{"id":31886,"date":"2019-07-26T11:21:28","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T15:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/?p=31886"},"modified":"2020-02-06T15:54:24","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T19:54:24","slug":"a-conversation-with-mika-mckinnon-freelance-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/a-conversation-with-mika-mckinnon-freelance-scientist.htm","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with Mika McKinnon, Freelance Scientist"},"content":{"rendered":"

So much of what many field scientists and engineers do hinges upon their ability to communicate the value of their work. Communicating the value of science, generally, is part of that process\u2014one that Mika McKinnon has down cold. We spoke with<\/span> geophysicist Mika McKinnon<\/span><\/a> about her work as a freelance scientist, and what it’s like to do work that touches on science communication in so many areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Freelance science and doing disasters<\/span><\/h3>\n

At first blush, what<\/span> Mika McKinnon<\/span><\/a> actually does might seem confusing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, I swear, freelance scientist, real job,\u201d quips Ms. McKinnon. \u201cI often describe myself as having a non-linear career path. In grad school, I quit out of my research lab but didn\u2019t actually quit out of school, and just kind of went into a holding pattern trying to figure out what was I going to do with my life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Feeling the throes of an existentialist crisis as a graduate student in the geosciences department, Ms. McKinnon realized she was less motivated by money, so mineral exploration or oil research work was not of interest to her.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThinking about it, my ultimate motivation is I need to feel like my work has made the world a better place,\u201d details Ms. McKinnon. \u201cI need to feel like the end result of what I have done has made the world less terrible. And that turned out to be disaster work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The goal became to better understand how disasters happen, how people interact with disasters, and how to communicate that information to decision-makers in ways that help people.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"freelance

Fieldwork site where slope stability is being investigated. (Photo provided by Mika McKinnon)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIf I can do that, then I\u2019ve made the world less bad,\u201d remarks Ms. McKinnon. \u201cFewer people may die, and fewer people may be stressed out and unhappy. There is less damage. We are finding a way to survive on this planet, these tiny little fragile creatures in a giant, different hostile universe. Cool. That\u2019s what I needed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. McKinnon researched large-scale landslides in graduate school.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to go into government work, but there was a huge hiring freeze on, and I got hired for 15 days a year,\u201d Ms. McKinnon describes. \u201cIt\u2019s awfully hard to do that much meaningful work or pay rent on 15 days a year. So I had to figure out other ways I could contribute to science with the skillset, knowledge, and expertise I have.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. McKinnon still does disaster work whenever possible, but now focused more on science communication.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI figured out that if I can be curious and excited in public, I can give other people permission to be curious and excited in public,\u201d remarks Ms. McKinnon. \u201cLittle tiny humans start off curious about everything. They have to learn what fingers and toes are; they need to figure out shadows. They have to learn about the entire universe. Unfortunately, often by the time they grow up, we\u2019ve taught them to be embarrassed about curiosity, about saying, \u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 or learning something new, or investigating something because they think they need more information to make a decision. We\u2019ve taught them that at some point you\u2019re done learning. But if I can still be curious and excited about finding out something new, it gives other people permission to continue to engage with that curiosity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"freelance

Fieldwork. (Photo provided by Mika McKinnon)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

This is how Ms. McKinnon began doing applied communication work, and it is also the common thread with much of her film industry consulting work.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve been a government contractor for <\/span>FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency<\/span><\/a>, where my job was to help them determine what science supports what actions during or before a disaster, and how to best teach Emergency Managers enough science to make better decisions\u2014for example, things like a tsunami being more than one wave,\u201d comments Ms. McKinnon. \u201cAnd all of this comes back to that same idea of curiosity, and by doing that I developed an overlap of expertise of working with the Earth and doing hazard assessments\u2014I never gave up my beloved landslides.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Blasting off<\/span><\/h3>\n

When it comes to curiosity and excitement about science, few areas rival space exploration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m also working on space because it turns out everybody thinks space is exciting,\u201d jokes Ms. McKinnon. \u201cWe all watch sci-fi. Star Trek is inspiring.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In this area, Ms. McKinnon engages in a combined application of real-world or Earth-based positive assessment and space expertise.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, when the <\/span>European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Rosetta mission 67P<\/span><\/a> dropped the <\/span>Philae lander<\/span><\/a> it landed next to a cliff, legs in the air, and died,\u201d states Ms. McKinnon. \u201cWe never want that to happen again, so we want to develop a package that we can put onto the robots that could help them determine where to safely locate their samples.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"freelance

Portrait of freelance scientist, Mika McKinnon (Photo provided by Mika McKinnon)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The NASA-funded project Ms. McKinnon is working on now, <\/span>ESPRESSO<\/span><\/a>, focuses on adapting terrestrial landslide models to be able to predict how they\u2019re going to behave in their other environments in order to learn more about the physics of landslides on asteroids.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is on the edge of research, where we are now,\u201d states Ms. McKinnon. \u201cThe bigger they are, the more oddly landslides behave. Really big landslides act more like a fluid than rocks and behave differently when they\u2019re in motion than when they\u2019re still. They are doing fundamentally different things, and they\u2019re really difficult to sample, because what would you sample? The boulder, the tree trunks, the mud? And you\u2019d have to sample it in situ, when it\u2019s moving, which is a very difficult thing to do while keeping everybody alive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, the team builds small sandbox experiments and attempts to make analogies between what happens in the experiments and what they observe in real life\u2014bringing the lessons of field science to space, in some sense.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPretty soon we\u2019re going to be loading a sandbox into a vacuum chamber on an aircraft to create a microgravity environment, and suddenly I\u2019ll be able to do sandbox experiments to see how they would actually behave on an asteroid,\u201d comments Ms. McKinnon. \u201cIf I know how the little sandboxes on Earth are akin to the great big, huge ones on Earth, and I know how little, tiny sandboxes on asteroids behave, then hopefully, I can predict how huge landslides on asteroids should behave.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The ability to make these kinds of connections matters to anything from mining ventures to space exploration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are Earth and Venus so different from each other, when in terms of how we evaluate exoplanets they\u2019re both inside the habitability zone?\u201d Ms. McKinnon queries. \u201cIf we were looking at this solar system from far away, we\u2019d say, \u2018Oh, both those planets, same deal.\u2019 And yet they are so dramatically different.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Science for storytelling<\/span><\/h3>\n

Ms. McKinnon enjoys consulting in science fiction because it is a challenge to be given a situation or storyline and find science to make it plausible. \u201cThe storyline is going to be what it\u2019s going to be,\u201d remarks Ms. McKinnon. \u201cI don\u2019t get to veto something. They\u2019re going to do it. I have to find a way to make it plausible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI had an episode in <\/span>Stargate Universe<\/span><\/a> where they wanted to have a big pulsar kill everybody every 22 minutes: pulse, pulse, pulse, death, death, death,\u201d relates Ms. McKinnon. \u201cBut pulsars rotate on milliseconds. They\u2019re lighthouses of death, but very, very fast\u2014much, much, faster. If you try and slow them down, the electromagnetic field also weakens, until you get to the point where it\u2019s about as deadly as holding magnets and doing cartwheels. Yes, there\u2019s an electromagnetic field, but nobody is going to notice at all, much less die.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. McKinnon\u2019s idea was to reach out into the broader universe and theorize.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"freelance

Mika in a forest landscape. (Photo provided by Mika McKinnon)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018I\u2019m not really seeing anything like this in any solar systems we\u2019ve found\u2014so far. But there\u2019s no reason we can\u2019t do this. Let\u2019s have a starving pulsar with a feeder star in a binary system where the feeder star come just close enough every 22 minutes for the pulsar to rip off gas and plasma from it. It then goes across the boundary between being quiescent and active, goes pulse, pulse, pulse, kills everybody, and that feeder star goes zipping back out of reach again. The pulsar uses up its tiny bit of gas and plasma and it goes quiet again. We\u2019ve never seen anything like it, but it\u2019s plausible,\u2019\u201d details Ms. McKinnon. \u201cThree years later, astronomers found a system that behaves that way. So we got to play with it in sci-fi before we saw it in real life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. McKinnon sees bringing science into entertainment as a way to influence real-life in numerous ways, from Star Trek communicators inspiring inventors to everyday movies educating children.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI did <\/span>‘No Tomorrow,’<\/span><\/a> a romantic comedy on Netflix about the end of the world with amazingly accurate asteroid deflection techniques,\u201d details Ms. McKinnon. \u201cYou could have taken screenshots or clips from this and used them as homework assignments in a grad-level asteroid deflection class.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Including an accurate asteroid deflection in a romantic comedy may seem less necessary than it does for a sci-fi audience, but Ms. McKinnon sees value in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people say things like, \u2018I don\u2019t like math,\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m not good at science,\u2019 or \u2018I hate school,\u2019\u201d remarks Ms. McKinnon. \u201cThose are popular sentiments, but people enjoy stories. In fact, most of how we learn is through stories. So if you can have plausible, good science in entertainment, not only does it support the story by creating a more plausible worldview that doesn\u2019t break our suspension of disbelief, but it also acts as a form of subversive education, where people can learn through the stories they consume.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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