An Interview with Dr. Rachel Bezanson
Written by Ariel Barreiro
Introduction
Dr. Rachel Bezanson radiates “favorite aunt you spend the summer with” energy, with show stopping silver hair and a cool demeanor. Sitting in her office at the University of Pittsburgh surrounded by posters of deep space, she dives into her exciting work on the James Webb Telescope, JWST, and the life that led her there.
As a child, Bezanson felt destined to become a medical doctor and never considered being a scientist. “I grew up in a college town and my downstairs neighbor was a geologist, so I knew being a scientist was a job, but it never occurred to me that it was a job I could do.”
She entered college as a pre-med but found her classmates cutthroat and self-serving. She tried switching to math but had what she describes as “a movie-like honors class” where the professor told the class, “Look to your left, look to your right, only one of you will make it.” Despite being the one to make it to the end, she still felt it was a similarly unwelcoming environment. Next, she tried an introductory astronomy course and found the community she had been searching for. She says the physics workload was intimidating, but the students were encouraged to collaborate and after a few classes like that, she was ready to make the switch to her third major.
After trying a few research projects through undergrad, Bezanson could not picture research as her life path. After graduation, she taught high school physics at a private school in Brooklyn for four years. By teaching, she says she was able to develop a very deep understanding of physics. However, the career progression would lead to administration, which meant less time in the classroom and more time dealing with the parts of the job she did not care for.
Her mother passed away during her first year of teaching and she had a 14-year-old sister to take care of. This put thoughts of graduate school on the back burner for a couple years. “But I missed figuring things out; I missed doing new physics.”
In her third year of teaching, she knew she needed more and began studying for the GRE. She spent six years total in grad school, including two post-doc positions. She says that’s when imposter syndrome finally began to fade, and she began to feel competitive in her field. The year she spent at Princeton for a post-doc was her most productive, and where she received the most path-altering mentorship.
“I think the importance of mentors cannot be overstated. I owe everything to my mentors.” Bezanson says attending Barnard College of Colombia University – a women’s college – left no doubts that she belonged. The mentors there kept close tabs on the students, providing everything from advice to research opportunities and funding. At every stage she learned to identify who could help in what areas. She says even at Pitt, she has mentors – in fact, it’s a requirement for junior faculty. “Without that network, I would be both uninterested in science and unsuccessful.”
Research
Bezanson is an observational astronomer. Unknown to most not in the field, observational astronomers rarely look through telescopes with their bare eyes anymore. Instead, they participate in remote observing, where a camera is attached to the instrument and takes pictures that can be viewed from just about anywhere. She says astronomy relies on coding, with data coming through as arrays in Python scripts that depict images. “I actually hated my first coding class, like I cried through it, but eventually it clicked.”
Currently, she is leading a few projects for JWST – the James Webb Telescope. The project is called “UNCOVER,” and is an ultra-deep imaging and spectroscopic survey. A survey answers a wide variety of proposed questions. The question that Bezanson’s team is focusing on is how to find the earliest galaxies and properties of the universe. She clarifies that we will not be able to see before or even to the Big Bang. The earliest the instrument will see to is the CMB – the cosmic microwave background. She says there is a period referred to as the Cosmic Dark Ages, which is roughly 500 million years after the Big Bang. “That’s what we think we can see back to; you know plus or minus 200 million years – but what’s that amongst friends?” She jokes.
With the state of the nation, some NASA projects have received a lot of heat as certain groups in America say our tax dollars should be used elsewhere — particularly to address recent social issues. Bezanson says funding projects like JWST is important because it is an expression of human progress. “In some basic way, I think astronomy is a gateway science.” She references the excitement of elementary students when discussing space versus other physical sciences and using that enthusiasm to flame interest in STEM fields later down the line.
Bezanson says her day varies dramatically with one exception – a lot of time is spent on Zoom. This is partially due to international collaborations and partially due to the pandemic changing the way we work. Her day consists of a lot of meetings, talks and teaching. “A lot of reading and writing, which isn’t something I expected as an undergrad.”
Where work-life balance is concerned, she says this is not a job where you go home and forget about your work. “I’m deeply invested in my job; I can’t put it down.” She says she wishes she had a better grasp on maintaining personal time and that the pandemic created an expectation to always be available and working. Deadlines are met with the same voracity as when she was a student during finals – prioritize and do them when their due.
Her advice to undergrad students is to get involved research as early as you can and don’t be put off if the first project you try doesn’t suit you. “Try different kinds, find equivalent field work. Try to make sure you start doing a real version of your career goals.”
The Struggle of Minorities in STEM
There is a myriad of internal and external things that underrepresented communities face in STEM, and Bezanson says part of the issue is a mentality that STEM and physics are accessible. “It starts with microaggressions, a huge hill of tiny things that are hard to ignore when added together. We live in a society that doesn’t exert pressures on everyone the same way. Then there’s overt stuff you have to develop a thick skin for.” She mentions that financial support is a huge problem as well, with students expected to work for free. “Unpaid internships are horse shit.” She says there isn’t nearly enough representation and the way we write about minorities is gendered or obvious, and most of the attention seems performative.
Being a woman in STEM provides little silver lining, like standing out if you’re successful or having shared experiences and struggles creating strong networks among the minorities, but Bezanson doesn’t think a gendered difference in our approach to science is the most important aspect of why we need to diversify.
In order to help the situation, she believes we should strengthen networks, aggressively pursue recruiting (even at the elementary level), make scholarships specifically for the underrepresented and make sure they have access to them. “This isn’t a battle that’s going to get solved soon, and physics is further behind than other fields.”
It’s a long, arduous road to begin to achieve as a woman in science. With the right help and proper motivation – whatever that may be for you – you can get there, and at CCL, our mission is to support high impact experiential learning experiences for undergraduate students, especially from under-represented groups, to prepare them for twenty-first century research and develop careers in STEM disciplines.