S3 E4: From Undergrad to Grad Student with Samantha-Lynn Martinez and Trent Vonich

In this episode of FieldSound, we meet two students who found their own paths at the University of Washington, blending their interests in science communication and public safety with research, classes and discovery — all the while laying the groundwork for their future careers.

From an early age, Samantha Lynn-Martinez, a recent graduate of the UW with a dual degree in biology and marine biology, was drawn to the natural environment and wanted to get involved but didn’t know where to start. Then she heard about high school volunteer programs at local organizations, including Seattle Aquarium.

Martinez enjoyed working with Seattle Aquarium visitors — showing them how to touch a sea urchin or how to be a good steward of nature — and she began doing social media engagement for the aquarium. That work introduced her to video-making.

By combining that curiosity for the natural world with her passion for storytelling, Martinez now uses filmmaking and photography as powerful tools for science communication. Through the lens of a camera, she aims to make complex scientific ideas accessible and engaging. And she’s inspiring others to see the world through a new lens.

“If I can introduce people to a topic they’ve never considered before on my Instagram, and then they do their own Google deep dive after, I think that’s a job well done,” Martinez said.

All of the research she’s done has integrated some form of science communication. Martinez sees the value of this work and advocates for it with her supervisors and PIs.

Recently, Martinez worked with NOAA in the Aleutian Islands studying steller sea lion ecology. She gained valuable field experiences working with sea lions, doing drone and photography surveys, photo identification and more.

What began as an interest in marine life as a high school volunteer at the Seattle Aquarium has evolved into a remarkable journey for Martinez, who was named a Husky 100 in 2024. And she’s just getting started.

“I just want to capture that curiosity. Curiosity is really what drives everything I do,” Martinez said. “Stuff that I’m currently doing with my own projects and through the UW have been really helpful in terms of building that portfolio, building those skills.”

Trent Vonich is a Ph.D. student in atmospheric and climate science who studies the predictability of extreme weather. He’s passionate about unlocking the secrets of the world’s most powerful storms by exploring the potential of machine learning to transform meteorological forecasting.

Vonich is not only a full-time student, he’s also an active-duty officer in the United States Air Force. He balances an exhilarating, fast-paced military career as a pararescueman with his studies and scientific research, all while looking ahead toward his future ambitions — NASA’s astronaut program.

Vonich has always been interested in severe weather, but decided to focus on hurricanes after seeing a number of U.S. Navy and Air Force bases sustain damage by severe storms.

When a weather forecast is wrong, that’s when Vonich steps in. His research examines why weather forecasts sometimes fail. Historically, scientists have looked at physics-based weather models to find answers, but machine learning may offer a much simpler way.

“I think the most compelling part of machine learning impacting weather modeling is the speed at which you can now do forecasts. It’s a totally different approach,” he said. It takes a long time to build machine learning models and train them, but once trained, they work quickly.

Now, tech companies have entered the field of weather modeling. For example, 

https://environment.uw.edu/podcast

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:15:23
Sarah Smith
One from the University of Washington College of the Environment. This is field Sound.

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Sarah Smith
Were you one of those kids that wanted to be a marine biologist when you grew up?

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Sarah Smith
her. I remember being so captivated by the natural world that you couldn't help but want to share its wonders with everyone you meet.

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Sarah Smith
From a young age,

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Sarah Smith
Samantha Lynn Martinez,

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Sarah Smith
an undergraduate at the University of Washington studying biology with a minor in marine biology.

00:00:43:04 - 00:00:46:05
Sarah Smith
was determined to do just that.

00:00:46:07 - 00:00:58:08
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
My path to stem, I really think started back in middle school or high school. I was someone who was like very drawn into the natural environment and I knew that I wanted to get involved with it, but I wasn't really sure how to actually go about that.

00:00:58:08 - 00:01:14:19
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
And I thought that there weren't a ton of opportunities for me, especially being a middle schooler or a high schooler, to kind of get into that until one day I was sitting in class and I overheard a friend of mine talking about the Seattle Aquarium and Woodland Park Zoo and the fact that they had a high school volunteer program.

00:01:14:21 - 00:01:33:23
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
And I thought that was the coolest thing ever. But I was like, okay, do I either continue working at the jobs that I have to work out to earn my keep to all that jobs? Because I moved over here from the Philippines with my family. So there's a lot of adjusting that we had to do, and there's a lot of work that has to be put into making sure things run smoothly because money is a thing, of course.

00:01:34:01 - 00:01:40:14
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
But I realized that there was finally this opportunity to kind of dive into the natural environment and learn something new.

00:01:40:14 - 00:01:42:14
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
was just an opportunity for me to

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Samantha-Lynn Martinez
put my passions to work honestly.

00:01:45:05 - 00:02:06:11
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
while I was getting my knowledge from the aquarium and working with public engagement at the aquarium, you know, I really realized that I love talking to people, that I loved doing everything from showing them how to touch a sea urchin to how to be a good steward when they're out in the wild. And I had an opportunity through the aquarium to actually explore what like social media engagement looked like.

00:02:06:11 - 00:02:24:21
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
Of course, I was like a teen who was chronically online, so I thought that that would be a really cool way to expand my palate when it came to science communication because I was so used to doing it in the quote unquote, like in a formal education based through a museum or an aquarium. And when COVID hit, that's really when everything kicked off

00:02:25:18 - 00:02:28:07
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
we realized we can't do anything in-person anymore.

00:02:28:07 - 00:02:48:04
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
So how do we make it so our teams still have a way to engage with the people that they would usually engage with. And I joined, I think, five other youth volunteers at the time we created or basically revamped the existing social media campaign that the aquarium had called put some We Love You. And then I started doing video work

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Samantha-Lynn Martinez
and it was

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Samantha-Lynn Martinez
all just from its humble beginnings of let's make a TED Talk about how we clean up our waterways or to talk about storm drains and stuff like that.

00:02:58:18 - 00:03:15:07
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
But I then realized that so much of what got me hooked on to the environment in the first place were like documentaries and things I saw on TV and even like Bindi the Jungle Girl, Steve Irwin, people like that. And I realized that it would be really cool if that could be a route for me. One day.

00:03:15:19 - 00:03:20:02
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
ever since then it's just been a lot of exploring and trying new things,

00:03:20:17 - 00:03:26:12
Sarah Smith
by combining that curiosity for the natural world with her passion for storytelling.

00:03:26:12 - 00:03:33:21
Sarah Smith
Martinez now utilizes filmmaking and photography as powerful tools for science communication

00:03:33:21 - 00:03:35:19
Sarah Smith
through the camera lens.

00:03:35:21 - 00:03:38:19
Sarah Smith
She aims to make complex scientific ideas

00:03:38:19 - 00:03:41:09
Sarah Smith
accessible and engaging.

00:03:41:18 - 00:03:42:23
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
it's been really cool.

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Samantha-Lynn Martinez
Diving into the multimedia realm

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Samantha-Lynn Martinez
kind of on my own because there's not really a program that exists

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Samantha-Lynn Martinez
it's been a lot of just picking up my camera, going outside, shooting what I can, posting what I can to that's been really critical of social media is like the primary way people engage with content nowadays.

00:04:01:07 - 00:04:10:04
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
So if I can introduce people to a topic they've never considered before on my Instagram and then they do their own little Google deep dive after, I think that's a job well done.

00:04:13:05 - 00:04:18:11
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
give. Basically, all of the other research that I've done now has integrated some form of science communication.

00:04:18:11 - 00:04:26:13
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
Just because I've told my PI or I've told my supervisor, Hey, I love to make a video about this or I'd love to share more about this. Are you okay with me taking pictures?

00:04:27:11 - 00:04:31:23
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
the science that I'm focusing on right now, tons of my coursework is about ecology.

00:04:32:04 - 00:04:46:10
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
That's the part of the natural sciences that I think I love the most. I grew up in a household and in a culture that really reinforced the fact that stewardship is the only way that we can navigate the world, the natural world especially.

00:04:46:10 - 00:04:59:19
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
But ecology and understanding how things interact with one another is just something that fascinates me because you find these little interactions between two completely different animals or two completely different life forms that you would have never anticipated.

00:05:00:15 - 00:05:24:00
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
over the summer I was in the Aleutian Islands with Noah and the Marine Mammal Laboratory and we were doing stellar sea lion ecology stuff. So I'm getting a lot of really fun, practical field work when it comes to working with the animals directly, doing drone surveys, photography surveys, photo ID stuff related to that photography. So a lot of it has just been practical experience and getting that under my belt.

00:05:25:08 - 00:05:29:09
Sarah Smith
What began as a simple interest in marine life as a high school volunteer

00:05:29:09 - 00:05:33:01
Sarah Smith
has evolved into a remarkable journey for Martinez.

00:05:33:16 - 00:05:42:20
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
so much of my natural curiosity is the reason why I'm so driven to continue all these multimedia projects, even though I don't necessarily have a program that I'm doing it through

00:05:42:20 - 00:05:46:07
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
it, literally just taking the practical science that I'm learning at YouTube.

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Samantha-Lynn Martinez
Michael Logy Learnings, my evolution, knowledge and

00:05:49:04 - 00:05:52:06
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
and also get folks to engage with something that they've never seen before.

00:05:52:11 - 00:05:58:07
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
And I just want to capture that curiosity. And curiosity is really what drives everything that I do, I think,

00:05:58:07 - 00:06:06:15
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
stuff that I'm currently doing with my own projects and through the YouTube have been really helpful in terms of building that portfolio, building those skills.

00:06:06:15 - 00:06:16:15
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
You just cold emailing people, just seeing if things are possible, seeing if there's any way that I can get a project rolling, even if that's something that they would have never anticipated even happening.

00:06:16:21 - 00:06:22:14
Samantha-Lynn Martinez
That's been a lot of what my college experience has been like, but it's proven to be extremely fruitful

00:06:28:04 - 00:06:35:13
Sarah Smith
What does it take to understand the most extreme forces of nature, like hurricanes and severe storms?

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Sarah Smith
Not only deep scientific knowledge, but also the discipline to pursue every detail. The drive to push through countless hours of research and the blend of resilience and passion

00:06:49:01 - 00:06:56:22
Sarah Smith
that fuels the relentless pursuit of knowledge in the face of nature's most formidable challenges. The Right Stuff.

00:06:59:09 - 00:07:10:16
Sarah Smith
Trent Vonich is a Ph.D. grad student at the University of Washington Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science, studying the predictability of extreme weather.

00:07:10:23 - 00:07:11:21
Sarah Smith
He's passionate

00:07:11:21 - 00:07:22:10
Sarah Smith
about unlocking the secrets of the world's most powerful storms by exploring the potential of machine learning to transform meteorological forecasting.

00:07:22:10 - 00:07:23:07
Trent Vonich
And I

00:07:23:08 - 00:07:25:12
Trent Vonich
study atmospheric science

00:07:25:12 - 00:07:27:08
Trent Vonich
Had the chance to come here

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Trent Vonich
as part of a National Science Foundation Fellowship.

00:07:29:13 - 00:07:31:15
Trent Vonich
doing hurricane predictability.

00:07:31:20 - 00:07:41:04
Trent Vonich
I always had it in the back of my head that it's maybe something I'd want to pursue down the line. I didn't really think it would come together the way it did,

00:07:41:04 - 00:07:48:01
Trent Vonich
just because at this point in my career, you know, it's not a typical deviation in your path

00:07:49:20 - 00:07:53:19
Sarah Smith
Vonich is not only a full time student at the University of Washington,

00:07:53:21 - 00:07:55:23
Sarah Smith
He's also an active duty officer

00:07:55:23 - 00:07:58:02
Sarah Smith
in the United States Air Force.

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Sarah Smith
He balances an exhilarating, fast paced military career as a combat rescue officer

00:08:04:06 - 00:08:07:01
Sarah Smith
with his studies and scientific research.

00:08:07:19 - 00:08:14:09
Sarah Smith
So why, why hurricanes? Is it just what? What is it that's interesting to you about this particular science?

00:08:14:20 - 00:08:26:20
Trent Vonich
when I applied to the Air Force for him to come here. I was kind of geared around that, especially with some of the impacts. That number of Air Force and Navy bases have had from hurricanes in the last five or so years.

00:08:26:22 - 00:08:31:01
Trent Vonich
Hurricane Michael 2018 is a big one that comes to mind. Tyndall Air Force Base.

00:08:31:14 - 00:08:33:06
Trent Vonich
I've always loved severe weather.

00:08:33:06 - 00:08:35:16
Trent Vonich
that's always what I've been interested in.

00:08:36:10 - 00:08:46:05
Trent Vonich
I'm looking at doing sensitivity analysis, which is a fancy way of saying when you get your weather forecast wrong y

00:08:46:05 - 00:09:01:04
Trent Vonich
looking back at the things that you missed and how that played in and historically, there's a way of doing that with legacy weather models, physics based weather models, as we refer to them.

00:09:01:05 - 00:09:05:22
Trent Vonich
But machine learning may offer a lot simpler way of doing that.

00:09:06:10 - 00:09:08:11
Trent Vonich
I think the most compelling part

00:09:08:11 - 00:09:10:19
Trent Vonich
of machine learning

00:09:10:19 - 00:09:15:20
Trent Vonich
impacting weather modeling is the speed at which you can now do forecasts.

00:09:15:20 - 00:09:18:04
Trent Vonich
it's a totally different approach

00:09:18:03 - 00:09:24:17
Trent Vonich
to weather modeling. So in the last 70 years, meteorology is really kind of a new field. All things considered.

00:09:24:21 - 00:09:27:05
Trent Vonich
Really started in the forties

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Trent Vonich
D-Day,

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Trent Vonich
you know, the most famous weather forecasts, I guess of all time.

00:09:31:23 - 00:09:34:13
Trent Vonich
If you look at meteorological history, was

00:09:34:13 - 00:09:38:18
Trent Vonich
when there was a weather window to land on the beaches of Normandy.

00:09:38:18 - 00:09:43:16
Trent Vonich
But apart from that, these weather models were all physics based,

00:09:43:16 - 00:09:50:01
Trent Vonich
you're actually doing the math of like air parcels, moving based on speed, interacting chemically

00:09:50:00 - 00:10:01:04
Trent Vonich
temperature, wind, etc.. And when you're calculating that for very small parcels all over the globe, it just becomes really computer intensive, which is why you need these

00:10:01:05 - 00:10:04:22
Trent Vonich
big supercomputers with machine learning models.

00:10:05:00 - 00:10:10:01
Trent Vonich
It takes a lot of time to build the models. To train them

00:10:10:02 - 00:10:14:19
Trent Vonich
But once it's trained, it's runs really quick.

00:10:14:19 - 00:10:17:02
Trent Vonich
that's the big advantage that they offer

00:10:17:01 - 00:10:21:09
Trent Vonich
and now you've got instead of

00:10:21:09 - 00:10:30:09
Trent Vonich
federal governments, who are generally who you think of as running weather models because it takes $200 million supercomputers to run these things right.

00:10:30:11 - 00:10:31:13
Sarah Smith
Like the National Weather Service.

00:10:31:13 - 00:10:45:02
Trent Vonich
Yeah, like the National Weather Service. A lot of people will maybe recognize, you know, the European model, the American model, the Canadian model, all governmental models. Now, a lot of tech companies have entered the fray.

00:10:46:08 - 00:10:48:13
Trent Vonich
Google released a paper

00:10:48:12 - 00:10:54:09
Trent Vonich
which seems to show that they have the most accurate weather model in the world now.

00:10:54:11 - 00:10:56:00
Trent Vonich
It's called Graph Cast,

00:10:56:00 - 00:10:57:23
Trent Vonich
The big difference, though,

00:10:58:00 - 00:11:09:04
Trent Vonich
the European model, I think to do a ten day forecast takes about an hour to run on one of the most powerful supercomputers. Grab cash with the right

00:11:09:03 - 00:11:11:12
Trent Vonich
hardware on your personal computer.

00:11:11:14 - 00:11:13:15
Trent Vonich
You can run a ten day forecast

00:11:13:16 - 00:11:14:23
Trent Vonich
in three or 4 minutes.

00:11:15:18 - 00:11:18:23
Trent Vonich
There's no way to have trained these models without the

00:11:18:23 - 00:11:25:19
Trent Vonich
40 or so years of the physics based legacy models where they're using all the data from those old models to train these new models

00:11:25:20 - 00:11:28:20
Trent Vonich
So I'm really curious to see where this goes

00:11:33:09 - 00:11:37:07
Sarah Smith
Vonich is dedicated to understanding the forces of nature.

00:11:37:07 - 00:11:40:02
Sarah Smith
all while looking towards his future ambitions.

00:11:41:00 - 00:11:45:04
Trent Vonich
First thing is, see where the Air Force wants to send me next.

00:11:45:03 - 00:11:46:17
Trent Vonich
and see how it's up to that.

00:11:46:17 - 00:11:47:04
Trent Vonich
But

00:11:47:03 - 00:11:57:00
Trent Vonich
at some point, when the next opportunity arises, I'd love to put in an application to NASA to be an astronaut. Yeah, you never know unless you try.

00:11:57:02 - 00:11:57:17
Trent Vonich
Absolutely.

00:11:57:17 - 00:12:00:03
Trent Vonich
So I'd like to give it a shot.

00:12:01:04 - 00:12:06:15
Sarah Smith
obviously being in the military and then sort of being on a timeline that takes a lot of discipline

00:12:06:15 - 00:12:11:17
Sarah Smith
being a PhD student, you probably have to, you know, have a very like exploratory mind too, right?

00:12:11:19 - 00:12:16:03
Trent Vonich
Maybe a little less regimented. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think

00:12:16:02 - 00:12:35:10
Trent Vonich
the challenging part has been not coding, not thinking about math equations, stuff like that for six, seven years, coming back and for us back into it. That's been the challenging part. Yeah. I think the beneficial part which people who maybe took a break and worked in industry or something would maybe understand this.

00:12:35:12 - 00:12:53:06
Trent Vonich
You feel busy as a student, as a grad student, and then you go work a real job 9 to 5 every day for six, seven years. You're like, Wow, I had so much time. If I really just cut out the stuff that wasn't helping me get where I want to go. And I think that's

00:12:53:06 - 00:12:54:10
Trent Vonich
where I maybe

00:12:54:10 - 00:12:55:04
Trent Vonich
I've gained

00:12:55:04 - 00:12:56:00
Trent Vonich
perspective

00:12:56:21 - 00:12:58:06
Trent Vonich
and it's helped me a lot here because

00:12:58:06 - 00:13:00:04
Trent Vonich
like I got a good pace going,

00:13:00:03 - 00:13:03:12
Trent Vonich
where maybe before I would have been distracted or

00:13:03:12 - 00:13:04:18
Trent Vonich
not had the perspective.

00:13:11:17 - 00:13:15:03
Sarah Smith
A big thanks to our guests today, Trent Vonage.

00:13:15:04 - 00:13:15:09
Sarah Smith
and

00:13:15:09 - 00:13:17:02
Sarah Smith
Samantha Lynnn Martinez,

00:13:17:15 - 00:13:25:10
Sarah Smith
if you'd like to learn more about their work, you can visit our website at Environment UW dot edu

00:13:25:10 - 00:13:27:06
Sarah Smith
for all of us at Field Sound.

00:13:27:08 - 00:13:28:16
Sarah Smith
Thanks for listening.

00:13:28:16 - 00:13:30:05
Sarah Smith
See you next time.