James Allen (616/MSU) is among the four scientists featured in the latest NASA GSFC Early Career Scientist Spotlights. The NASA Goddard Association of Postdoctoral and Early Career Scientists (NGAPS+) compiles these spotlights monthly, highlighting research, motivation, and accomplishments across four divisions of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate: Earth Sciences, Astrophysics, Heliophysics, and Planetary Sciences.
Dr. Allen provides informative and insightful responses to the interviewer, such as this aspect of enjoying his work: "I also love the cross-pollination. There’s such a wide range of expertise that ideas travel in surprising directions. For example, I’ve been able to incorporate workflows that astrophysicists use to study galaxy formation for my own ocean remote sensing. And I’ve even had the chance to help out with modeling cosmic dust in our solar system with my own ocean particle models, which sounds like a big stretch until you realize that in both cases, we’re just trying to infer the properties of tiny particles from the way they interact with light!"