Alex Romanovich (00:00):
Hi, this is Alex Romanovich, and welcome to Global Edge Talk. Today we have another guest that was on the show before, Jennifer Spencer. Hello, Jennifer.

Jennifer Spencer (00:12):
Hello Alex.

Alex Romanovich (00:13):
We have a very exciting announcement, actually, with Jennifer. We will be starting a new series of podcasts about women in tech and innovations in science. And the reason that Jennifer is involved is because if you recall and we'll repeat it again, Jennifer is on contract with NASA. We'll talk about that. She is a software engineer. Prior to that, Jennifer was with UC Berkeley in Math and Science. Prior to that, she was with a number of interesting projects and institutions tied to science, technology, and innovations. She's also an avid photographer. She's a proprietor, she's traveled to over, how many countries, 40-50?

Jennifer Spencer (01:02):
Over 50 countries.

Alex Romanovich (01:04):
Over 50 countries. She is a worldwide traveler. She's a scientist. She's an engineer. Jennifer, welcome to our show.

Jennifer Spencer (01:11):
Thank you, Alex.

Alex Romanovich (01:13):
Well, first of all, let's talk about that beautiful backdrop you have, which is you must be somewhere in the Caribbean or something, right?

Jennifer Spencer (01:21):
I am very fortunate to be working in the US Virgin Island of St. John right now. Absolutely lovely. I'm really happy to be missing the freezing rain in Maryland. That's all right.

Alex Romanovich (01:33):
And the freezing rain in New York City. Today is February 19th, 2021. And we have another day of snow. I actually canceled my trip to Florida to visit my folks who would just be vaccinated. Finally, thank God. And we had two cancellations the day before yesterday, so hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to fly out. We have so many things to talk about today and in general. Certainly, we'll have a lot to talk about as part of our podcast series. Let's first talk about a little bit of your background. How did you come about to become an engineer and work for NASA of all of the places?

Jennifer Spencer (02:24):
Well, I didn't set out to do that. I happened to get a job that worked out that way, but I can explain that I hope. I went to community college and I took an astronomy one class because I was just trying to figure out what I might want to do with my life. I'd always liked math. I'd been good at it since I was very little. And my father taught me to do quite a lot of math when I was very small, it was something that he wanted his child to know. So, I figured there would probably be something scientific in my future, but I didn't know what, and I fell in love with astronomy. I really did. And from there I really wanted to study it as much as possible. So, I went to university, I went to UC Berkeley transferred from community college there, and got my degree in astrophysics and applied math.

Jennifer Spencer (03:08):
And my first job was actually there also professionally as a data reduction person for radio astronomy lab, where we had a nine telescope array of small radio dishes up in Hat Creek, California. And from there, eventually, I got a job at Stanford University, the competition in that area, so to speak, Stanford and Berkeley are big rivals on football anyway. So, that's sort of a joke. But thinking about Stanford it was a very different kind of job. I realized that data reduction was not for me. That's eight hours by yourself in a room, not talking to anybody. And it's doing statistical analysis all day. Was it raining the night of the observation? Well, we'll need to apply some different algorithms for that is the bull gear on telescope number two running a little slow right now, in our case, it was because it was out of a World War II tank, sort of interesting.

Jennifer Spencer (04:02):
Sometimes it was little temperamental. So you had to apply an algorithm to correct data for that. Radio astronomy does a lot of work like that. It's very interesting, but it's also pretty tedious sometimes if you're doing it all by yourself stuck in a room, that wasn't for me. So I was very happy to have an opportunity to interact with people. And I started doing a quality assurance database entry and then design and then I became responsible for the telemetry database at Gravity Probe B mission at Stanford University. And that was a pretty exciting part of my career. I got to be part of a mission, which was lovely. From there, I went to work at the Solar Dynamics observatory doing something that was sort of similar, but that was more on the science side. And I got to know their data very well.

Jennifer Spencer (04:46):
They went through a period where they were going from phase D to phase E, I believe is the correct phase terming terminology. And they let a lot of people go because that happens once you've launched. So I was a rocket scientist without a rocket, sort of a bad thing for rocket scientists. So I went into photography for about three years because you got to pay the mortgage. So I did that. And then I was offered a job at Goddard Space Flight Center on the same mission as on the Solar Dynamics Observatory, but handling its data for the virtual solar observatory at Goddard and that is through a contractor. So I'm not a representative officially, not a press representative, but very excited to have worked there for a long time and very proud to be part of that mission. And that's how I ended up at Goddard. I was very surprised to get that offer and very happy.

Alex Romanovich (05:37):
That's an incredible story, by the way. And the question that comes to mind immediately is during this entire career path, what was some of the challenges? What were some of the issues or obstacles, or maybe there were none, but as a woman in tech, in science, working with NASA, surrounded by mostly men, I would think, how was it like?

Jennifer Spencer (06:09):
Mostly fine, but there were issues. I mean, starting in the UC Berkeley Physics Department, which was not very female-friendly, there were some professors who were, I think, pretty sexist. And then there were many who were not, and there were some that were champions of women there. So it was quite a mix. And fortunately, I was really having problems with one of the sexist guys, one of the guys who was a champion for women was my other teacher. And he just said, nobody likes that guy anyway. And I thought, okay, then I just stopped taking it personally after that. But you have to have a thick shell because you don't know whether it's you, you're young, you're 19-20 years old, you're impressionable, your confidence is in question. And I would say the physics culture, in general, is one of confidence questioning. They do that to men too. I mean, it tends to be breaking down. There's a harshness in physics.

Jennifer Spencer (07:00):
And the social way of that has to be that way in the education. And that's a challenge. And then I got to Aerospace at Stanford. And the first guy that I worked for was a contractor. And he was so old-fashioned that he asked me if my husband would let me travel during our interview. So, that was pretty funny. I told him my husband would let me do whatever I told him to let me do. And that didn't go over well at all. However, somehow despite that I still got the job. And occasionally being the only woman I worked with a lot of people from all over the world on that mission. There were people from Russia, Israel, Japan, China, I mean, everywhere.

Jennifer Spencer (07:44):
And some of those cultures are really different, some of them are really macho and you'd get a guy who wanted to prove himself once in a while and just have to push back real hard and tell him that wasn't going to happen, that he wasn't in charge. And people don't like to hear that when they're used to being in charge, even if they don't deserve to be in charge. So, sometimes that was a challenge, I would say. It was also scary in a very different way being the only woman or one of only two women in a large room of men during a really important review. I remember we have what's called a Red Team review for our mission. If we don't pass that review, they would cancel the whole thing, and everybody loses their jobs. So, that's pretty intense. And as the data processing lead, there's me. And then there's our mission operations manager, Marcy, who is quite an excellent mission operations manager and a career woman, but older than me.

Jennifer Spencer (08:31):
So, at least I took some comfort there, but that was it. There were 50 other men in there and that was it just us, and I'm thinking, should I have worn lipstick? I don't know. Is that a bad idea? I'm not sure. We're just going to represent the gender as best we can because we got an example set here. But that was something I hadn't really thought of before that, that was all on my shoulders that day, well, mine and hers.

Alex Romanovich (08:57):
You mentioned a very interesting item right now representing gender. It's kind of interesting because men don't think in those terms, they never think in terms of representing gender, right?

Jennifer Spencer (09:12):
The first male nurses on the job did have to take a lot of flack for that. They were even. It's unusual, but it happens.

Alex Romanovich (09:21):
Although, male nurses right now are not a surprise anymore.

Jennifer Spencer (09:26):
People just feel that's quite normal now.

Alex Romanovich (09:29):
Absolutely. So what is your advice for a young woman who is entering the science innovation field, the technology field, being on contract with NASA and being in charge of emission control, working on some incredible projects, involved with physics and world exploration? What have you, what is your advice to those individuals, those women who are entering this field?

Jennifer Spencer (10:04):
I think, it almost starts a little bit earlier. I would even go back as far as college, and then you can take that into the career field once you've been able to be learned to be a little bit more polite about it, but probably the most useful phrase you can learn is 'thank so much or go to hell'. You have to be able to be confident in who you are, and what you want, and what you believe and know that if you're doing a good job and you're being careful and you're doing the right thing, that's enough. There are a lot of people who will want to tell you what you can be or cannot be, and you must tell yourself that. That's a hard voice to find, but find it, speak it and keep going. That would be my advice.

Alex Romanovich (10:50):
I love that advice. I think you have to have confidence. You almost have to have more confidence than others, than men have in order to be successful. It seems that way.

Jennifer Spencer (11:04):
It seems that way. It's really nice when you can find an ally, that man at work who will also believe in you, that really helps a lot.

Alex Romanovich (11:13):
So, finding an ally helps, finding a mentor maybe helps.

Jennifer Spencer (11:17):
Absolutely.

Alex Romanovich (11:19):
Let's talk about travel. You've traveled to more than 50 countries worldwide. I've seen pictures of your travels, which are totally amazing from the North Pole and South pole to the African Safari land and most amazing waterfalls in the tropical jungle and so forth and so on. Is it because you're a photographer and you just love to capture this amazing beauty or is there something else?

Jennifer Spencer (11:47):
Actually, I love to see that stuff and then I couldn't photograph it very well. So I went to school to become a better photographer that was sort of in reverse. I started traveling, the first time I went abroad I was 13 with my father. He had a business trip in Geneva as we went to Europe, it's two weeks, I guess it was for very long now that I think about it. And it was a wonderful experience and I thought, I'm going back one of these days. And it took me until I was 28 to be able to go again. But I did, and then I really never stopped. There's just something wonderful about seeing how other places live their lives, how they handle things, what their culture is like, I feel like I learned something about myself.

Jennifer Spencer (12:37):
I relaxed a lot more. It's restful. It's a wonderful new challenge at the same time. There're just wonderful things to learn about the world. And I liked to see them and there's really no substitute for it. I knew, that in many tropical countries, in tropical places you get a gecko in your house. This is not uncommon. And then you open the door, even if you just look away for a second there are lizards in your house. Many people would get a broom and scream in horror and shake these lizards right out of there because Lord knows, that's bad. Well, you may know that lizards also eat mosquitoes and other bugs, and at night you're really glad that they're in there because they're eating those things and they're not bothering you. Well, guess what I learned last night? Apparently, it's not just geckos around here. They've got frauds that come in too. So when one jumped on me last night, it was a very interesting learning experience. Certainly not expecting, but this is the sort of thing that keeps life interesting. So, I can accomplish it

Alex Romanovich (13:41):
You come to their territory, right? It's what you have to endure, so to speak.

Jennifer Spencer (13:45):
But at the same time, I mean, all the bugs they ate didn't bite me. So, I'm happy about that, but travel boosts you, and it teaches you an awful lot of things. I learned in Africa that complaining is actually rude in America. So I passed on, but there that's considered very poor manners. In Subsaharan Africa anyway, East Africa specifically, I should say because it's very large continent with many countries. So, you find things out and it makes you think, well, if that's not right here, isn't right at home? Should I change my behavior? Would I be a better person if I did something different? I think those are important questions to keep asking yourself lifelong.

Alex Romanovich (14:29):
I think so too. American culture has always been very forthright, and with American's travel, everybody knows it.

Jennifer Spencer (14:43):
Wear white shoes with a baseball cap, and that stuff.

Alex Romanovich (14:45):
Whatever it is, but everybody knows. And it's really interesting this entire COVID scenario, the year of 2020, and even right now, 2021, I know we're at the beginning of the year, but we're all anxiously waiting when the borders will open and we will begin traveling again, we will get vaccinated. We will freely be able to cross borders with our neighbors, like in Mexico and Canada for that matter. What are your thoughts on how Americans and how America is handling this crisis in comparison to some of the other countries that you know of? I mean, you obviously travel, you're still traveling within the United States, but it's almost the Caribbean, the United States, which is slightly different, but I'm sure your friends all over the world telling you, giving feedback and sort of what. What are some of those differences?

Jennifer Spencer (15:43):
My cousin got COVID in December and he became very ill, nearly died. One of the things, thankfully, he made it, but he spent some time in the ICU in Italy because he lives in Italy part of the time. And this was one of the times he's in Italy. One of the cool things they're doing there is they're actually sending EMT to your house. Not quite even EMT, it's just very trained people to run some tests on you in your home and see if you need to go to the hospital. So, if you don't feel good and you think either you have COVID or you have all the symptoms and you think you're in trouble, you call and they come and they checked out. And they came in and they checked him out that day.

Jennifer Spencer (16:22):
And thank goodness because they whisked him off to the hospital. We didn't know if we were gonna get him back, which is a little scary, but he got there and they helped him. So, I think it's pretty neat that they're sending people right to your home. And it also makes sense in a way, because you're not really allowed out of your home either. You have to write yourself a permission slip effectively before you leave your house, you have to say where you're going, why you're going there, it's a form you have to fill out every single time you leave, the purpose of you're there and the time you're leaving, when you expect to be back and all of that stuff. And then you will be stopped very likely. And that form will be requested and that all has to correspond to whatever time it is now and where you were headed and all of that. So, they kind of have to send people to your house, if you don't feel good. I'll fill out the form and then I'll go get help.

Alex Romanovich (17:12):
But don't you feel that we're catching out very quickly? I mean, I know that, for example, in the very early days of COVID-19 different countries handled it differently, obviously. And some countries actually had a lot more experience with it. Countries like Taiwan, for example, or some of the Asian countries, Japan, Vietnam. We even had interesting reports that Vietnam handled it really well in the very early stages of the disease and the pandemic.

Jennifer Spencer (17:44):
Well, I would like to point out that many countries in Western and Southern Africa have done, except for South Africa, have done a marvelous job at keeping it out of their country. And a lot of that has been taking it seriously from the beginning, recognizing that this is a serious threat to society and to the economy and people's health, and then putting severe measures into place, like saying, no, we're not going to let you leave the country unless there's a really good reason or you're going to have to have a test. You're going to have to quarantine for two weeks. These are requirements. And we didn't do any of that. So, I think one of the ways to see, I heard what's the word I'm looking for is, but I will say that other countries' economies are not really suffering and ours is not really suffering.

Jennifer Spencer (18:31):
It may soon. I think people's joblessness and people's personal finances are in a lot of trouble in many areas. So, I don't want to downplay that, but I would say that the country's economy as a whole is still doing okay as far as individual experiences, that's a very different story. So, I don't want to downplay that, but it's interesting to see that whether or not you took a draconian response doesn't seem to have an impact on the economy as much as one might think. I'm not entirely sure why. So, that's sort of an interesting thing about comparing. I would say that we could have saved a lot of lives if we had behaved differently in the beginning. That's frustrating.

Alex Romanovich (19:12):
I agree. And many people obviously would agree as well with you and with the fact that we could have done a better job. And here we are priding ourselves on being scientifically advanced. We'll talk about the NASA trip to Mars in just a moment. And yet you're claiming, you're saying, and I'm hearing the same thing being traveling to other places in the world that other folks are handling it better. So it's not a matter of science necessarily, right?

Jennifer Spencer (19:50):
Not at all. It's a matter of actually listening. This is available science, we knew it here. They knew it in Europe, and they learned about it as quickly as possible of other places. And it's a matter of action, and it's a matter of political action. It's not a matter of science. It's a matter of applying.

Alex Romanovich (20:11):
Very interesting point. We always apply science to this, we have three vaccines, we have four vaccines. I think, now it's a little bit better in terms of getting this vaccine out there. But I think, in the very early stages of it it was somewhat challenging. And some of the States are continuing to whether it's by choice, by their choice, by the governor's choice or by an inability to manage logistics and to manage the distribution of this.

Jennifer Spencer (20:44):
Well, you've got to remember too, that at least according to State's governor in Maryland, Larry Hogan, he's telling us that the States have never been asked to do anything on this scale before. They're reinventing the wheel, the national guard and other places have had to do these kinds of things before. And it's the previous administration that decided that this was all going to be on the States, even though they hadn't done any of it before they hadn't done the COVID testing and the COVID protections that they had had to do before either. It was a huge amount of effort of human manpower. All of it thrust upon States and some of which don't even have a budget to do it. And they're just being told, well, you look after it, even though there are federal mechanisms already in place.

Jennifer Spencer (21:26):
So that's just a mess. And the individual departments of health personnel are doing all they can, I think, in every state, but a lot of them are on new roads for them. That's not easy. And it shouldn't be that way. And that's where we find ourselves. But I will add that we're very fortunate that we even have an opportunity to get this. There are whole countries where their medical staff, their most important medical staff has not been inoculated at all. None of them, so we're sitting in a pretty fine area, despite these problems.

Alex Romanovich (22:03):
I think, our close neighbor Canada is having issues as well, by the way. Let's talk about another disaster - Texas. I want us to talk about this in terms of science, in terms of technology, in terms of innovations, in terms of high tech. If you were a chief scientist in the United States, if you were given the ability to do things better, differently, given our governmental structure, given the fact that we are Republic, we have certain centralized things with the federal government, but we have a lot of autonomy with the States as well. Can you comment on the situation in Texas and what would you do differently, and how would you do it differently?

Jennifer Spencer (22:45):
Well, I think, that probably when you're asking this question that Texas has resisted becoming any part of a federally regulated energy system, they worked very hard to avoid that all of their history. Fiercely independent group, and that's the state of Texas for you. So, not being a Texan I can't say whether or not that's a good decision. However, if I could, for their sake, I would make it so that at least my regulations matched the federal regulations, wherever possible, here let me try to get out of the sun of it. Thank you. And really they don't, I mean, I can show you pictures of wind farms working great in Antarctica, if you'd like. We have the national science center runs them. So it's not like it's not possible.

Alex Romanovich (23:32):
The Russians actually use helicopters in Murmansk to a defrost and defreeze the blades of the windmills, right?

Jennifer Spencer (23:42):
That's an extreme situation, but if you just even buy a winterizing package for the windmill, you don't have to do anything like that until it gets even colder, at the Murmansk level of cold, which it did not get in Texas, thankfully. I mean, this is all preventable stuff. And what I find interesting right now too is that,I think, 50% or some large percentage of the windmills froze up because they didn't have this winterizing protection that they could have easily purchased. And yet the natural gas and nuclear instruments, the gauges, I guess, in part that runs up the the pipelines have also completely frozen, and that's the majority of where they're getting their power and they can't get it. And it's not just the ecological fuels that are having trouble. And in fact, they're overdelivering compared to what they might've done given the weather, according to the paper they write. So, it's a lot about perception. And I think, if it were me if I could change anything, Alex, I would make data-driven decisions and the hover perception. And again, you got to listen to your own voice and you have to use it.

Alex Romanovich (24:56):
How do you convince the States in the great state of Texas to make a data-driven decision, to make a science-driven decision, to make a use case driven decision, to say, look let's be prepared better for the next time, because we don't know what's going to happen next, weather-wise, we can certainly predict it, we can certainly track it, we can look at it ahead of time even?

Jennifer Spencer (25:21):
They had this since 2011, so it's not like absolutely new part.

Alex Romanovich (25:24):
Exactly. So how do you convince an autonomous decision-making power in the state of Texas to do things differently?

Jennifer Spencer (25:33):
I think, you have to take money out of it. I think, there's been a lot of profit issues that have probably driven this. And again, I'm not from there, so I'm commenting here a bit out of the pocket a little bit, but what I'm seeing is that they're trying to deliver cheaper and cheaper energy at a higher and higher profit for the energy company. If it's a true utility, and not a profitable company and not a profit-making situation, then I think you can enforce those safety regulations. You can start to talk about, it's just going to cost this much to make sure the grid is safe, and that's our goal, rather than we're going to make money from this, or we're going to make sure that we're competitive with other energy companies nearby and we're going to get more customers that way. So, it's a matter of focus, it's a matter of what the goal of the regulator is, what the goal of the company is. And if the goal is profit, or customers, or money, then you're going to have a very different situation.

Alex Romanovich (26:39):
Thank you for that opinion. Let's talk about NASA. Let's talk about Mars.

Jennifer Spencer (26:44):
We're not really profit-driven there. So, we can make data-driven decisions in a way that's a luxury for a lot of people making a data-driven sitch.

Alex Romanovich (26:52):
Well, I think, these days it's a necessity, isn't it?

Jennifer Spencer (26:57):
I mean, more and more obvious that maybe it's a good idea at least to think about it.

Alex Romanovich (27:01):
Well, I think, this is a great example of what data-driven and science-driven decisions actually can save lives, not just save money. But let's talk about NASA, and missed all of this COVID-19 pandemic, Texas, all the other issues. We, again, land on Mars with Perseverance, with the Rover. What is the significance of that as somebody who is working with NASA and somebody who's a person of science and innovations of technology, what is the significance of that?

Jennifer Spencer (27:34):
Well, for one thing, I just want to say to the team who did that amazing work. It's really great. And we just can't be happier for them. I think everyone at NASA and everyone in the United States, we're really excited and probably worldwide from what I'm hearing from a lot of people outside the US. So, that's really cool. We might even just say, what does it mean to us as a species? Because that's thing to think about too. This is all part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program/ And again, I'm not a spokesperson, so I'm just kind of quoting off their website and anybody who wants to can go to the Mars Exploration Program in Google and look it up at NASA and see what our goals are as an agency and where we're headed now, I'm just going to go ahead and read from that site for just a second, because it's kind of worth talking about that.

Jennifer Spencer (28:18):
There's a whole program, which is they're going to look for water. They're going to follow the water. They're going to explore habitability. And that's kind of what we're doing right now, seek signs of life, which we're also doing right now. And then move on to prepare for human exploration, which is also part of what we're doing. I understand tha there is an oxygen generation experiment on this Rover to see if they can, maybe, make oxygen generation and happen on Mars to make this human habitable one day. So, that's part of why this is so important. They're going to look and see, they're going to do some sampling of what is a lake once upon a time, a lake bed, they're going to find out whether there was life in there, hopefully. There was a limited amount of instrumentation that you can ever send that far away.

Jennifer Spencer (29:05):
So, there's also a plan to try to get good samples. Then look at those further and determine just how good they are. And then hopefully go pick them up one day and bring them home. So, that's pretty exciting too. But then we can try to find out, what happened there, whether there was ever life. We believe the evidence looks like it was much wetter and much warmer on Mars at one time, and then that went away. Around the same time that microbes were formed and found on the Earth is around that same time period when Mars was wetter and warmer, theoretically. So maybe there would be something in this lake bed, this dried old lake bed that would be similar to what we had on the Earth or some form of life, maybe, a very small molecular form of life I'm talking about here. But that's what we're looking for. Was it like the Earth? Was it not? What happened? And if there is anything here, should we be concerned about ever polluting that? Is there more life? Could we find it? Did it live somewhere in some little pocket, somewhere on this planet, this very large planet Mars or not? And could we eventually live there one day?

Alex Romanovich (30:17):
Jennifer, I'm always amazed and fascinated by talking to you and learning so much from you. I want to thank you for coming on the show. Once again, I am very excited about launching this series of women in tech, science, and innovation with you. And we're going to have some very exciting guests coming up, which we will be announcing very soon. You have a beautiful backdrop there. I see a gorgeous sailboat and the beautiful blue water behind you. So enjoy the rest of your stay in the Caribbean. And until next time we will be talking soon.

Jennifer Spencer (30:58):
Thank you, Alex. And it was really a pleasure to talk with you again. Thank you.