Dr. Anjali Tripathi, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA

"Once upon a time - The story of an astrophysicist communicating science"

Food: Pizza will be served!

Abstract: Once upon a time, there was a graduate student. Every day, she worried that her research wasn’t making a difference, and she wondered what to do with her life. One day, a mentor encouraged her to apply for a job in public service. Because of that, she landed in the White House serving two Presidents on everything from climate and ebola to protecting the Apollo lunar landing sites and opening a new neutrino facility. Because of the door this opened, her experience in policy and science communication grew, until finally she embraced being a seemingly atypical astronomer. Ever since that day, she has created roles that fulfill her sense of impact, from managing COVID data for Los Angeles County to doing climate adaptation research at JPL, and that continue what she enjoys about astrophysics, in the form of new mission design and outreach.

Join us for a candid conversation about non-traditional paths outside of academia, with a focus on science policy and communication. Along the way, we’ll touch on improving communication skills and how to tell your own story, as in the exercise that all NASA JPL mission proposal teams must do - of using the (oft-attributed-to-Pixar) storytelling exercise of 6 sentences starting with Once upon a time…

Bio: Dr. Anjali Tripathi is an astrophysicist at the intersection of science and policy at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She serves as NASA's inaugural Exoplanet Science Ambassador, and she previously led JPL's government affairs office focused on climate. Her research has explored exoplanets, cosmology, and geophysics, and she is currently studying how communities can adapt to sea level rise. Dr. Tripathi is a Research Associate of the Smithsonian Institution and a science communicator for PBS and the National Academy of Sciences. Featured by the BBC, HBO, and TED.com, she has contributed to multiple books, including Science and Cooking and The Tech that Comes Next. Dr. Tripathi serves on the Los Angeles County Public Health Department's COVID data and epidemiology team, and she co-chairs the UK's Marshall Scholarship Selection Committee. She previously served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as acting director of the National Science and Technology Council, and in the US Department of Agriculture, as a White House Fellow. Dr. Tripathi earned her PhD in Astrophysics at Harvard, where she created the department's mentoring program, her MPhil in Astronomy at Cambridge, as a Marshall Scholar, and her SB in Physics at MIT.