What is your background and what are you working on at the moment?
I did my undergrad in physics and geology here in the US at Bryn Mawr College, a small women’s college just outside of Philadelphia. I started out doing physics but then had a bit of an existential crisis halfway through. See, I have always enjoyed environmental work. I even spent a year in between high school and college working for an environmental group and volunteering at a rainforest research institute in India during that time too. During college, I realized that I enjoyed environmental work not just as a side thing but potentially as a career as well. Hence I decided to do geology. I got into oceanography through a summer internship and really enjoyed applying physics to study the ocean. After graduating I ended up spending about 2 years working for a paleo-oceanographer doing data analysis and I got to explore the interactions between the ocean and long-term climate. That is also what I do now in graduate school and my 3rd year at Scripps, although in more real time. I study how small-scale surface processes in the ocean influence rainfall, specifically the monsoon in South Asia together with my advisors, professors Janet Sprintall and Jen Mackinnon.
What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
I like that I can go to sea and actually observe all of this data I'm looking at and I’m excited to get more fieldwork experience. I also really enjoy doing physics and the way it teaches you to approach problems and think about the world. You learn how to simplify a problem to its essential parts and think more deeply about the forces influencing our everyday lives. I like getting to practice that kind of thinking when studying such a complex system as the ocean.
When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer?
I don't think I specifically thought about being a scientist when I was a kid. 5-year-old me would not have answered “scientist” to “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. My obsession when I was a kid was ancient civilizations and history. I was also exposed to a lot of popular science shows by my parents who are both engineers but probably wasn’t until high school that I really started to think about going into science as a career. I had a great physics teacher who really encouraged us to think and explore and not just learn things to get a good grade on a test. That was an important experience for me.
Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean?
I grew up in in Singapore and my family is originally from a coastal town in India so I kind of grew up around the ocean. It had a presence in my life even though I didn’t necessarily spend a lot of time at the beach as a kid. It also felt very natural to move into oceanography from geology. It feels like the intersection of so much that I love and care about - physics, climate change and adaptation especially in many parts of Asia which is where I think I’ll want to work in the future.
What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography?
One thing is to be able to be comfortable with uncertainty. I think that the way science is often taught in school is very deterministic. You have a problem, you solve it using a method you’ve learned, you get an answer, and then you’re done. Actual research is much less certain, and you can’t be afraid of not knowing the right answer, because often you don’t. Making mistakes is part of the process and there is a lot more uncertainty in general. That is hard to learn in a class though, you just have to get into it and practice.
I also think it is important to be able to put things in perspective. In oceanography there are so many different connections to everything from climate science to math and social sciences, and there is a lot you can learn from collaborating with other people. To be a little bit curious about the rest of those fields and to be willing to learn from other people is useful. Being able to put your work in a greater context and think about how you fit into the bigger picture, I think is what makes a good scientist and it can help you stay motivated when it sometimes feels like you’re not making much progress.
What does a typical workday look like for you?
I typically spend most of the day working in front of the computer doing data analysis. I'm also just starting out, so I've been spending a lot of time reading papers trying to build a foundational understanding of the things I'm studying and getting started processing and thinking about data from our first cruise in the Arabian Sea.
What drew you to Scripps?
I think a large part of it for me was being able to get to do observational work, that’s what Scripps is known for. I also applied to graduate school during the Zoom/Covid era (fall of 2020 to start in the fall of 2021) so I didn’t really have a feel for the campus and community. The latter is very important for me after coming from a small college where I really enjoyed that. I’m happy that Scripps although it is big also has that kind of small community vibe at times. Plus, I had spent 6 years on the East Coast and wanted a change. I needed a break from the winter…
Is there a particular scientist/person/something that inspires you?
I've definitely been lucky to have a lot of people who have influenced my path and have been great mentors along the way, but I think the one the person that has been with me the longest is my grandmother. She is not a scientist or does anything related to science, but she just has this wealth of knowledge and understanding of the world. A lot of my favorite memories with her are going out to parks and she would point out all the plants and animals she knows. She also jokes that the kitchen is her laboratory. She is just very curious about everything, a scientist in disguise as a grandmother! Seeing her approach to the world around her reminds me that there's so many people who understand nature in different ways; science is just one approach. I also think that a lot of how much I value community has come from her. My grandparents’ house is always open and people are always coming and going. That sense of community, being welcomed and belonging is something I find invaluable, and it is something I want to work to create around me too.
Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you?
I have accumulated a lot of musical hobbies, none of which I’m very good at. Growing up I did classical Indian vocal music and piano, and then I played sitar in high school. I recently started doing taiko drumming too. It is quite physical and requires a lot of precision and alignment, but it is very fun!
Written by: Kerstin Bergentz