Deciding to Start a Family While Being a STEM Graduate Student

A few weeks ago, PhD Candidate Charissa Campbell began a leave from the lab. From all of us at the PVL - we wish her well in her time away and look forward to her return next year!

by Charissa Campbell

Being a woman in STEM can come with certain challenges, including deciding if you want to start your family or not. Since women have to carry and be the primary caregiver for the first year it can be a difficult decision whether to put off starting that next step in your life. Luckily, there are a lot more benefits available to women who want to start their family while also being a graduate student. Knowing this, my partner and I decided to make the decision to start our own family after getting the surprise that I was expecting.

To find Life on Mars, we need to do some real digging

 

This week PVL MSc candidate, Hemani Kalucha interviews a professor from her undergraduate institution about a few of the factors affecting our search for life on Mars. Image above from: https://geosciences.princeton.edu/people/tullis-c-onstott .

by Hemani Kalucha

Increasingly, experts are coming to the conclusion that if life exists or ever existed on Mars, we will only find signs of it far beneath the surface. There’s a brand new effort at JPL to create missions to Mars that go beneath the surface and you can read all about it here. As someone who hopes to be involved in the development of such a mission, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to one of the world’s leading experts on life underground: Professor Tullis Onstott! Professot Onstott is a professor of Geomicrobiology at Princeton University and an incredible mentor to me! Read about all his exciting discoveries here, here, and here.

Green Shoots, Space Gardens

It's snowing in Toronto this morning. Seriously. But irrespective of what I see outside my window, I know spring to be near at hand. Many of us have experienced the therapeutic power of caring for and raising plants and are looking forward to getting out into our gardens. I for one need to have some greenery around my office and home, which marks me as a bit unusual. In space, however, plants may eventually serve a more vital role. This week Alex examines the first green shoots researchers are cultivating along that pathway. Above, a zucchini plant is pictured on the ISS. 

by Alex Innanen

Spring is arriving in fits and starts in Toronto, and that means it’s time to start this year’s seeds and get out in the garden. It would also normally be time to visit a nursery (or five) but this year is a bit different, and my gardening routine has been disrupted by isolation. Which got me thinking about growing plants in an even more isolated location – that’s right, it’s time for space plants!

I know that taking care of my plants, spending time in the garden, can be very relaxing and grounding. The same is true for astronauts. But we haven’t been growing plants in space just because they’re nice to work with. One big reason to grow plants in space is for food. On the ISS, it’s relatively simple to resupply the astronauts with fresh food but think back to early explorers spending months at sea and getting scurvy. If only they had had a grow light and some arugula! Plants have also been suggested as a from of life support – we know that plants recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen, the kind of reverse of what happens in animals where we breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. In addition, wastewater can be used to grow plants, and the same plants then transpire, or release, clean water vapour, which can be condensed and used again.