we actually sequestered the members of the crew to a room that had a protection because of the solar flares that were happening. What we're really concerned about is the galactic cosmic rays because that is very high energy. And what right now is predicted is that if we go to nine months and Mars that that former radiation would actually have a hit to almost every cell within the body. What we don't know is what would it do. Good it would have no effect or what kind of effect that would have. And so we actually is funding Brookhaven to develop a beam that we can actually start doing this kind of research so we can get a handle on

that. Thank you. So is is the concern here that this radiation would damage human DNA. That's that's what it is. That's right. I mean we know radiation here x rays and that that's what it has. But it's interesting. You know one of our major programs is astrobiology and the search for life in every where we've searched for life on earth we've found that you know two hundred thirty four degrees Fahrenheit. They're living and they've actually got some microbe called a radio. And basically you can zap that don't quote me I think it's like 1.5 million rats. OK but don't quote me. And that but actually radiation that would kill us all. And these microbes are able to survive. And what it is is so we're actually studying them to see how do they repair themselves so that they can. Sort of prevent the radiation damage. Turns out that they've got a couple. Duplicate DNA. And so the radiation actually causes the

DNA to break. But then it basically comes together in terms of the right complementary strands and so there's no effect upon him. Very good. Let's go in here we have about 10 minutes left we'll go next to a caller in Chicago. On line for Hello. Thank you have just about answered the question I wanted to ask. However as a back up I'm concerned about the matter of the biosphere that we have here on Earth that was supposed to allow people to live in compatible relationship with food and other things that they could produce and so forth. If anything like that contemplated an early stage. And on a mission. Basically we have ongoing research at our NASA's centers really developing technologies for this. As you said at the very beginning we do need oxygen. We do need our food source. We do need water. And you know we have major sort of environmental

programs dealing with these issues. Also at down in Houston at Johnson we have a bio plex which is also sort of a area where humans can go in and live in a confined environment. But we can test some of our environmental systems here on Earth. But Kennedy has now the Kennedy has major scientists working on sort of you know the role plants and sort of terra forming and JPL and Ames. So we're actually addressing these important problems. Well one other question is given the fact. That some people say you can't get all the nutrition you need from food. Well the BMO supply a health food store to go home with a mission for all the nutrients and supplements it may need I don't know if that's a problem problem can be solved but a physical question I understand on Mars. There is almost a continual okaying of

velocity when blowing your own existence or knowledge to be true. Yeah there are called Devil which is again one of the callers that yeah there are dust storms but they call them devils I mean I just heard a briefing on there actually. Yes and it is something that the last Saturday we launched a new Mars explorer and one of the activities on this are the technology and science that's going to do is actually study these winds and dust storms. The final question is there are several magnetic poles as it were or centers that are as I think the last count I heard. It was like four or five sort of bewildering to think that the organisms that we have here got along with just to now they're going to have to cope with all those other ones up there. So there's all kinds of different factors besides being barbequed from the radiation and so forth that have to consider. You've got a huge job ahead you know it's sort of feel like the steamboat going up and down the

Mississippi and we're at this stage right now and it will be a long time before we can get to the real goal we're after. And again with health and safety is their number one value there we're not going to go forward in till we've sent the robots and still we've sent this to pave the way for the humans. Well considering the damage that may occur to the physical health of the people I think we ought to allow them to retire early with extra bonuses. I think they'd like that. And I think if we go we have about 10 minutes look at less than 10 minutes left in this part of focus 580 Our guest is Cathy Olson She's chief scientist at NASA's. And your questions are welcome three three three. W I L L toll free 800. Two two two. W. Well you did mention just the most recent Mars mission and I know I'm sure that a lot of people at NASA's have their fingers crossed on this one because of a couple of about a year and a half ago a couple of failures that were obviously no one wishes for failure. They got a great deal of attention in the

media and I'm sure that it was. It was hard for folks and Nassa one of the the problems some people have pointed to is is the issue of money. That is when the I believe when that first mission was planned or maybe it was going back to the one that was successful everybody said we've discovered something here we've discovered that it's possible actually to do missions for less to accomplish what we want to do to have the research and development period be shorter too. To do these things without spending so much money. Then when the next two things came along and they weren't successful some people said See here's the problem. We didn't spend enough money is. It. And I suppose nobody ever thinks that their budget is adequate but is funding really a serious issue. Does Nassa have enough money to do the engineering to guarantee as much as possible that missions are going to be successful.

Basically one of the things I want to add is that everything that we do at NASA's very high risk everything that we do it's the first time that it's ever been done. And both of the specially the Mars planet Lander we really wanted to land at a spot on Mars that would benefit the science that wasn't really the safest spot. In terms of money we always you know we will do our research within the president's budget in terms of what they give us and we can work with that budget. And that's the budget that Congress and everyone believes that we can get our projects done. Can we use more money of course and we would spend it wisely. But we're not asking for more money. It's interesting too because people always dwell on the failures. And in that same time period we actually flown. And I don't have the data right in front of me I should actually memorize it

but you know more than 50 percent more missions than in the past 10 years. And I think we're a success for 80 percent of our missions. And so we had a major success rate and we believe that if you're 100 percent successful then you're really not Natha and going to that next frontier. And the other thing that's really hard is because it's new technology and it's never been done before. It's really hard to get a handle on the cost especially with software. The the demand for software and the use of our software now is so large and we just we were still trying to get sort of an understanding of it. And so we predict the best. But you know again it's interesting one of the previous directors when it was in the palm mission basically got the numbers and he says OK are you guys sure with these numbers. And they go yes this is the number we can do it. And then he doubled it and went to Congress and they still went over and

over the years here on the program from time to time we've talked with with various women about some of the challenges faced by women in science. I think that today we are doing better. There are more women who are getting advanced degrees in things like engineering and physics. Young girls little girls in school. We are at least we hope that we are encouraging them to study math and science and that they're getting the message that if you're a girl it's fine to want to be a scientist. No problem. You got your Ph.D. in one thousand seventy nine. When you were a girl. What sort of were you in when you were little girl were you interested in science where you saw that want to be a scientist. When did you start becoming interested in science. You know it's actually very interesting because I actually hated science in high school. And but I loved math. And so I was in salaried of math and I took calculus when I was in high school I looked at math as story problems and I just loved mysteries and story

problems. And it wasn't till I was in college that I had a teacher. And the teacher was outstanding. I will add this little thing my freshman year in college I was actually going to an economics major and I got chappy. And I'm not chubby now but I got chubby. And the reason is I had ice cream for breakfast lunch and dinner. And when I came home from college my mother basic my first year and this is the syndrome you know the first years and I'm a college. My mother came home and she said you exercise. And so my sophomore year in college I needed to take a course and the only thing that could fit in P.E. was badminton tennis was general biology. And again I hated science and high school and sort of like badminton tennis make my mother happy. General Biology something that I just read it was science. And I chose general biology so I could take my badminton tennis and make my mother happy. And I had a teacher that was incredible and I fell in love with biology and

it just shows the importance of education out there and how much sort of impact a teacher can have on someone's career. She was outstanding and got me interested. And after that interest psychology and biology and I just. I became Ph.D. and. And I love now all types of science. How do you think that we're doing as well as we should in encouraging girls and making sure that they have the opportunity to go on and study math and science if that's what they love. I don't think so and but I don't know I'm on a number of commissions you know looking at this what's interesting now is is girls in high school are taking these science courses and the math courses but they are majoring in college or they're going on they're taking it to get into college as a precursor and they're just not going on. And the question is why. And as you know the 21st century is going to be a technical logical

century. You're going to have to have a knowledge of science and technology really to be successful in all endeavors in life from radio to becoming a rocket scientist. And it just we don't really know why that. Women and minorities are not pursuing it. It's interesting in high school my math class. I mean there are only two women and now an Ellen Calver who is my lab partner in high school and that she's actually now the head of software for Intel which is interesting. But I really don't you know we're trying. We've got you know special programs special activities and but we're going to have to use the entire workforce and that's both males and females and so it's just really important that they continue. We'll have to leave it at that. I want to mention one more time. Our guest Dr. Kathy Olson chief scientist from Nassau. We'll talk about federal science policy a perspective from inside the beltway as part

of a year long series on the university's changing role sponsored in part by Center for a vast audience a lot of other folks on the campus as well. If you'd like to hear her talk and you're in and around Champaign-Urbana she'll be speaking at 4 o'clock this afternoon at the auditorium of the Beckman Institute. Anybody is welcome. Thanks very much.