LINDA ARTERBURN: OPEN AIR TO NASA CAREER

Linda is a current PhD Student at Georgia Tech.

This week NYSG is highlighting one of our New York Space Grant (NYSG) summer interns Linda Arterburn, who spent her summer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Linda is part of the NASA Pathways Internship Program, which strategically hires interns based on their long-term potential and alignment with NASA’s future workforce needs. The NASA Pathways Internship Program prepares students for a career at NASA and offers a direct pipeline to full-time employment at NASA upon graduation.  

Linda is from Olathe, Kansas. Linda attended and obtained a degree in environmental science with a focus in earth and atmosphere systems with a chemistry minor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in 2022. Linda is currently a first year PhD student at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) focusing on atmospheric chemistry in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Linda has extensive experience researching aerosols and particulate matter, especially through satellite data. 

Linda detailed her experience in undergrad and her current graduate experience. Linda has a unique intersection being a Black woman in STEM. Black individuals make up 11% of the total workforce, but only 9% of the STEM workforce. Black students earned 9% of STEM bachelor’s degrees below their share of all bachelor’s degrees or their share of the adult population.  Women are underrepresented among graduates in math, physical sciences, computing, and engineering. They are more represented in some STEM degree fields, such as health sciences, but only make up about 24% of atmospheric and space scientists. 

Linda mentioned many pushed her to study health sciences instead, as this is a common story amongst women in STEM. She had to fight to continue her path in environmental science. There was a lack of diversity in her major which caused her to feel stuck, making it hard to connect with those in her major. She was able to find some community in soccer and among people outside of her program. Her professors helped make her experience much better after this initial shock. Those professors spent much time making her feel welcomed, creating a sense of belonging and strong mentorship to prepare Linda for her studies and career moving forward. She was eventually able to blossom in her work due to this encouragement from her mentors and friends. 

There weren’t many research opportunities at her university, which required her to look elsewhere. Linda was able to complete four external research opportunities outside of school at institutions like the University of Utah, Colorado State University, and University of California-Berkeley. That first research experience at the University of Utah led to her passion for research, which led to her interest in studying particulate matter, aerosols, and NASA priorities. This experience led to her internship at NASA GSFC. The environment at NASA helped improve her confidence because there was a strong sense of belonging and it made everyone feel like they can be scientists. The experiences of each intern may not be the exact same, but just because they aren't the same, or align with expectations doesn't mean they are not relevant. 

During her NYSG funded internship at the NASA GSFC, Linda worked with Dr. Robert Levy and his group in the Climate and Radiation Laboratory. Her job was to code and interpret data from Purple Air, a low-cost sensor database. The task was to take all the data collected via the geostationary observational environment and satellite from the United States to provide data on different types of aerosols, focusing on concentrations of particulate matter (Pm) 2.5. She observed the concentrations of particulate matter 2.5 and aerosol depth, which is the measurement of all the light extinction occurring in a vertical column in the atmosphere, to understand their relationship. This study bridged the gap between differences in air quality at the surface level versus the practical atmosphere. Just because pm 2.5 is collective service-based measurement system. 

In this study, Linda was working to better understand algorithms, equations, and write code that looked to convert pm 2.5 into aerosols, so we can better understand and compare whole air, soft aerosols, and the boundary layer we live in on Earth. Purple Air proved to be a challenge, so a switch to the open database, OpenAQ, allowed Linda to continue her code to pull data from thousands of sensors around the world to observe a massive dust event that happened over the summer. With time waning, the last portion of the project was to analyze data based on the wildfires that occurred in Canada that made New York City and the entire east coast smoky. This portion of her research lead to the use of different networks to format air collection data and the certificate systems to analyze change over time using satellite data of particulate metadata for wildfires. Linda hopes to present her research findings at the American Geophysical Unions Conference in December. 

Reflecting on the experience, Linda mentioned there were many talented scientists and talented students at her NASA internship this summer. It was a stressful situation at the beginning because others were doing such great work, and she was worried she was not doing enough. However, she did great work and tackled a difficult part of the process. She noted this experience was very humbling but rewarding. She is very happy about her experience because if there were no difficulties in research, we would not have science, and we would not be doing research if failure was not a part of the process. 

Linda hopes to attend another NASA Pathways internship soon at other NASA locations around the country. Eventually, she will return to work at NASA because of the impactful work and the great work environment. She mentioned that the friendly, encouraging, and welcoming environment at NASA built her confidence for the future. Linda mentioned NYSG made it possible for her to see her future at NASA. Once she becomes a NASA employee, she would like to study the atmospheres of other planets.