HI All…this is my first blog and I’m a bit out-of-synch in terms of what to write about. I thought that for starters I would write about the work going on in my lab and also about what my goals for the audio recordings that I did for the “Pulse of the Planet” program were. So, for starters, my own background is in physics, computer science, and biophysics. After getting my Ph.D. I decided that I liked being out on the water better than I liked being in a dark room looking through an electron microscope and had the opportunity to switch into oceanography. That was more than 20 years ago and I’ve never regretted that decision. I don’t know about “you” but for me, I get tired of sitting in front of this screen and need something to tie me into the physical, non electronic world, to anchor my science. That being said, my research program is geared toward inventing new instruments in order to learn things about the ocean. In most areas of science, the fundamental limit on progress is the acquisition of information, not the interpretation of it. There are relatively few instances where we had lots of data and just needed to interpret it. The oceans pose a huge (and sometimes frustrating) challenge in this regard. Hence my work. Of course, what is especially true now is that we are taking a serious look at what is happening to the planet and examining the role of humans in altering our environment. It strikes me as being very sad and somewhat ironic that, just as we are developing new tools for ocean sensing, that our instruments are giving us lots of bad news. Among these are the loss of habitat, the extinction of species, the alteration of the ocean’s ph, and the global changes in climate that seem to be driven, to a large extent, by increased carbon emissions. Nevertheless, science and logic are what is needed to get us out of this mess (if possible!) and my own program is meant, in some small but measurable way, to develop new tools to sense the environment. On the up side of this, I consider myself fortunate to have the opportunity to pursue these areas and I am grateful to this society that supports these efforts.
So, what have I tried to portray in this series on audio diaries? First of all, we have a pressing need to recruit our youth into scientific careers. As the father of a bright son, I was amazed at how easily he was turned off by the curriculum at the local school. This, in spite of his wonderful and incredibly dedicated teachers. Why should a ninth grader by forced to learn the details of glycolysis? Sure, it’s important and one of the landmarks of 20th century biology/biochemistry, however, can’t the educators see that we are just “turning off” these kids? In my series, I have tried to portray the process of doing science as related to problem solving. This requires creative thinking, testing of ideas, and the interactive development and improvement of initial efforts. To me this is great fun, miles away from memorizing mechanistic biochemistry, and much closer to what we really do, not only in science, but in life.