Athletics + Academics = A Balanced Life

A challenge for many of us who do science professionally is knowing when to take a break. The engrossing feeling of diving into an all consuming problem can make it hard to remember to come up for air. But scientists are human beings too and we need other interests, connection and to take care of our physical bodies as much as anyone else. This week, our newest lab member Isabelle Marincic writes about how she strives to achieve that balance in her research career.

by Isabelle Marincic

Hello Lab Blog! My name is Izzy, and I’ve just joined the PVL as an MSc student in May 2025. I am so excited to be a part of this amazing group of scientists. I technically began working for Professor Moores in January as an RA, so I have been with the group for around 6 months. Within these first few months, I’ve begun working on projects related mainly to astrobiology (my favourite subject), including biological methane production on Mars and the feasibility of bacteria inhabiting Martian penitentes. I have also begun TA’ing which has been a new and exciting experience that I honestly have really enjoyed. On top of all of this, I am currently writing my first paper with the lab that will hopefully be submitted by the end of the summer! 
 
The reason for sharing all of this is not only to introduce myself, but to lead into the main topic of this blog post. I am an athletically motivated individual, and I strongly believe in a work-life balance. While I deeply enjoy academics and am grateful to be in the position I am, I always make sure to have an outlet that is separate from academia. After the long days of writing and reading papers, all I want to do is get on my feet and go do something that uses mainly my body rather than my brain. Ever since I was young, I’ve always been really athletic. I played soccer, volleyball, ran track and field and cross country, and just enjoyed being active in general. Now that I am a busy adult, finding time to be active is difficult, but it makes my quality of life so much better that I make sure to find time most days of the week to do something that moves my body. For a few years now I have been into weightlifting, which I aim to do three days a week. When I am not lifting in the gym, I am in the climbing gym 3x a week! I have been climbing for just over two years, and I am so thankful I found this sport. Climbing is fun and relaxing but also has such a strong community that I really enjoy being a part of. I have been able to meet so many people and make so many friends because of this sport, and it is extremely important to me to have spaces to meet people as it becomes increasingly difficult as an adult to do so as I get older. Human connection is something I seriously value in my life, and I can foster this through the athletic activities I participate in. 
 
For some reason, people in the climbing community constantly recruit their non-climbing friends to join climbing. I am one of those people. Since joining PVL I was repeatedly asking my lab-mates to come climbing with me. Some of them were eager to climb, while others I eventually wore down <3. This marked the first official PVL climbing outing. Those from the group able to make it out to Basecamp in downtown Toronto got to experience a fun evening of climbing, specifically bouldering! Bouldering is a style of climbing that does not involve ropes or harnesses where routes are set around 15 ft off the ground at their highest point. Mats cover the floor to break your fall, but proper falling technique is still a must-know before getting on the wall! Routes are organized by level of difficulty and use a V-grading system. Often, V0 is the easiest climb, with climbs getting progressively more difficult as the number increases. My lab mates absolutely rocked (pun intended) at our climbing session! While climbing obviously involves strength and endurance, it is 100% a mental sport as well. I have had to overcome mental blocks when attempting a problem which has only made me a stronger climber, and a more confident person. 
 
Getting to enjoy my favourite sport with my new lab mates was a really fulfilling experience as it allowed me to share something I love, and I had the opportunity to build stronger relationships with people I work alongside every day! Please enjoy the group picture from the evening above :)

The Crunch

There comes a point when working on any large project when you can run into roadblocks or motivation can flag. This is almost guaranteed with something as long and as challenging as a PhD. Indeed, statistics suggest that in Canada about a quarter of science and engineering PhD students do not complete their degrees within 9 years (as of 2013). Sometimes, the greatest challenge can arise just before the end in "The Crunch" to finish, as Dr. Kevin Axelrod, our new Postdoctoral Fellow attests in this week's very personal post below. But if you find yourself in this situation, don't loose hope!  As the saying goes, it's often darkest just before the dawn.

(Photo above courtesy of Dr. Axelrod: "The view from the roof of the main building of the Desert Research Institute.  I spent a lot of time up here over five years, all four seasons.  It’s that nice.")

by Dr. Kevin Axelrod

So, it’s been a pretty crazy 12 months.  In January of 2023 (one calendar year before this blog is being posted), I was lying on the couch for two straight weeks in my shared house in Reno, Nevada, recovering from leg surgery, high on hydrocodone, and needing my housemates to get food from the kitchen for me (thanks, Heather and Brie).  Not appearing in the lab at the Desert Research Institute for two full weeks, I still had not completed the experimentation for my second publication of my Ph.D. research at the University of Nevada at Reno.  I still did not have a set date for when I would defend my dissertation and graduate from school, and quite frankly I did not yet know where my life was going.  And, believe it or not, I had never heard of York University.  

I had spent the last year and a half worrying about where my research was headed and how it was going to help me take the next step in life after graduation (if I even graduated).  At this point, I was supposed to be in “the crunch” - the last year of a Ph.D. tenure in which a student is supposed to devote their life, body, mind, spirit, overall being, consciousness, life-force, qi, etc. to their research and nothing else.  Instead, for two weeks, I watched Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime (not sponsored, by the way) while eating chocolate pudding.  Not exactly the demeanor of someone who had spent the last 4.5 years of their life in graduate school and was now supposed to be in the crunch.  Of course, I could not walk and thus could not come into lab to work on my experiments, and I struggled to write anything because most of the time, I could not even sit up.  I felt stuck – I was seriously questioning whether I could graduate in August of 2023, which was a date delayed from a previous goal of May 2023, which was a date delayed from my original goal of December 2022 that I laid out in my prospectus defense.  

This was just 12 months ago.  And now, I am writing a blog for the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory, supervised by Dr. John Moores, at YorkU in Ontario.  Back in January, I would not have guessed that I would be here now. 

So, this blog is not about how cool my Ph.D. research is, a summary of an important meeting or event, or a case study of a planetary atmosphere.  This blog is about Ph.D. students in “the crunch”, who are anxious, unsure of their future, feeling consistently unprepared or inadequate, and always being very busy while still feeling like they get nothing done.    

Hopefully, that is not the case for most Ph.D. students who read this.  Hopefully, most Ph.D. students are constantly ecstatic about their research, enjoying all the once-in-a-lifetime experiences that they had dreamed about since childhood when they first watched Bill Nye the Science Guy or Mythbusters.  That was not me, however, and I know I am not the only one.  I had been working on this one singular project (bioaerosol chemistry, and more specifically pollen chemistry) for 4.5 years, and though it came with a lot of intrigue and enjoyment, I had also made many mistakes, suffered setbacks, and was disappointed with what I viewed to be a low level of progress. As a result, I was feeling very stressed and burned out – I just wanted to finally complete it and move onto new things.

After I got to the point where I could walk again, I returned to the lab with a new motivation - to get my life together.  And that involved two tasks: finishing my research on the volatility of bioaerosol constituents in the atmosphere, and also looking past my Ph.D. and finding a place where I could continue my passion for scientific research on a new project which would allow me to expand my knowledge further.  And I ended up finding such an opportunity with the PVL via a flyer that Dr. Moores posted on the American Geophysical Union website’s career listings.  

Upon my first interview with Dr. Moores, I knew right away that I wanted to join the lab – I was completely overwhelmed when he extended the offer to join.  I accepted.  It would be an exciting change of pace - a new project on the development of a functioning methane spectrometer for the Martian atmosphere (and so far, it has been a very exciting change of pace).  But, in March 2023 when I first interviewed, in the back (and front) of my head was a lingering doubt – would I actually be able to finish my Ph.D. research in time to move to Toronto and start research at YorkU in September 2023?

One thing was for certain – the pressure was on like never before.  Pressure not just to produce manuscripts, but to start a new chapter in life.  To self-improve, if you will.  In my opinion, that was the subject of my dissertation writing, even though self-improvement is never mentioned in it.  

And, for the most part, that pressure was good for me.  It made me more focused and motivated towards my bioaerosol research.  And as my leg improved, so did the state of my dissertation.  By the end of March, I completed the experimentation for my second publication and was busy writing the manuscript for it, while simultaneously taking care of in-lab work for my third research chapter in my dissertation.  By May, I had finished the writing of the publication and was wrapping up the in-lab research.  And by July 10, I was holding my dissertation defense.

Granted, the defense was far from perfect (almost nothing ever is in academia).  The night before was my most disturbed night of “sleep” ever. The morning of, I woke up at 4:30 AM and was instantly wide awake – something that had only happened one other time in my life, which was the morning of my prospectus defense two years earlier.  I held off on coffee that morning because it would have had no effect.  My jitteriness was already at a maximum due to the nervous energy surging through me. 
I was in a state of extreme anxiety.  But, I took solace in the fact that I had given the past year, “the crunch”, my best effort – motivated by my desire to make it to my postdoctoral fellowship.  And if my best effort was not enough, then oh well.    

The defense was an absolute fever dream – I don’t even remember most of it.  But it went well, and after two and a half hours I walked out of the presentation room with the blessings of my committee.  After living in Reno for five years, I was finally going to start a new chapter in life.  Provided, of course, that I take care of a few other things before I left, such as updating some of my writing and attempting to gather some results via a secondary analysis of some of my aerosol samples because one of my previous experiments failed.

But before any of that, I had another immediate task: attending my first in-person conference as a graduate student (no thanks to you, COVID), at the International Conference for Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere (ICCPA) in Berkeley, California.  After my defense, my next task was to drive for four hours (on two hours of sleep) to California.  Though I was driving at night and did not arrive at the conference hotel until 2AM, it was one of the most euphoric drives of my life.  

The next day, I finally got to enjoy an in-person conference, as a reward for passing the defense.  It was a great time – I presented a poster on my research, sat in on an absurd number of exciting platform presentation sessions, met several new people and research groups, and certainly did not skimp on the catered wine.  By all estimates, it was one of the most enjoyable excursions of my time as a graduate student.

And one month later, I stuffed all my belongings into my sedan and left Reno, driving them back to my parents’ house before jumping onto a plane two weeks later.  

I will miss Reno.  I will miss the incredible natural landscapes around Lake Tahoe.  I will miss the excitement that I had back when I first moved there in 2018 as a grad student, realizing that I was about to take part in cutting-edge research for the first time.  And I will also miss a lot of the time I spent in lab over those 5 years.  I am forever grateful that I had a great advisor, a great program director, and great co-researchers and classmates, without all of whom I would not have graduated.  I will forever cherish the research topics that I was able to take part in while at the Desert Research Institute.  But there were certainly things that I will not miss: the many times that I made mistakes in my experimentation, the many re-do’s that needed to be done, the eternal frustration of trial and error, followed by finally obtaining a set of results that I thought were interesting enough to be published (and then writing about them for several months), only to have the manuscript murdered by some very truculent reviewers.  This cycle of frustration made it feel like I was stagnating – that I was not moving forward in research or in life.  It made bioaerosol research, a topic that I intrinsically enjoy, into something that stressed me out.  It’s the part of the scientific method that they do not show on Mythbusters.

So, to any current Ph.D. student who feels the same way right now, I would say: try to think about what you want to do after your graduation, even though it can be difficult to think about.  A visualization of your “next chapter” will get you over the hump.  Scientific research has both excitement and disappointment.  A Ph.D. may sometimes seem like it has more disappointment than excitement.  But after completion, you will feel just like the Mythbusters right after they blow something up: total ecstasy.  And that feeling will fuel my motivation for further research here at YorkU - hopefully I can keep it going for a while.    

PVL Welcomes Three new MSc Students!

This year, three new students are joining PVL at the MSc level through the Physics and Astronomy Graduate Program. Though neither of them worked with the lab in their undergraduate years (and, indeed, come from three different universities) we've already started getting to know them and they us; Grace, Justin and Conor have been able to dial in to our lab meetings over the course of the summer once they moved online due to the pandemic. I know that everyone in the lab is excited to have them join us in an official capacity. They're also keen to introduce themselves to you, dear reader, and wanted to share their experience and hopes for the next couple of years.

Written by Grace Bischof, Conor Hayes and Justin Kerr
Organized by Conor Hayes

Grace Bischof (center in image above) Hi! My name is Grace Bischof and I’m extremely excited to be joining the PVL group as a first year Master’s student this fall. I started my academic career at Western University in London, Ontario and earned my B.S. in physics. I had the privilege of being taught by amazing, passionate physics and astronomy professors who inspired a love for physics (even when it was challenging).  I’m very grateful for the experience I had as an undergraduate student in Physics at Western.

During my undergrad, I participated in research in the area of microfluidics. We designed and tested a T-junction microfluidic device to produce micron-sized beads of human decellularized adipose tissue to be used as a 3-dimensional cell culture method. While I enjoyed the research I participated in, medical physics was not the area of physics that truly interested me.

Like many who do space research, I’ve been captivated with space since I was a kid. When I applied for Master’s programs, I knew that I wanted to do research beyond Earth and was so thrilled to be accepted into this group. In the PVL group, I am going to be involved with the Martian Atmospheric Gas Evolution (MAGE) project. In the lab, we will test an enhanced spectrometer that will (hopefully!) eventually be deployed to Mars to gain a better understanding of the planet’s methane cycle.

I’m looking forward to the next couple of years at York with the PVL group!

Conor Hayes (left in image above) My name is Conor Hayes and I am joining PVL this year as a new Physics and Astronomy M.Sc. student. I received my B.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. My research there, through the Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, was focused primarily on conducting a spectroscopic analysis of five ultra-diffuse galaxy candidates in low-density environments.

My work at PVL will be much closer to home, looking at ices in the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) of the Moon. PSRs are notable because, as their name implies, they receive very little light from the Sun or other sources, which allows them to protect volatiles like water ice against sublimation on geological timescales. Consequently, PSRs can act as a record of the history of volatiles in the solar system in addition to serving as a potential source of important resources for long-term human inhabitation of other celestial bodies.

When I applied for York’s Physics and Astronomy graduate program, my intent had been to complete the M.Sc. by Coursework degree. However, when I was contacted about the possibility of joining PVL, that plan changed quickly. Although I’ve not yet had substantial experience in planetary science (as it was not an area of much focus in the Department of Astronomy at Ohio State), the study of planets, particularly those closest to home, has held my fascination for quite some time. Consequently, I had to jump on this opportunity when it arose.

Justin Kerr (right in image above) Hi everyone, my name is Justin Kerr and I am a new M.Sc. student with the PVL through York’s Physics and Astronomy program. I am no stranger to York University, as I did my undergrad in Physics and Astronomy here as well. My previous research during that degree primarily consisted of particle physics, with my main project involving searching for magnetic monopoles using the Large Hadron Collider with the ATLAS collaboration. I also hold a BA in History which I completed before returning to university to study physics; my primary areas of interest at the time were Viking Age Scandinavia and medieval Europe. I am now looking forward to bringing my varied experience to the PVL for work in planetary physics.

My work at the PVL will consist of two projects. The first will involve joining the team in the development and testing of the Mars Atmospheric Panoramic camera and Laser Experiment (MAPLE). This project aims to use low-power lasers and a small panoramic camera system to detect small dust and ice particles near the Martian surface. I will also be working on modelling exoplanet atmospheres to determine the size of their “geocorona” (a term normally used to refer to the bubble of hydrogen in the outermost part of Earth’s atmosphere, extending past the orbit of the moon). It is expected that exoplanets possessing water would have an exosphere equivalent to Earth’s geocorona, but we do not yet know whether the size of it is affected by the presence of life. The goal of the project will be to determine what features of these exoplanet “geocoronas” future telescopes should look for as a biosignature when hunting for life-bearing exoplanets. I can’t wait to get started on these two exciting projects with the PVL, and look forward to telling you more about them over my time here.

Space from Across the Pond

 Our newest recruit, MSc Candidate Hemani Kalucha, introduces herself in this post reflecting back on what she did this past summer before joining the PVL.

By Hemani Kalucha

Last summer, I had the opportunity to work at the European Space Agency centre in Leiden, The Netherlands. There are a few charming eccentricities about this place that really define the Dutch experience. To start off, the Dutch bike everywhere. By this I mean, the town of Leiden is only a few km square, practically the size of a university campus if you will, and walking around is a game of constantly dodging the wave of ever-present bikers whizzing past you. The undeniably flat and uniform landscape here is a gift, and they use it well. 

They are also the most skilled bikers I have ever seen. The first few times my friend and I tried to bike to work, we were shamefully slow compared to the locals. At my most embarrassing, a guy with no hands on his bike handles, not looking at the road, texting on his phone, pedaled faster than me with ease. It has been surprising to learn the impressive range of a bike. Briefly, I have seen someone roll along their suitcase while biking, walk their horse while biking, carry two other people on their bike, connect two bikes to carry a wooden panel, you get the idea. 

As a result of all this biking, Holland has some of the most expensive and interesting bike paths in the world. From the few that I’ve tried out, one was a bike trail through sand dunes and a network of old war bunkers called the Atlantic Wall, one involved biking over a dam with the bright blue sea on both sides, and another used to be a NATO air base runway! The Dutch love their boats as much as they love their bikes. The maze of canals that line the streets of Leiden are forever filled with boat picnics, completely ignorant of my North American perception of a work schedule. I say this a little out of jealousy, but mostly out of respect for their approach to work life balance. 

From Spacetime to Space and From Plasma to Planets: The Journey to a Master’s Degree

This week, we have an innaugural post from a new student here at the PVL. Solomon Segal joins us from Queen's University and shares his journey with you below.

By Solomon Segal

The path to finding work one enjoys is never an easy one, however this should never deter people from trying! As an undergraduate student I knew I wanted to do a Master’s degree, but I also knew I could only do one if the research was captivating. This posed a dilemma seeing as my undergraduate research experiences left me with varying views in their respective fields and made me wonder what research I would truly enjoy?

If you yourself are an undergraduate student reading this and commiserate with these sentiments, then you might be interested to hearing how a student like myself ended up working in the Planetary Volatiles Lab.

As a high school student applying to various universities for physics, I wish someone had pulled me aside and told me that some physics faculties concentrate more funding to certain areas and thus many professors focus on specific fields. Granted, with my high school physics knowledge I barely knew how to solve F=ma let alone comprehend what these fields were, but it would have been nice to be aware of this fact.

Introducing our new Postdoc

Introducing our newest addition to PVL, Dr. Paul Godin who comes to us from the University of Toronto! Paul specialized in laboratory-based research in the atmospheric sciences, and will now apply that strong base to the atmospheres of other worlds. The image above is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and depicts IR absorptions both of the atmosphere (top) and of select molecules (bottom).

by Paul Godin

Hello World! My name is Paul and I’m the newest member of the PVL, so I should probably introduce myself, eh? I just completed my PhD in physics at the University of Toronto studying the radiative impacts of several chemicals on the atmosphere, using a metric known as a global warming potential (GWP). A GWP is the measure of the radiative forcing of a pulse emission of one kilogram of gas over a defined period of time (commonly taken to be 100 years), relative to an identical pulse emission of carbon dioxide. Radiative forcing is defined as the net change of radiation at the tropopause; positive radiative forcing means more radiation directed towards the surface (leading to higher surface temperatures), whereas negative radiative forcing corresponds to a net cooling effect.

The radiative forcing of a molecule depends largely on two main factors, the absorption spectrum of the molecule and the absorption profile of the atmosphere. The absorption spectrum of a molecule is a result of the quantum mechanical interactions within the molecule, thus the structure and composition of a molecule will dictate at what wavelengths of light the molecule can absorb. The atmospheric absorption spectrum is the sum of the absorption spectra of all the species present in the atmosphere (largely made up of water, carbon dioxide, ozone, nitrogen, etc.). The atmospheric absorption spectrum for the infrared (wavelengths associated with outgoing radiation) is shown in the top half of the figure at the start of this article. As can be seen, the atmosphere normally absorbs a significant fraction of outgoing radiation, but also has a region where it doesn’t naturally absorb radiation (8-13 μm), which is known as the atmospheric window. This is great for life on Earth; we need to trap some of the radiation to keep the planet from being frozen, but also allows enough heat escape that we don’t turn in to a furnace (i.e. Venus).

An Opportunity to Expand my Curiosity of Mars

An example of the X-ray spectra you’d see from a supermassive black hole vs. the one our new MSc Student Charissa Campbell was researching in her undergraduate studies. (Gallo, 2011, JRASC, 105,143) While many of our students have previous research experience, this is not true for all. Still it has been an added plus for our newest recruit from St. Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 

by Charissa Campbell

After 5 years, I successfully finished my Bachelor of Science degree but I could not tell if I wanted to continue with my studies or not. The final year of my degree was intense, filled with 6 classes a semester, working a part-time job as well as completing my undergraduate thesis which involved weekly research. All I could think of during that time was why on earth I had decided to do this field of work. However, at the same time, receiving my Bachelor degree in May 2016 was a great accomplishment and I appreciated the degree much more.

To be honest though, when the time came around to apply to graduate studies, I had no idea if I wanted to repeat the process I was currently going through. Sleepless nights, typical college food and one assignment after another. Since applications were due in early 2016, I figured, why not apply anyways and see what happens.

Since I did my undergraduate thesis on high-energy astrophysics, this was all I knew, research wise. So I applied across Canada for high-energy research, specifically on Active Galactic Nuclei. However, one day I got an email from Dr. John Moores asking if I’d be interested in planetary science. At first, I wasn’t sure what to think or if I’d even respond as I didn’t know anything about planetary science since it wasn’t in any of my studies at Saint Mary’s university. But then the voice inside my head said I’d be crazy if I didn’t take any opportunity that came my way, especially since I have been interested in Mars research from a young age.

An Experimental Life

Abdelkrim Toumi is a new postdoctoral fellow here in the Lab who started with us in September. Originally from Corsica, he completed his PhD studies at Aix-Marseille in France.

By Abdelkrim Toumi

As a new member of the “Planetary Volatiles Laboratory” group for my first postdoctoral fellowship, everything was new to me when I arrived a month ago. First, the environment… I left my family, friends and my home country (France) to live and work in Canada. The day of my arrival (so after a very, very long trip), I put my feet on the American continent for the first time of my life. It was really a shocker! Everything is bigger here than in France: buildings, streets and even the trucks. It is pretty much a new scale life for me because I come from a little town in Corsica. Luckily for me, the French culture is also present here: from indications in the subway to the food I buy in the supermarket. That made me more comfortable.