What’s It Like To be

Geodesist

Please tell our readers a little bit about yourself. My name is Dr. Theresa Damiani. I grew up in Rochester, New York, and spent a lot of time outdoors when I was a kid. My family often went camping and hiking. One of our favorite places was New York’s Watkins Glen State Park, which has beautiful gorges and waterfalls. I was always picking up cool-looking rocks there and bringing them home! Later, my parents signed me up for a summer class about fossils at our local science center. The day we went out collecting fossils is the day I fell in love with geology. In high school, my favorite classes were Earth Science, Physics, Math and English. I went to college at the Pennsylvania State University and majored in geosciences. My first scientific jobs were there at the university, where I worked in professors’ laboratories helping with research projects. I loved it! At Penn State I decided I wanted to be a geophysicist – someone who studies the earth by using instruments to make measurements, rather than collecting rock samples. Geophysicists study earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain ranges and many other interesting features of our planet. To become a professional geophysicist, I moved to Texas and got a doctorate degree from the University of Texas in Austin. While there, I studied Antarctica (that’s the frozen continent at the South Pole, where penguins live). In fact, I was lucky enough to go on an expedition to Antarctica! I lived there and did research for four months. We flew an airplane filled with scientific instruments over a remote part of the Antarctic Ice Sheet that had never been surveyed before. We measured how much ice was there and what the rocks below the ice were made of. After I finished graduate school, I moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the U.S. federal government. I have worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for seven years now as a geodesist. My work now is similar to what I did in Antarctica, but this time we’re making measurements from airplanes all over the United States. In fact, it will take 15 years to make all of our measurements because the U.S. is so big! We are half-way done. What is a geodesist? A geodesist is someone who studies and maps the size, shape and major properties of the earth. They also track how its shape and properties change over time. In other words, they keep track of the locations of points on the earth’s surface and how those points move. The earth’s surface is constantly changing! The tectonic plates move, slowly rearranging the surface of the planet. And the ground sinks and swells both naturally and because people pump water, oil or other resources out of the ground. Geodesists also help people figure out where they are on the planet so they can make sure they do not build their houses in flood zones and they can travel safely – whether on foot, by car, by plane, by train or by boat. What does it take to be a geodesist? An aspiring geodesist first needs to be interested and do well in classes related to the physical sciences, math and/or engineering. In college, most geodesists major in areas like geology, physics, math, geomatics, surveying engineering or aerospace engineering. They then switch to graduate degrees (Master’s or Ph.D.) in geodesy or geophysics after they finish their undergraduate degree. When/How did you know you wanted to be a geodesist? It’s funny, but I didn’t know what geodesists did until I was almost finished with my schooling! It’s a field of study that is often discovered while you’re in college studying similar subjects. I knew I wanted to be a geodesist because the questions we ask and seek to answer about the earth are such big, challenging and interesting questions. Also, our work is critical to commerce, construction and other things humans depend on. It’s rewarding to be able to contribute to society in that way. Why is this work important/how does it apply to everyday life for most people? Geodesy is very important. You use products created by geodesists every day, though most of the time you don’t know it. Geodesists provide coordinates (latitude, longitude, height and shoreline) to map-makers for locations so that maps are accurate. Those maps are used by you when driving and hiking, and also by people doing construction projects and predicting flooding too. Geodesists help figure out which way water flows and make estimates of average sea level around the U.S. Geodesists were also some of the first people to use GPS (the Global Positioning System) for finding accurate positions of things. Now, you use GPS in cell phones and cars all the time to tell you where you are. What is a typical day like for you? Most days I work in an office, at a federal building. I work on teams and by myself. My work involves finding patterns in data on a computer, reading about other people’s work, writing computer code and reports, and figuring out how to answer scientific questions (called hypotheses). I often work on many different projects at once. A few times each year I travel to scientific conferences to give presentations about my work. These conferences are held all over the world. I’ve been to Tasmania, Argentina, Italy, Austria, and many places in the U.S. for conferences. Sometimes I spend a few weeks at a time “in the field.” That means going to different places in the U.S. collecting data from an airplane. Being “in the field” is intense, hard work and very rewarding when everything runs smoothly. What do you most enjoy about your work? I love the opportunity to discover brand new things about the planet we live on, things that add to our basic knowledge of the earth and are useful in our lives. Tell our readers something really cool about your work that most people don’t know. I study…