Waching daily Aug 29 2017

[music]

Monifa Vaughn-Cooke and Alberto Bolatto

have really cool jobs —

Monifa uses virtual reality to train people doing work

that involves life-or-death decisions,

and Alberto is studying how galaxies are born.

You know, no big deal.

I talked to them about their research

and the importance of diversity in science.

So VR is by most people known primarily

in the gaming space.

But what a lot of people don't know is that it's used

a lot now in research. It's being used now for training.

We use virtual reality in situations

where it might not be feasible or it might not be advisable.

to go into the actual scenario and interact with individuals

Think about a pilot interacting with a cockpit interface.

You don't really want to go in there and run a study

to assess their performance while they're trying to operate a plane.

Planes are just one of the high-stress settings that Monifa simulates in VR.

She's also created simulations for nuclear control rooms,

intense group therapy sessions and even hospitals.

What they have in some of these larger hospitals

is something called a telemetry room.

Which is basically a control room where you have a bunch of operators,

called telemetry operators, who monitor several patients.

For example, you can have up to 64 patients

in some of these larger telemetry bed hospitals

monitored by just one operator.

And in the case of a patient who's maybe being monitored

in a post-operative setting, seconds matter.

Instead of going into the actual environment,

we can simulate the distractions, the alarm timing,

the auditory and visual signals, in a repeatable,

controlled laboratory simulation

and then we can look at how an operator

might respond to those:

timing, accuracy and their workload.

Alberto uses really big radio telescopes

to answer some really big questions.

What I try to do is I try to understand how the universe

came to look as it does today.

So my personal interest

is in understanding how galaxies evolved through time.

You know galaxies are some of the coolest objects that I can look at.

Like all kids interested in astronomy,

I was interesting the in the majesty of the universe.

And you know, all those wonderful pictures of galaxies

taken with large telescopes.

Alberto's first experience using one of these telescopes was... unique.

After he left his native Uruguay to come to the United States

to pursue his Ph.D, he got an opportunity

to work on a telescope in a really far-flung place.

You had the chance to actually go to Antarctica.

The telescope was going to be there at the South Pole.

What could be more exciting than getting into a Hercules C-130

and flying to McMurdo [Station] on the coast

and then taking another one to fly to the center of the continent

and spending weeks at a time

working in, you know, the center of Antarctica.

It was a wonderful hook into becoming

more of an expert on galaxies

and the interstellar medium and how stars form

and what is the chemistry, in you know,

clouds in between the stars.

I also spoke with Dr. Shirley Malcom —

a longtime advocate for diversity in science —

about the importance of making science open to everybody.

We have a lot of big challenges.

We're looking at climate change.

We're looking at feeding an ever-growing population.

Food security.

We are never really going to be able to

address those goals without diverse populations

really putting their minds to this.

We need different perspectives.

We need different experiences.

We need different points of view, different lenses,

all coming to bear on these really, really serious,

big challenges.

The more perspectives that you have,

the more diverse perspectives you have,

the more innovative solutions you can come up with.

And those different viewpoints come from the fact that

they have different technical backgrounds,

you know, they come from different cultures,

and they see the problems in different ways.

So I think that, that is the value of diversity in these contexts.

I have said on many occasions

that there's talent going to waste.

And that we need that talent.

We need to bring that talent into science,

engineering and mathematics.

Into invention and innovation.

Well, I think one of the hurdles

facing people of color in STEM fields is visibility.

So if you don't see anyone that looks like you

pursuing something,

it's not seen as...

it's not seen as a field that might be attainable.

It's very difficult to become something you've never seen.

Um...

I had to become something I'd never seen,

and it makes it real hard if you know

that you are plowing new ground.

With more individuals now going into STEM

who are of color, I think that's helping visibility a bit.

That's also helping some of the younger children to see

that, that this might be a pathway

that is feasible for them to pursue.

I could argue that we need to be able to have more

women or minorities or persons with disabilities

or low income or other people

being able to enter the sciences and engineering

because its the right thing to do.

It is the right thing to do.

The circumstances that that have held people back

from being able to go into these fields need to be removed.

The barriers need to be removed.

But it isn't just the right thing to do.

It's the smart thing to do.

And smart in the sense of having that talent available

to you to address the big issues.

Health. Food. Energy. Climate.

Those things are going to be with us for a while,

and we're going to have to deal with them.