874: Searching for Signs of Life on Mars and Beyond - Dr. Amy Williams

Introduction

0:00Hey everyone, this is Dr. Marie McNeely welcoming you to episode 874 of People Behind the Science. Today I am joined by our guest, Dr. Amy Williams. And listeners, I want to take a moment to thank you for joining us today and give a special shout out to everyone out there who has subscribed to our show and left a rating or review. Now we have a great episode for you today, so I hope you're to meet another one of our outstanding people behind the science. Every day discoveries are

0:31made that will change our understanding of the world around us. Dr. Marie McNeely is here to bring you the brilliant minds who are making these discoveries so they can share their incredible stories and take you on an amazing journey. Welcome to People Behind the Science.

Guest Introduction

0:52Hello, everyone, and welcome to People Behind the Science. Today I am thrilled to be speaking with our guest scientist, Dr. Amy Williams. So, Amy, welcome to our show today. How are you? Oh, doing amazing. And thank you so much for having me on. Well, thank you so much for joining us. And we're excited to learn more about you and your career path and all of the wonderful things that you've been doing in the lab. But first, let me take a moment to tell our listeners a little bit more about you and how you got to your current position.

1:22So, listeners, Amy is an associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and assistant director of the Astrea Space Institute at the University of Florida. She received her bachelor's degree in earth and environmental science from Furman University, her master's degree in earth and planetary sciences from the University of New Mexico, and her PhD in geology from the University of California, Davis. Afterwards, Amy accepted a position as a postdoctoral research associate at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She then served on the faculty at Towson University before joining the faculty there at the University of Florida

1:57in 2018. Now, Amy has received several NASA Group Achievement Awards for her work with the Curiosity Rover team. And she's also received the Provost Excellence Award for Assistant Professors from the University of Florida. She received the American Geophysical Union's Award for Advancing Inclusive Excellence in STEM with the Geospace Field Program. And she was also a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow and a Cialog Signatures of Life in the Universe Fellow. And today, Amy, we're excited to get to know you as a scientist, of course, but we'd also like to get to know you outside of science. So, can you tell

Hobbies and Interests

2:30us what do you like to do when you're not working? I love this question because it motivates me to remember that, yes, I do have a life outside of my science. It's really easy to fall into the work is the life and the life is the work. But I have a family. I have cats. I enjoy being a really, I would say, a bad birder. So, I like going out and listening for birds and using like the Merlin app to try to identify them. But I'm terrible at actually finding them with binoculars. So, what do I like to do? I like to be outside if birds are involved.

3:05Those are fun as well. But hiking, walking, gardening, a lot of outdoor activities are kind of where I find a place to rebalance myself. I love that. And you mentioned you have pets cats as well. Can you tell us a little bit about them? Oh, yes. We've got a brother-sister combo who are a little more senior now. And then I guess he's a full-grown adult cat that we call kitten because he was when we got him seven years ago. So, they are just as much a part of the family as any of the folks in the house. Oh, I love that. Amy, it sounds like you've got a wonderful range of

Career and Research

3:38things to keep you occupied when you're not doing your work. But I'd love to talk about your science next. I think you do some really cool research that it's easy to get people excited about. But how do you describe your work to people who are outside of science, maybe outside of geosciences and microbiology? So, I like to tell folks that I'm an astrobiologist. And this term, I think it gets people's attention, of course. Astro being out in the stars and biologists being biology. And folks then say, but what are you actually doing with that if we haven't found evidence for life beyond Earth yet?

4:10So, what I like to do with my science is try to build instruments and analyze data from other worlds to help us try to answer the question of whether there is life beyond Earth on other planetary worlds. I spend a lot of time thinking about Mars and whether there was life on Mars in the past. So, I get to spend my time working on the ground here on Earth, looking at what we call analog environments, places where some condition kind of mimics what you might see on Mars today or

4:40in the ancient past. And then I spend the other half of my time actually working with the NASA Mars Rovers Curiosity and Perseverance. And so, I get to marry sort of living on the ground but working in the stars. And I think it's a pretty cool job. I absolutely love that. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of public interest in space and Mars and this big question of whether there is or was life outside of Earth. So, I think it's easy to get motivated perhaps to go in and do the work that you're doing every day. But do you have a particular quote or a saying or a force that just

5:13keeps you going when times get tough? I actually do. I have had this up in my, well, I guess it was even before I had an office when I first started grad school. It is an Eleanor Roosevelt quote. She says, you gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do. I discovered it in a magazine of all places, getting ready to go to grad school and move across the country and really upend my life

5:44and change things for myself. And I tore that out of the magazine and it's literally in a frame in my office now because it's been something I kept having to turn back to and say, you can do this. You can overcome challenges. You're getting better every time you do it. So, just make yourself do it. I absolutely love that quote. And I love that you kept that little snippet from your pre-graduate school days from the magazine. And now, overcoming some of these challenges can be made easier if you have the right people in your life, whether it's role models or mentors or colleagues or peers or even

6:15your family to kind of bolster you and help you get through difficult times. So, when you look back over the course of your career, Amy, are there particular people who really helped you get to where you are today or who you've looked up to as role models? I think that there are both real people and actually fictional characters who I've used as a bit of a model. When it gets to like the fictional characters, I really enjoyed the movie Contact based on Carl Sagan's book and the concept of the astrophysicist, Ellie Arroway. She really was an astrobiologist

6:47searching for life beyond Earth. Her story, her struggles and her ultimate triumph, but it's also like her growing as a human. I've always found that to be motivational and sparked that interest in me of being a strong female scientist who helps support other female scientists, but we're really scientists of all walks of life. When it comes to things that you watch as a kid, that one really stuck with me. But then I will also say I've been really lucky to have awesome academic advisors. And so these are like research advisors, in my case, who have guided me kindly or if I really needed to shove,

7:23they can provide that as well. The one person I would call out is my undergraduate research advisor, Brandon Anderson at Furman University. I was not on the path that I am now, and he saw in me promise that I certainly did not see in myself. And without him, I would not be an astrobiologist studying Mars today. So you never know when these people will pop up in your lives. And I'm so thankful that Brandon came into my life at the time he did because it set me on my path.

Early Interest in Science

7:50So let's perhaps walk back to the beginning of that path, Amy. Do you remember when you first started getting interested about science and space and just these general questions about life? I was raised in a household where we were talking science and engineering and technology. I had a really supportive family that encouraged me to pursue science and to just ask those interesting questions. I know that one of the things that's really stuck with me is I call it back is not necessarily the moment I knew that I wanted to study astrobiology, but it's been sort of a guiding

8:25memory of mine as we went out to watch a meteor shower and we're laying in the back of the pickup truck bed watching the meteor shower. And I remember looking up and thinking, what if out there one of those stars has a planet and that planet has life and there's another little girl, whatever that version is, looking out from her planet thinking, I wonder if anyone's looking back. And that sort of mirror of myself looking into space, hoping someone is looking back and just as inquisitive and kind as I was

8:57approaching that interaction. I see that as the big thing as a kid that I was like, I really want to know the answer to that question. Oh, that's so cool. So did you know that science was sort of a career option that you could pursue? Or how did you make that discovery? I knew science was an option, but I actually did not know that geosciences were a field. I think that a lot of programs don't have any exposure to geosciences and maybe just a little bit to environmental science. So when I started as an undergraduate at Furman, I was a biology major because I took AP Bio and I knew

9:30that I liked that. So I figured I would always be a scientist, but in the beginning didn't have any dreams of doing anything cutting edge, certainly not of earning a PhD. I've been lucky, but I've also worked hard to get to the point where I have these opportunities to do this kind of work. So it was a really big moment for me to realize that geosciences were a field I could study. And like my first geology course, I was like, oh, I was hooked. I did not know that this was an option for me to pursue and I absolutely loved it. And so I still feel that when I get to teach introductory courses at the University of Florida and I

10:06taught them at Towson University, my previous institution, I still have that passion and that love for it, showing other people. This is such an awesome field of study. So that's how I went from, I don't know what I want to be, to getting to show others this really awesome field of geoscience.

Career Experiences

10:22Cool. And I'd love to dive into some of your career experiences. You've had a really cool career path and had some great opportunities along the way. So can you share with us, did you have an opportunity to get involved in research as an undergrad or when did your research experience begin? It did start as an undergraduate. And this ties back to thanking my undergrad research advisor for giving me the push that I needed to get into it. He recognized that I had some potential to do research and helped me design a project. I should say he had a very heavy hand in that as well he

10:53should have, as well as many undergraduate research advisors do, helping me to actually work on a project related to water quality and water chemistry. It was a simple experimental design. We went and collected water samples from regions sort of in the upstate of South Carolina and ended up turning it into my very first authored paper as an undergraduate student. So that was a really big deal at the time for me, of course, to have that experience. I feel like the landscape has changed now, whereas my advisor

11:24recognized that this person could benefit from a research project and might actually be good at this. I feel like many students already kind of know that they should be looking into research experiences. And I think the advice I would have is try different labs and maybe be open to trying something that you wouldn't necessarily have as your first choice for a research project. Just like I was surprised that geosciences were a field that I loved and wanted to pursue. Your listeners may find that there's a path out there they didn't even know was an option that's actually where their passion lies.

11:55Well, I love that advice, Amy. It sounds like you were pretty certain that you wanted to go on this path when you were leaving your undergraduate education. Can you talk about the decisions that went into where you got your master's degree? I applied to a lot of grad schools. At the time, I was doing that water quality and water chemistry research, so environmental science. And my advisor suggested, don't just go to any program that is a safe bet. He was saying, go for something that might be able to exact change, make a difference and, you know, help people. And that stuck with me. And the last place I got

12:30into grad school was the University of New Mexico. And so every program I got into, I was like, oh, yeah, I can't wait to go there. And every new program I got into, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I want to go there instead. And potentially part of it was the last place to reach out was the one that was freshest on my mind. But I also had the opportunity to look at the water quality in a really water restricted region in the Rio Grande Valley. And I had this opportunity to move to New Mexico from South Carolina. I was very much an East Coast person. And that was a really foundational,

13:02fundamental change for me that helped me grow not just as a scientist, but as a person. That's really cool. And then you went to California for your PhD. Can you talk about that transition and how it went for you? As I was doing this water quality work, I was working in these remote springs in the Rio Grande Rift. And each one had a very different chemistry and a specialized geologic setting. And I started to think about how the water and the geology and probably the microbial communities like bacteria that lived in the water, how those varied between those unique systems. And I was

13:38thinking, gosh, if only there was a field that married all of these together, and there of course is, and it's called geobiology. So I wanted to get more into that interaction between the geology and the chemistry and the biology. And that actually led me into the realm of exploring not just geobiology, but astrobiology, applying those techniques and approaches to the search for life off Earth. And I had this incredible opportunity at the University of California, Davis to join my

14:09research advisor, who was working on the not yet launched Mars Curiosity rover mission. So I was able to join that mission as a graduate student before we ever launched to Mars. And I'm still working on that mission today. So I feel as though I've basically grown up on that mission. And I imagine I have a relationship to it similar to like, it's almost like a family member to me. It's like, yeah, I've got my kids and my cats and my Mars rovers.

14:37I think that's amazing. And I think this opportunity to get involved with NASA is really, really cool. So what was it like for you when you started to work with NASA? Thinking back to this dream that you had as a child. I remember having conversations with my dad over the phone as I was trying to basically ramp up to doing PhD level research at UC Davis. And I remember telling him, this is going to be the hardest thing I've tried to make myself do to this point, but the payoff will be worth it if I can rise

15:07to the challenge. And it of course was challenging. PhDs always are. And I learned so very much by taking that path that I knew from the start was going to be harder. But I remember we were going through the badging process. You could go to the jet propulsion lab. The first three months, basically, of the last several Mars missions, you live on Mars time because it's a more efficient way to operate the vehicle. So getting ready to go live on Mars time, you have a NASA badge. And the whole time you're like, they're going to figure out that I'm a fraud or something. I don't belong here.

15:40So that was also my introduction to imposter syndrome, which I think many of us struggle with. But certainly I was able to have those moments of clarity of, all right, Amy, you are accomplishing the things that you always wanted to do. Count those wins because they will bolster you through the harder times. Absolutely. I could not agree with that more. And as you were approaching the end of your PhD, what was going through your mind in terms of thinking about the next steps in terms of postdoctoral positions, faculty positions, etc? So as I was doing all this NASA research,

16:15I did not think that I could do that cutting edge, what we call R1 or research one level work that you see at major research institutions in the U.S. and around the world. So I focused on becoming a really good instructor. I knew I wanted to be a university professor. I attended workshops and classes and short courses on pedagogy, how to be a good instructor. And I was focusing on all of that when I had this incredible opportunity to join NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as a postdoc,

16:51still working on the Curiosity rover, but changing the instrument that I was working with. So I pivoted to a really like research heavy postdoctoral position for a year with Goddard and working with that instrument, which actually is able to detect organic carbon on Mars, has been sort of the foundation for much of my professional career as a professor. So I tried to prepare myself to be a strong instructor and teacher and at the same time had this remarkable opportunity to do research with NASA at NASA in the capacity of working with this instrument called

17:26SAM on Curiosity. Wonderful. And we'll definitely get back to these organic compounds on Mars, but I would like to talk a little bit about that transition to a faculty position as you were finishing this research intensive postdoc and you started looking for faculty positions. How did that search go for you? I keep going back to this, but I think there's so much that is both luck or serendipity, as well as being prepared for the opportunity so that you are the right choice for it. So I worked incredibly hard to demonstrate that I was a good instructor and also had the research chops to carry forward a research

18:01program. And I had the opportunity, I actually got the offer, I think, within the first three months of being at NASA as a postdoc to join Towson University as a faculty member with their program. And so I will always be indebted to them for that opportunity to be a good teacher, to focus on my undergraduate research program and to work with the incredible students and faculty and staff that are at Towson University. That's awesome. And then what ultimately brought you to the University of Florida? I know you said you weren't necessarily looking for this big kind of research university.

18:35I ended up going to the University of Florida because it was part of, I would say, the community we call a two-body problem. I like to call it a dual career opportunity. My husband and I were searching for faculty positions together and we tried to make it work in Maryland, which is where Towson University is. And in the end, it wasn't panning out. And I know that there are many people out there who have a shared experience with this. So my husband actually got the offer from the University of Florida. And as is common in academia, if you have a trailing spouse, you're trying to have

19:09hired as well. You say, oh, my partner is looking for an academic position as well. So they were able to hire me on as a assistant professor, just as I was at Towson, but now at a research one institution. So this was a major shift for me in my job description and the expectations for me to sort of be successful in this role. So I think this ties back to my Eleanor Roosevelt quote, you must do the thing you think you cannot do. I did not think that I could carry the weight of

19:40a research program at this level, supporting graduate students and hopefully trying to influence the national dialogue on science and exploration and Mars research. And man, I feel so fortunate that this has panned out so far for me. So it was a big shift and took a little time to get my feet under me. But I'm actually having a fabulous time with this, I would say new role, but I've been doing this longer now than I was in my teaching position at this point. So I enjoy all the aspects of being a

20:10professor, of teaching, of doing research, of service to my community and my department, my university. And it's a thing I thought I couldn't do, but man, I threw myself into it and so far it's working out. Well, Amy, we appreciate you sharing your career path and talking about some of these key decision points along the way. And as you mentioned, you are doing some really exciting

Research on Mars

20:30research right now. So I'd love to dig into some of the details of a project that you're working on at the moment. So is there one in particular, perhaps, that you are the most excited about that you want to share? There's certainly one that has come out recently that I just can't stop talking about. So I'm going to make your audience think about organic carbon for just a few minutes. And we're going to not carry with us any preconceived notions about chemistry and how we felt about it as a class in high school or college. Let's step all the way back and say that organic carbon is just carbon

21:02bound to other carbons. And sometimes there's hydrogens in there, too. Awesome. Every living thing that we're aware of is made of organic carbon, but it's not only made by life. Organic carbon molecules can be made abiotically or without life present. Picture like a deep sea hydrothermal vent or actually even an interstellar space. Organic molecules can form on meteorites. What I'm interested in is, one, looking for organic carbon because it is so important to life as we

21:33know it, looking for that organic matter on Mars, and then trying to learn a little bit of detail about the character of that organic matter. Could you tell if you detect it if it's made by life or if it was made on meteorites or if it's made by geology? So relatively recently, I published a paper that tells us about detecting organic carbon on Mars, which I'll say we have done previously with this instrument on this mission. So it's not like the first time we're seeing this. But we did do a first

22:03of its kind experiment to learn more about the character of that organic matter. I don't want to disappoint folks. We don't think that the organic matter we detected was made by life. It's actually relatively simple material. And so it can be hard to actually assign an origin to it, whether it's geology, meteorites, or biology. But the different little molecules that we saw with the experiment, they're actually pretty consistent with what you would see on a meteorite. So that has led us to

22:33the interpretation, at least some of this is probably from meteorites that fell to Mars billions of years ago. And that organic matter was preserved in the rocks over all of that time. So it's exciting to have a new experiment run on Mars to give us more insight into something that's so important for life as we know it. Even if we aren't able to say anything about whether biology had a role in making that organic matter, I think that we're taking so many more steps toward eventually being able to

23:03answer that question about whether there was ever life on Mars by carefully building up a story of where the components needed for life even present on Mars in the past. Well, I think this is such a cool project. And one thing that really stuck out to me when you were kind of describing this is this idea of carefully building the story and just the way that you describe things. I think it's so important, particularly perhaps for people in your field, but also in science in general, to sort of manage the expectations of the people that you're talking to and make sure that you're not sensationalizing things or giving people the wrong idea. So how do you

23:37balance this? I'm probably like the most pessimistic astrobiologist. I don't know. I mean, I approach it as I think that discovering definitive evidence for life beyond Earth is such a profound discovery, such an important discovery that will be paradigm shifting for humanity. I think it's incredibly important to make sure that we as scientists are confident in that interpretation so that people know how to move forward with their understanding, right?

24:07I know that we've had some discoveries that sometimes are sensationalized. Sometimes they're just, we have a little more promise that maybe we found something like a potential biosignature on Mars, something that would require additional evidence for us to feel confident in making that assessment. And so I just think it's part of our duty as scientists, as, I don't know, good citizens to make sure that we are accurately reporting our data, but also communicating why it's exciting, even if it's not the big headline that folks are kind of waiting for. It's still important work

24:41that builds up the story so we can feel confident one day if we are able to say that we found life beyond Earth. Definitely. And were you disappointed perhaps when the data came through and it looked like it's likely not of biological origin? I actually was not. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And I honestly thought to myself it would be such a more difficult uphill climb to substantiate such an extraordinary claim. So having something that the character was very similar to what you see on meteorites was

25:13actually maybe a little bit of a relief that I didn't have to be the point person for such an extraordinary potential discovery. And I still think, of course, that the work that we published on that science is foundational, very important for understanding not just Mars, but what early Earth was like as well. So I try not to approach it with the idea of, oh, I want the answer to be this or that. I try to approach it as what are the data telling me and what is the most parsimonious interpretation of those data?

25:44Definitely. And I think any new discovery is exciting, whether it was something that you were expecting or that the public was hoping for, or if it's just new information that you find out about something. But I know not every day in science is about new discoveries. There's a lot of work. There's a lot of struggle, toil and failure along the way. And I think it's so important to share those stories as well, because the public doesn't often get to hear them. So Amy, can you tell us about a time that you struggled with something or perhaps you had a major failure in

Overcoming Challenges

26:10your career? And if you have, can you tell us how you got through that difficult time? You're absolutely right. We all suffer failures all the time. And it is the greatest teacher, unfortunately, and it really stinks when it's happening as well. Sure. There's always something that's just not quite right. Something goes funky. And especially when you're working with a vehicle that's operating on another planet, you can't send the technicians up to fix it when something goes wrong. We have to troubleshoot on the ground and hope that we can find a redundancy or a workaround to still accomplish the work that we're doing. So a smaller version, I guess,

26:46of the failure and workaround is right before we were going to do the experiment that I was just talking about, the detection of that organic carbon on Mars with a first of its kind experiment, one of the channels that we use to process the molecules to basically separate them out and say, this one is this molecule and that one's that molecule. One of those channels actually got clogged right before we were going to do the experiment. And so much of our preparatory work was done

27:16in preparation for using that particular channel. So then we had to pivot within a couple of days, say, okay, we're going to go to this other channel we've never used before and get it commissioned and get it ready so that we can do this. So certainly it was a failure in that the original plan wasn't going to work. It was obviously a success in that we still got very compelling, brand new, first of its kind data from basically a quick pivot that we were able to accomplish. And so much of the credit,

27:46of course, it goes to the scientists and engineers, both at NASA Goddard and at the Jet Propulsion Lab, the folks who work on SAM and Curiosity who were able to pivot in almost real time to turning an almost failure into a great success. I think that's amazing. And I think these pivots in science are absolutely critical. You have to be adaptable because especially if you're doing anything outside of a laboratory setting, nature doesn't often go your way. Nope. Absolutely. And even in the lab, I'll tell you, I tell my grad students, we have a specific instrument we use in our lab and I tell them, maybe don't use this instrument in your careers because

28:20it just likes to need a lot of maintenance. But I think that this is a shared concern amongst many of my scientific colleagues. We always have one instrument or technique or approach that it just drives you crazy, but that's the way to get the data. And so we're going to make it work. Absolutely. And it sounds like the team was pivotal for helping you get through this challenge and this almost failure, as you called it. Were there other things that really helped you in that moment where you were panicking because this channel was clogged? Oh, we have folks who have worked on spaceflight instruments using this type of technique on other

28:56missions. We have a whole team of folks, not just in the U.S., but in France as well, who built these instruments, who have basically dedicated their lives to understanding their nuances. I guess I never thought this might fail until later on when I looked back and said, oh, gosh, we really, we really barely got by here because I knew we had a team that was basically the best positioned in the whole world to make this work. And so I would say that it was really relying on the expertise of folks

29:28who've been doing this for decades that made a lot of the difference and at least made me comfortable with our new path forward that ended up giving us fabulous results. I think that's wonderful. And it sounds like this was a tremendous success story. And I think it's so important to celebrate these wins in science because there's so much work and failure and struggle that goes into them. And oftentimes they're years in the making. So do you have another success story that you would like to share with us or perhaps go into more detail on one of the ones we've touched on? Well, I think that this paper in particular is like my biggest success story right now.

30:01I actually, when I said I went to NASA Goddard to join that SAM instrument team as a postdoctoral researcher, it was to work on this experiment. And so that was in 2014. And this paper was published in 2026. And we worked on optimizing the experiment. And I went through two different institutional changes during that time. And we ran the experiment in 2020. So we were in the pandemic when that occurred. And we were able to get the data, process the data, do all of the benchtop experiments that we needed

30:32to do to ensure the robustness of our interpretations and then get this paper published. So right now, my big one that I'm writing on is this thing I started 12 years ago. It's finally published. But there's all these other great successes. I just had a student successfully defend his master's and he's staying on for a PhD. You have students who overcome daily little challenges in the lab, in the field. And so getting to participate with them, basically, they're learning how to process

31:04and navigate failure as well. And so being witness to that and hopefully being a support system for those students, that's something that I take very seriously, even in the moment when you're stressing about how am I going to get this to work when there is a failure, we don't understand why the data are looking the way that they are. These are all the things that I think my field, my role as a professor, as a researcher, we're able to kind of help guide students. Maybe they'll be able to overcome these things and actually guide their own students one day. And so it's just kind of passing the torch

31:35forward really of how you deal with failure and how you celebrate your wins to keep yourself moving forward. I think that's wonderful. And Amy, it sounds like you've had some great successes, both in the research and the mentorship realms. And you mentioned, of course, 12 years in the making. How do you even celebrate a success of that magnitude? My dear friend, who actually he did a postdoc researching role in my lab, came back from France and brought me a nice bottle of wine. And so I had my bottle of wine and celebrated with a small

32:06gathering of friends and just took a moment to recognize that this is finally published. And then, gosh, then you realize, all right, I've got these other papers on the burner that I got to move forward. So it's always moving forward. You know, the celebrations bolster you up and you use that to ride the wave of the next paper, the next grant or, you know, whatever the challenge is and whatever the exciting motivational thing is of the day or the week. I love that. And you mentioned earlier that you've been part of this Curiosity rover team since even

32:38before it launched. So what was that like for you being part of even that big success of actually successfully launching this rover? It was a really exciting time, of course, launching and landing Curiosity. It was a novel entry, descent and landing system that we were going to use to land such a large vehicle. And it could not be tested from start to finish on Earth because the way that you land something on Earth is different from on Mars. The atmospheric density is different. So there's always the concern that it's not going to successfully land. And I was thinking

33:12like, gosh, what am I going to do my PhD on? This thing just makes a crater. Yes. So we had this big watch party. And of course, everyone celebrates when you get the data back that you successfully landed. But I guess it's actually a good metaphor for sending your students out into the world to hopefully become their own independent scientists, because it was out of our hands having this rover land, right? It's all autonomous. You can't even send data back and forth in the time that that vehicle was

33:42kind of going through the Martian atmosphere and landing. And so, you know, you did everything you could before you sent it on its way, and then you just got to let it do its job. And it did. So it was certainly really exciting to be there from the beginning with Curiosity. And I had then the opportunity to join the Perseverance rover mission actually after we launched, but before we landed. And so it was probably comparable to when you have one kid and then you have another kid. And all right, I know this routine now. It's challenging, but you kind of know what to expect a bit more.

34:17So getting to kind of see at least this part of a life cycle of a planetary mission, a flagship mission of this scale. I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have this firsthand experience. And I also consider it a little bit of my responsibility to share that excitement with anyone who's willing to listen to me tell you about Mars rovers, because it's incredible. The scientists and engineers who designed, built, launched, landed, and now still operate these extraordinary missions. Well, I think this is phenomenal. And I appreciate you sharing some of these exciting successes. And I think

34:51these success moments can really bolster you and motivate you to get into the lab and to do even more work. But we try to encourage our listeners to take a moment for themselves and to try to read, to broaden their horizons. So do you have a recommendation that you can share with us for a book that you've really enjoyed? Oh, yes. This is going to seem very on theme, but it is genuinely one that I really enjoyed. And it's actually a friend of mine who wrote this book. Her book is called The Sirens of Mars. Her name is Sarah Stewart Johnson. She's an incredible person

35:25and mom and scientist and professor. And I just don't know how we have similar-ish jobs. I don't know how someone has time to write a book in addition to everything that we are all doing all the time. So The Sirens of Mars is this really beautiful weaving together of Sarah's experience as a student and then as a professor working on different Mars missions. And it leaves together sort of her personal story and like some of her journal writing with what's actually happening

35:57during Mars exploration, launching of different Mars missions. And it's beautifully written. She is just an extraordinary writer. So if you want to talk about role models, there's another one. I would love to get to that level where I can write something as compelling as Sarah's book. Well, excellent recommendation, Amy. Listeners, we will put The Sirens of Mars on our website for you to find later. And one of the things that we haven't really touched on directly are some of the opportunities that you've had for travel. We mentioned that your academic training took you to

36:29different parts of the country, but do you have a favorite place that you've gone to for science, whether it was for training or conferences or other purposes? I've had so many extraordinary opportunities to travel since becoming a scientist, not just within the U.S., but globally. And I am so excited every time I get to go to a new country or somewhere where I've visited previously, because I think just getting that fresh breath of culture, environment, climate, landscape is so refreshing. So the past couple of years, I've had the opportunity to do

37:02fieldwork in Iceland. That is an incredible place. And the research is like diving into these hydrothermally influenced lakes and collecting samples that are analogs to what maybe very early Martian lakes might have been like. So Iceland almost feels like a home away from home now when I go back. It's been a really great place to visit. I was just thinking it wasn't fieldwork, but I had this awesome opportunity to actually go to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and visit the New York

37:34University in Abu Dhabi. And they had this symposium. We were able to collaborate with some of the researchers there. And I'd never been out to the Middle East. So it was incredible in so many ways to make connections with folks that otherwise I just would never have really had the opportunity to sit in the same room together. So it's both doing conference work, giving talks, making connections and networking, as well as getting out into nature. It's very settling for me, kind of getting my feet on the ground. It sounds like you've had some phenomenal opportunities to travel and see these different

38:08parts of the world that you're absolutely right you may not otherwise have gone to. So can you share with us if our listeners are perhaps planning their upcoming travel, if someone's going to Iceland, what are some of the sites that they absolutely must see or perhaps the same in Abu Dhabi? I would know Iceland quite a bit better. Abu Dhabi was an incredible city. I just got to see so very little of it because I was being a good scientist and I was in my conference. I loved Abu Dhabi and I love the city. And so that's unfortunately as far as I can recommend, but it was a great time. For Iceland, if you want like a short trip going out, you fly into Reykjavik and you're able to kind

38:44of explore areas where the mid-ocean rift is splitting Iceland apart. They have these incredible waterfalls. You can go up and see the volcanoes. The weather changes every five minutes. So it's going to rain and then be sunny and then be foggy and then rain and it's going to go back around again for you. But in the summer, you're so far north, the sun doesn't set. You go in the middle of summer and so the last few years that I've been able to go, I've had that experience. And it is so easy, too easy to just stay up and, you know, you keep working or your dinner lasts for several hours

39:17because the sun's not setting and you're not getting those cues to wrap it up. It's an incredible place, an incredible experience. You can easily rent a car and drive around the western side of the island. You can get into rougher, like just the landscape territory moving towards the east. It's a wild place and absolutely incredible. And the people are gracious and wonderful there. Well, this sounds amazing, Amy. Thank you so much for painting a beautiful picture for us. And I think in science, there are so many wonderful aspects of the career, whether it's travel and also

39:49just some of the teams and the people that you get to work with. But I think there are still, unfortunately, stereotypes out there about what scientists are like and what life as a scientist is like. And I think it's important for us to continue chipping away and trying to break those stereotypes because I think there are so many funny, amazing, creative people in science who don't fit them. And I know every lab has its quirks and traditions and you just do some really cool stuff with your colleagues over the years. So do you have a funny memory or a quirky tradition or something like that that shows this human side of science that people may not often get to see?

40:21I love this. Yeah. I had mentioned that my husband is also a faculty member at the university here. He's actually in the geology department and in fact is on the same floor as me. So we always joke that I see you at home and then I'll see you at work. And so with all of this in mind, he does a very different kind of geology from what I do, even though he's also a planetary scientist. And one of the things that he has in his lab, they have these big basically presses that can take geologic material

40:51and crunch it down to very high pressures. And you can study what happens inside of planets, Earth, Mars, whatever, based on the results from those kinds of experiments. And so on those presses, they have these little figurines that are meant to like appease the presses, make sure that they behave and function properly. They're kind of like totems. Little offerings. Yes. Yes. And I've seen that in so many other labs. A student brought one of these into our lab and it

41:24remains sort of as an overseer of the lab facility. It's a little plastic dinosaur that's been hot glued to a rock and then spray painted. It was gold, silver and bronze for first, second and third place in our annual trivia night. So there's these things that add very much a human component to the day to day. Turn on the instrument, bake it out, run some blanks. But maybe your second place spray painted dinosaur is watching over you, hoping you have a good day with the instruments.

41:57Oh, that is absolutely amazing. I love these little quirky traditions. And you're absolutely right. This sort of character just permeates all of the different labs that I've been in. In your lab now, do you have any particular traditions or things that the group does together? One of the things that I've been doing since I started taking on grad students is when they defend their master's or their PhD. We always have the signs up in our building advertising their defense and their title and when and where and all of that. And once their defense is done, I take one

42:28of those off of the wall and I have the students sign it. And then it goes up on the back of my office door so that I can see them. And I figure if I get to the point that I filled up the door, that's probably a good career's worth of work. And maybe that's my metric for when it'll be time to retire. If I fill up that door, I'll know I've done my part. I like to think this is something shared across generations of my students. This finally got on the back of Amy's door. Well, I think that is a beautiful tradition and a wonderful tribute to all of your former students.

43:00And we've talked about some of the wonderful questions that you're answering and some of these very big picture questions that you're thinking about every day. And I think oftentimes there are barriers, unfortunately, Amy, that I'm sure you're well aware of this idea of funding, staff, technology, feasibility, all of these things that keep you from being able to answer these big questions that you'd like to answer. But if we took those barriers away, what is the one question that you would want to answer most?

Biggest Question in Science

43:24I think the question I'm trying to answer now is the question that I'd still like to address with unlimited resources. Are we alone in the universe? And one of the things that has stood out to me is as we continue to get samples back from planetary bodies. So most recently, though, OSIRIS-REx mission that brought back asteroid samples from Bennu, you learn so much by having these samples in-house, basically, on Earth. You learn a ton, of course, by sending missions and instruments to other planetary bodies. That's how you figure out what samples you want. So if we could

44:00find a way to bring samples back to Earth from Mars, I think that would be simply revolutionary for science in general, not just planetary, not just geoscience, but science at large. So pulling away the technological and funding barriers to that would be the big thing that I'd like to see done, because I think that can help us address my big question of whether we're alone in the universe, but also so many other big questions about how planets form and evolve, what Earth was like in its infancy. There's so much that we can address by having just a couple of grams of sample in our labs at

44:35home. Definitely. I think this is an interesting idea and I think overcomes some of the barriers that we talked about earlier with this idea of trying to manage experiments and analysis remotely when something breaks. You can't just walk down the hall and get a new instrument, right? Yep. Well, thank you for dreaming big with us on the show today. It's been wonderful to chat with you about you and your work. And I'd love to wrap up our conversation, Amy, by talking about advice. So when you look back on your career path in your life, is there one piece of advice that somebody gave you that really helped you get to where you are today?

45:06So many things pop up in my brain. I think the one that has stuck with me for better or worse is actually something that my mom has always said, which is that this too shall pass. It's a good reminder that the hard stuff will pass and you'll have brighter days. It's also a good reminder to not rest upon your laurels. Exciting that this paper came out recently and that we have these great discoveries from Mars, but it's not something to stop at. And highlighting this work, this too will also pass. And so it's a good reminder to keep your chin up and keep moving forward.

45:40I see it as a way to just keep contributing positively to my community. And that's my family, my students, my work colleagues, and my community at large, locally, regionally, and globally. So this too shall pass. Make sure you're making a positive difference in the world. Well, that is a wonderful message, Amy. I appreciate you sharing it with all of us today. Is there any other last piece of advice or a last note of inspiration that you would like to leave our listeners with today? The thing that I often close out my public talks with is a quote that I hang on to both as an

46:13astrobiologist and I think just as a positive human. And it is a quote from Carl Sagan in his book contact. And it says, the universe is a pretty big place. And if it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space. I love that.

46:30Well, Amy, wonderful note to close our conversation on. If our listeners want to learn more about you and the exciting things that you're doing, what is the best way for them to get more information? I have a website up with the University of Florida. If you search for UF or University of Florida and my name, Amy Williams, that'll lead you to our websites where you can find resources on if you want to contact me, if you want to learn more about the research and the science that I and my lab group are pursuing. Those are the best ways to kind of track down who I am, where I am and what I'm doing.

47:01Fantastic. Well, listeners, definitely take some time to check out that website, learn more about the wonderful work that Amy is doing. And Amy, it's been such a pleasure to chat with you on the show today. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for this opportunity. It's been great to learn more. And listeners, I'd like to take a moment to thank you as well for joining us today. And we hope we'll see you again next time on another episode of People Behind the Science.