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This is The Discovery Files podcast
from the U.S.
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National Science Foundation.
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The future
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of the science, technology, Engineering
and Mathematics Enterprise will require
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input from all sorts of unique individuals
to achieve its utmost potential.
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Innovation in the makeup of the Stem
workforce will come from individuals
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representing a wide variety
of neurocognitive perspectives.
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We're joined by Keivan Stassun,
the Stevenson Chair in Physics
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and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University,
where he also serves
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as director of the center
for Autism and Innovation.
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His work advocating for diversity
in STEM was recently acknowledged
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with the genius grant,
the MacArthur fellowship.
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Professor Stassun,
thank you for joining us today.
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My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
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So I'd like to start with a little bit
of background, and I want to ask you
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when or how did you know
you wanted to be an astronomer?
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Oh, gosh.
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Well, the honest answer
is that all through high school,
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I was obsessed with the idea
of becoming an astronaut.
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And I learned that, at least at that time,
the best chance
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I would have for joining the astronaut
corps would be to become a military pilot.
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So I went through the process of getting
myself admitted to the Naval Academy,
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and I even attended for the first summer
for basic training and summer.
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They call it.
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Decided after that
that my military career wasn't
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the path that I was going to want.
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And so I went to University
of California, Berkeley instead,
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and I found myself there asking,
so if I'm not going to go up into space,
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what am I going to do?
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Instead, I decided that studying
the stars would be the next best thing.
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And, I don't regret it.
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Keeping on the astronomy theme to begin
here.
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What keeps
you excited about working in the field?
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Like, is it the sense of discovery,
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the endless possibilities
that are out there? Yes.
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You know, to put it generally,
that's certainly true.
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I mean, I think that's probably true
of every scientist or engineer.
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There is that sense of all the things
we don't yet know that that's out there
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to discover.
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With astronomy specifically,
I wake up every morning literally excited
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about the possibility
of discovering some new Earth out there
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that might be habitable,
might even be inhabited.
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That is tremendously exciting to me.
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The idea that within my own lifetime,
you know, we may come to know
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of another place out there
that is like our own planetary home,
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where we may yet
discover the signs of other life,
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maybe even a place that we could imagine
people here eventually going there.
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We are living in a time
where science fiction is becoming more
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and more science fact, and it's something
that specifically is very exciting to me.
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Thinking about your work.
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Is there any particular discovery
that you're
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proud of or feel like
is your favorite to share with people?
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Oh yeah, actually there is.
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I'm proud of a lot of the work
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that I and my research team
have done over the years, but there is one
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that in my mind, just brings together
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so much about unexpected discovery.
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On the one hand, involving talented
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students from different backgrounds
and different abilities and perspectives.
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On the other hand, all in one.
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So some years ago, about ten years ago
now, my research
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team and I were working with data
from NASA's Kepler spacecraft.
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Which was collecting data on lots
and lots of stars
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in our galaxy
to look for planets orbiting those stars.
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It was an exemplar hunting
mission, and I had in my research group
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at that time, an autistic student
in computer science at Vanderbilt
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also had, an African-American student
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who had joined my lab through
a partnership program that I helped create
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with Fisk University, together
with Vanderbilt here in Nashville.
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And the autistic student
working in my group
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developed a new way of analyzing
the Kepler telescope data,
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literally turning the light signals
that the telescope collected into sound,
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so signifying the data
which gave us a new way
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of just sort of quote unquote,
looking at the data and understanding it.
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And with that tool that he invented, my
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PhD student was able to make
a completely unexpected discovery,
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which is that
it turns out we can accurately determine
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the sizes and ages of stars
just on the basis of what
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we came to call light flickering or sound
flickering in the stars data.
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This had not been known before, and
we published this in the journal nature.
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In the process,
the student who led that work became
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the first African American woman ever
to lead in astrophysics paper in nature
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and the data analysis tool
that my autistic student had developed
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became licensed by NASA
for use in their data analysis work.
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So you see what I mean?
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Unexpected discovery.
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Involvement of talented students
with lots of different abilities
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and backgrounds and perspectives. On one.
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It was that that meant a lot to.
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Me, and it's the kind of work
that has some legs where that technique,
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I'm sure, is
then used on many other kinds of projects.
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Right? That's right. Very cool.
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So that kind of leads into the next area
I want to ask you about.
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And that's thinking about neurodiversity
in science.
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Can you talk a little bit
about how you became interested in that.
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And and maybe for the general public
that's not thinking about it.
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Why it's important. Yeah.
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My own journey in this direction
began from a very personal place.
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My first born son is autistic,
was diagnosed
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with autism when he was 4 or 5 years old,
for several years thereafter.
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You know, again, just in my personal life,
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you know, that experience as a parent,
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was shaped entirely by trying
to figure out how to support my son.
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And, you know, what he needed.
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So, you know, early interventions
and supports
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and helping him
be ready for the world of school and just,
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you know, sort of all of that early
little kid stuff, which is so important.
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But eventually
I began to think about his own future.
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And, you know, what his experience
would be like in life as an adult
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and beginning
to see alongside his support needs,
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which will be there forever,
beginning to see real, unique abilities.
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You know, the away that he had of sort of
seeing the world, of recognizing patterns
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and things, noticing things
that most people would miss.
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And I began to wonder
if there was an opportunity for the world
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to benefit from these unique abilities
that I was able to see as his father.
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Could the world right learn how to better
recognize and enlist these abilities
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at the same time that we are learning
to better support people like him?
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And so that inspired me to begin
intentionally
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recruiting autistic students
at Vanderbilt into my research group,
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which gave me an opportunity to learn
how to manage a neurodiverse team,
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you know, beyond a diverse team,
a neurodiverse team in particular,
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which meant not only for me
as a supervisor
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and advisor and manager,
you know, learning how to work with
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more and
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different kinds of people,
but also helping
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everyone on my team understand
how to interact with one another
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so that everyone was enabling
and enlisting the best of each other.
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Right?
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So that was a real learning opportunity
for me.
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But also,
you know, had the opportunity to witness
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firsthand how real, unique
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and impactful scientific
discoveries are enabled
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when we recognize
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and enlist and support
all different kinds of minds.
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Right.
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There's a human diversity of mind
that we need to fully leverage
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if we're going to have the best chance
of tackling the grand challenges
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that we face as a society.
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Absolutely.
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You need all those fresh perspectives and
and people
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that'll, like, kind of flip something over
and look at it from a little bit
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of a different angle, right.
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So as part of this journey for you,
you've started the first center
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for Autism and Innovation.
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Can you talk a little bit about that
center itself? Yes.
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So about six years ago
now, together with colleagues
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in the School of Engineering and
the business school here at Vanderbilt,
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we launched this, academic research
center called the Frist Center for Autism
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and Innovation,
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named after a philanthropic family that
generously helped to endow the center.
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And in looking at where
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we could make the most sort of value
add to the world of autism research
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and related work,
you know, what we saw is that for decades,
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there has been a large amount
of investment
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and development of expertise
and programs and interventions,
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largely around early years, early
diagnosis, early interventions,
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clinical approaches and supports,
all of which has been hugely important.
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That's important to acknowledge,
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but where
there has been much less investment
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and development of expertise and programs
and supports and interventions,
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is around transitions
to adulthood and transitions
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to independence
and transitions into the workforce,
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including and particularly
the STEM workforce.
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And so we launched the first center
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for Autism and Innovation in the School
of Engineering and in collaboration
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with the business school,
with the idea that we can bring in
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engineering and hard science
to bear on developing technologies
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that support individuals
in making those transitions
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to adulthood and independence
and access to meaningful employment.
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And at the same time, we can be working
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to build real pipeline and to employment,
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in part through better
equipping individuals to be successful
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in accessing work,
but also working with employers,
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including specifically companies
and other employers
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who are seeking
Stem talent right for the Stem workforce.
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That's where we wanted the Frist center
for Autism and Innovation
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to be operating technology development
and transforming the workplace.
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Inspired by the human diversity of mind
and enabling access
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for individuals, and enabling access
for those who seek to employ
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those talented individuals. Very cool.
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One of the specific programs
I know has been very successful there
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I wanted to ask you about.
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It's the Frist center's
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PhD program in neurodiversity
inspired science and engineering.
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Can you tell us a little bit
about the success of that program?
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Yeah, I'm very proud of that.
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And I want to clearly acknowledge
and thank the National Science Foundation
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for the NSF Research Traineeship
Grants, the NRT grant
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that we received
to help create this interdisciplinary
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PhD program, develop a set of graduate
seminar courses to support it.
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And, of course, the ability
that that Grant gave us to recruit
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students, support them with stipends
and all the rest.
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But the Neurodiversity Inspired Science
and Engineering, or Nice program
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was developed with the idea
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that especially
but not only for neurodivergent students,
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in science and engineering,
having an interdisciplinary PhD program
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that would support them in their journey
toward a PhD.
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In coming up with ideas, inventions,
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technologies, scientific approaches,
and algorithms, all the kinds of things
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that PhD students do
in the course of their doctoral training.
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But to invite students to be thinking
creatively
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about those things research
projects, dissertation projects
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that would intentionally
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include their neurodiverse perspectives,
we believed,
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and it had been borne out
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after five years of running the program,
that we would be able to better recruit
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neurodiverse students
to better support them,
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and have better outcomes
in terms of their own PhD completion.
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But also just
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the great discoveries and innovations
that they would create along the way.
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For example,
we have had PhD students who have designed
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virtual reality platforms
that teach autistic adults
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how to engage in social communication
that will allow them to be
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more successful in gaining employment
and being successful on the job.
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We have had PhD students who have created.
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This has nothing to do with autism per se,
but bringing their creative perspective.
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Have designed and patented detector
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for mining a rare earth
material from asteroids that
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and we have, an
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autistic woman,
who is finishing her PhD now
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in biophysics, who, based on her own lived
experience, has designed
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and is commercializing an ear implant
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that will allow individuals
to fine tune their auditory experience
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if they have auditory sensitivities
that can create challenges for them
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as they move through the world,
you know, much more
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intelligently than a simple noise
canceling headset, right?
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I mean, by inviting that creativity
and that inventiveness that springs
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from one's own lived experience,
we're seeing a tremendous outcomes.
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As just one more example, we have
an autistic man in our neuroscience
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PhD program
because participating in our Nice program
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and our program, who,
when he completes his PhD in neuroscience
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in a couple of years,
he will, to our knowledge,
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become the world's
first non-verbal autistic neuroscientist.
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Think about that.
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These are outcomes and opportunities
that are now possible
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because of the advent of technologies
that we didn't have available to us
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even ten years ago.
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And, you know, these folks are changing
the world, changing
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how we understand
the very nature of the human mind.
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Right?
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Because they are now able to bring
and communicate and express
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and share their unique perspectives
and their inventiveness and creativity.
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It's really cool because maybe even 20
or 30 years ago like that wouldn't.
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Happen, right?
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The path to that opportunity
wouldn't exist, right?
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The time. It's so cool.
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And this work has been acknowledged
in a big way.
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This year. You got the MacArthur
fellowship.
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Can you talk a little bit about
your experience getting the genius grant?
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What was that like?
What does that mean to you?
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Oh my goodness.
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Well,
I mean, first of all, just what an honor.
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And, you know, it's the kind of thing
that I think you can't expect.
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I mean, it's not something you apply for,
and it's
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such an out, outrageous
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recognition
that I certainly never imagined it coming.
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It was very unexpected
and and just a tremendous surprise.
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But a great honor.
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One of the things that I am grateful
for about it
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is that it gave me an opportunity
to talk about this work
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that we've been discussing,
and to talk about it in the terms
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that the MacArthur
fellowship is intended for,
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which is about creativity,
you know, sort of creative genius.
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And I don't mean to apply that to myself
necessarily, but rather
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that the work
that I do as an astrophysicist,
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but also as a developer of Stem talent,
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is really very much inspired
by the idea that creative genius
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is out there and oftentimes
in unexpected forms or in ways
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that we in the past
have not understood how to recognize.
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I think of that actually
as sort of my life's work,
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beyond my legacy as a scientist and the
scientific discoveries that I'm a part of.
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It's all learning
how to recognize and enlist human talent
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for scientific discovery in new ways,
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recognizing creative genius
in new and different ways and new forms.
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The MacArthur gave me an opportunity
to speak to
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that work that I find so meaningful,
and to speak to it in those terms.
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I think that was important.
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Now, you mentioned NSF support
slightly earlier,
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and I like to try to work that in
since we're yeah, where we are right now.
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What difference has things
like your career award
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made to the trajectory of your career
itself?
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Like what difference has the NSF support
made for you?
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It is not an exaggeration for me to say
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that NSF support
throughout my scientific career,
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from the very beginning to
this day, has fueled,
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00:17:00,452 --> 00:17:05,524
has accelerated, has enabled in ways
otherwise not possible
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that every stage and at every turn
in my career NSF support has been
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the enabler, has been the fuel has been
the accelerate technology.
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Yeah.
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As a graduate student,
I received a graduate research fellowship
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from NSF that gave me a recognition and
and premature,
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but also a certain amount of independence
to be able to shape
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my own PhD experience in ways
that I might not have
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otherwise been able to,
including as a graduate student
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undertaking some professional
and leadership development activities
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that would later position me to be able
to, for example,
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create the partnership program
between Vanderbilt and Fisk
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that has become one of the top producers
of PhDs to underrepresented
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minorities and neurodiverse
people in the physical sciences.
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The ability that I had to develop
that work
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as a part of my NSF career,
grant supported early career work
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was very much enabled by NSF support of me
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as a PhD student to begin learning
those leadership development skills,
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and then later the NSF partnerships
first right
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I in astrophysics research and education,
the pair grant
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00:18:19,264 --> 00:18:24,436
that we receive to really build out
and scale up and institutionalize
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the Fisk, Vanderbilt Partnership
program was critical for taking
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what was initially an individual
Pi project, but
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really scale it up and institutionalize it
into what it has now become
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all the way to now, the active
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NSF Research Traineeship grant
that has allowed us to create and operate
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the Neurodiversity Inspire Science
and Engineering PhD program.
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These have been NSF supports
to me as an individual,
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00:18:52,064 --> 00:18:55,901
but even more important
to the sort of the Institute symbolization
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and scale up and model development
kind of work that has enabled
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not just the support of me as
an individual scientist, but the creation
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00:19:04,743 --> 00:19:09,448
and dissemination of model programs
that touch lots and lots of lives.
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It has all been enabled
and fueled and accelerated by NSF support.
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So my last question here
is thinking about the future.
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What do you see ahead in your work
or more broadly,
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if you want to, I'll, I'll leave
how you answer this question.
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Up to you.
But what do you see in the future?
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What makes you optimistic about
what's coming up in the next few years?
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Well, I'll give you an astrophysics answer
and I'll give you a human talent answer,
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because I think very much and very hard
about both of those things.
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On the astrophysics front, I am excited.
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Literally every morning
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I wake up just filled with excitement
about the discoveries
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that I know are right on our horizon
around habitable worlds.
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Signs of life elsewhere in the universe.
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I mean, these are real discoveries
that are waiting to be made,
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and they feel like
they're right around the corner.
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And to have a front row seat
and to be actively involved, to have my
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fingers literally.
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And the data that we're collecting to make
those discovery is this.
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Oh, I just it feels like
I'm a kid in a candy shop with that.
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And at the same time,
I feel so privileged to be
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working at a time when we are learning
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how to recognize human talent
for the science and technology
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00:20:29,394 --> 00:20:31,997
workforce needs
that we're going to have now,
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00:20:31,997 --> 00:20:35,968
and that we're going to have more and more
through this century, learning
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how to recognize human talent in new ways,
where we didn't know
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how to recognize talent in the past,
that human diversity of mind that we need,
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and learning how to recognize
and support it, that excites me, too.
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It fills me with that very human
kind of hope
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that we really will be able to tackle
and solve big, big challenges
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that only scientists and engineers
and technologists can solve.
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There is a depth and a breadth
to the talent
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that exists in the diversity of human mind
that is available to us,
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and we're learning
how to recognize and tap into it.
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Special thanks to Keivan Stassun.
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For The Discovery Files, I'm Nate Pottker.
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00:21:14,039 --> 00:21:15,207
You can watch video versions
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00:21:15,207 --> 00:21:19,111
of these conversations on our YouTube
channel by searching @NSFscience.
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00:21:19,411 --> 00:21:22,381
Please subscribe wherever you get podcasts
and if you like our program,
356
00:21:22,381 --> 00:21:24,750
share it with a friend
and consider leaving a review.
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00:21:26,318 --> 00:21:27,252
Discover how the U.S.
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00:21:27,252 --> 00:21:30,555
National Science Foundation
is advancing research at NSF.gov.
00:00:03,303 --> 00:00:05,972
This is The Discovery Files podcast
from the U.S.
2
00:00:05,972 --> 00:00:08,975
National Science Foundation.
3
00:00:10,410 --> 00:00:10,944
The future
4
00:00:10,944 --> 00:00:14,781
of the science, technology, Engineering
and Mathematics Enterprise will require
5
00:00:14,781 --> 00:00:18,518
input from all sorts of unique individuals
to achieve its utmost potential.
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00:00:19,052 --> 00:00:22,422
Innovation in the makeup of the Stem
workforce will come from individuals
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00:00:22,422 --> 00:00:25,425
representing a wide variety
of neurocognitive perspectives.
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00:00:25,759 --> 00:00:29,329
We're joined by Keivan Stassun,
the Stevenson Chair in Physics
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00:00:29,329 --> 00:00:32,599
and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University,
where he also serves
10
00:00:32,599 --> 00:00:35,602
as director of the center
for Autism and Innovation.
11
00:00:35,935 --> 00:00:39,639
His work advocating for diversity
in STEM was recently acknowledged
12
00:00:39,639 --> 00:00:42,509
with the genius grant,
the MacArthur fellowship.
13
00:00:42,509 --> 00:00:44,577
Professor Stassun,
thank you for joining us today.
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00:00:44,577 --> 00:00:46,312
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
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00:00:46,312 --> 00:00:49,682
So I'd like to start with a little bit
of background, and I want to ask you
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00:00:49,682 --> 00:00:52,685
when or how did you know
you wanted to be an astronomer?
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00:00:52,952 --> 00:00:53,887
Oh, gosh.
18
00:00:53,887 --> 00:00:56,523
Well, the honest answer
is that all through high school,
19
00:00:56,523 --> 00:00:59,492
I was obsessed with the idea
of becoming an astronaut.
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00:00:59,759 --> 00:01:03,396
And I learned that, at least at that time,
the best chance
21
00:01:03,396 --> 00:01:07,600
I would have for joining the astronaut
corps would be to become a military pilot.
22
00:01:07,700 --> 00:01:11,304
So I went through the process of getting
myself admitted to the Naval Academy,
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00:01:11,304 --> 00:01:16,242
and I even attended for the first summer
for basic training and summer.
24
00:01:16,242 --> 00:01:17,610
They call it.
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00:01:17,610 --> 00:01:20,713
Decided after that
that my military career wasn't
26
00:01:20,713 --> 00:01:22,315
the path that I was going to want.
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00:01:22,315 --> 00:01:26,586
And so I went to University
of California, Berkeley instead,
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00:01:26,586 --> 00:01:30,590
and I found myself there asking,
so if I'm not going to go up into space,
29
00:01:30,590 --> 00:01:31,257
what am I going to do?
30
00:01:31,257 --> 00:01:35,261
Instead, I decided that studying
the stars would be the next best thing.
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00:01:35,261 --> 00:01:36,963
And, I don't regret it.
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00:01:36,963 --> 00:01:39,132
Keeping on the astronomy theme to begin
here.
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00:01:39,132 --> 00:01:42,602
What keeps
you excited about working in the field?
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00:01:42,602 --> 00:01:44,671
Like, is it the sense of discovery,
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00:01:44,671 --> 00:01:47,640
the endless possibilities
that are out there? Yes.
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00:01:47,841 --> 00:01:50,610
You know, to put it generally,
that's certainly true.
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00:01:50,610 --> 00:01:55,115
I mean, I think that's probably true
of every scientist or engineer.
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00:01:55,348 --> 00:01:58,952
There is that sense of all the things
we don't yet know that that's out there
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00:01:58,952 --> 00:01:59,886
to discover.
40
00:01:59,886 --> 00:02:04,824
With astronomy specifically,
I wake up every morning literally excited
41
00:02:05,024 --> 00:02:09,562
about the possibility
of discovering some new Earth out there
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00:02:09,729 --> 00:02:12,966
that might be habitable,
might even be inhabited.
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00:02:13,600 --> 00:02:15,268
That is tremendously exciting to me.
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00:02:15,268 --> 00:02:19,205
The idea that within my own lifetime,
you know, we may come to know
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00:02:19,205 --> 00:02:23,476
of another place out there
that is like our own planetary home,
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00:02:23,743 --> 00:02:27,213
where we may yet
discover the signs of other life,
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00:02:27,514 --> 00:02:32,385
maybe even a place that we could imagine
people here eventually going there.
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00:02:33,453 --> 00:02:36,322
We are living in a time
where science fiction is becoming more
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00:02:36,322 --> 00:02:40,860
and more science fact, and it's something
that specifically is very exciting to me.
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Thinking about your work.
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Is there any particular discovery
that you're
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00:02:46,032 --> 00:02:49,469
proud of or feel like
is your favorite to share with people?
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00:02:49,502 --> 00:02:51,371
Oh yeah, actually there is.
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00:02:51,371 --> 00:02:52,705
I'm proud of a lot of the work
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00:02:52,705 --> 00:02:56,609
that I and my research team
have done over the years, but there is one
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that in my mind, just brings together
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so much about unexpected discovery.
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On the one hand, involving talented
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students from different backgrounds
and different abilities and perspectives.
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On the other hand, all in one.
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So some years ago, about ten years ago
now, my research
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00:03:16,863 --> 00:03:21,501
team and I were working with data
from NASA's Kepler spacecraft.
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00:03:21,801 --> 00:03:25,805
Which was collecting data on lots
and lots of stars
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in our galaxy
to look for planets orbiting those stars.
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It was an exemplar hunting
mission, and I had in my research group
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00:03:37,050 --> 00:03:41,454
at that time, an autistic student
in computer science at Vanderbilt
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00:03:41,821 --> 00:03:45,124
also had, an African-American student
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who had joined my lab through
a partnership program that I helped create
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with Fisk University, together
with Vanderbilt here in Nashville.
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And the autistic student
working in my group
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developed a new way of analyzing
the Kepler telescope data,
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00:04:02,709 --> 00:04:07,947
literally turning the light signals
that the telescope collected into sound,
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so signifying the data
which gave us a new way
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of just sort of quote unquote,
looking at the data and understanding it.
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And with that tool that he invented, my
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PhD student was able to make
a completely unexpected discovery,
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which is that
it turns out we can accurately determine
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the sizes and ages of stars
just on the basis of what
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we came to call light flickering or sound
flickering in the stars data.
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This had not been known before, and
we published this in the journal nature.
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In the process,
the student who led that work became
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the first African American woman ever
to lead in astrophysics paper in nature
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00:04:52,091 --> 00:04:55,895
and the data analysis tool
that my autistic student had developed
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became licensed by NASA
for use in their data analysis work.
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So you see what I mean?
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Unexpected discovery.
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00:05:04,037 --> 00:05:08,074
Involvement of talented students
with lots of different abilities
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and backgrounds and perspectives. On one.
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It was that that meant a lot to.
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Me, and it's the kind of work
that has some legs where that technique,
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I'm sure, is
then used on many other kinds of projects.
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Right? That's right. Very cool.
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So that kind of leads into the next area
I want to ask you about.
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And that's thinking about neurodiversity
in science.
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00:05:27,527 --> 00:05:30,863
Can you talk a little bit
about how you became interested in that.
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00:05:30,863 --> 00:05:33,633
And and maybe for the general public
that's not thinking about it.
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00:05:33,633 --> 00:05:35,568
Why it's important. Yeah.
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00:05:35,568 --> 00:05:40,006
My own journey in this direction
began from a very personal place.
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00:05:40,340 --> 00:05:43,776
My first born son is autistic,
was diagnosed
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with autism when he was 4 or 5 years old,
for several years thereafter.
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You know, again, just in my personal life,
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you know, that experience as a parent,
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was shaped entirely by trying
to figure out how to support my son.
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And, you know, what he needed.
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So, you know, early interventions
and supports
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and helping him
be ready for the world of school and just,
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you know, sort of all of that early
little kid stuff, which is so important.
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But eventually
I began to think about his own future.
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And, you know, what his experience
would be like in life as an adult
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and beginning
to see alongside his support needs,
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which will be there forever,
beginning to see real, unique abilities.
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You know, the away that he had of sort of
seeing the world, of recognizing patterns
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and things, noticing things
that most people would miss.
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And I began to wonder
if there was an opportunity for the world
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to benefit from these unique abilities
that I was able to see as his father.
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Could the world right learn how to better
recognize and enlist these abilities
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at the same time that we are learning
to better support people like him?
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And so that inspired me to begin
intentionally
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recruiting autistic students
at Vanderbilt into my research group,
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which gave me an opportunity to learn
how to manage a neurodiverse team,
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you know, beyond a diverse team,
a neurodiverse team in particular,
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which meant not only for me
as a supervisor
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and advisor and manager,
you know, learning how to work with
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more and
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different kinds of people,
but also helping
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everyone on my team understand
how to interact with one another
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so that everyone was enabling
and enlisting the best of each other.
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Right?
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So that was a real learning opportunity
for me.
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But also,
you know, had the opportunity to witness
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firsthand how real, unique
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and impactful scientific
discoveries are enabled
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when we recognize
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and enlist and support
all different kinds of minds.
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Right.
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There's a human diversity of mind
that we need to fully leverage
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if we're going to have the best chance
of tackling the grand challenges
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that we face as a society.
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Absolutely.
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You need all those fresh perspectives and
and people
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that'll, like, kind of flip something over
and look at it from a little bit
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of a different angle, right.
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So as part of this journey for you,
you've started the first center
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for Autism and Innovation.
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Can you talk a little bit about that
center itself? Yes.
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So about six years ago
now, together with colleagues
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in the School of Engineering and
the business school here at Vanderbilt,
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we launched this, academic research
center called the Frist Center for Autism
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and Innovation,
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named after a philanthropic family that
generously helped to endow the center.
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And in looking at where
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we could make the most sort of value
add to the world of autism research
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and related work,
you know, what we saw is that for decades,
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there has been a large amount
of investment
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and development of expertise
and programs and interventions,
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largely around early years, early
diagnosis, early interventions,
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clinical approaches and supports,
all of which has been hugely important.
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That's important to acknowledge,
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but where
there has been much less investment
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and development of expertise and programs
and supports and interventions,
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is around transitions
to adulthood and transitions
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to independence
and transitions into the workforce,
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including and particularly
the STEM workforce.
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And so we launched the first center
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for Autism and Innovation in the School
of Engineering and in collaboration
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with the business school,
with the idea that we can bring in
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engineering and hard science
to bear on developing technologies
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that support individuals
in making those transitions
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to adulthood and independence
and access to meaningful employment.
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And at the same time, we can be working
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to build real pipeline and to employment,
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in part through better
equipping individuals to be successful
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in accessing work,
but also working with employers,
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including specifically companies
and other employers
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who are seeking
Stem talent right for the Stem workforce.
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That's where we wanted the Frist center
for Autism and Innovation
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to be operating technology development
and transforming the workplace.
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Inspired by the human diversity of mind
and enabling access
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for individuals, and enabling access
for those who seek to employ
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those talented individuals. Very cool.
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One of the specific programs
I know has been very successful there
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I wanted to ask you about.
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It's the Frist center's
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PhD program in neurodiversity
inspired science and engineering.
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Can you tell us a little bit
about the success of that program?
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Yeah, I'm very proud of that.
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And I want to clearly acknowledge
and thank the National Science Foundation
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for the NSF Research Traineeship
Grants, the NRT grant
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that we received
to help create this interdisciplinary
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PhD program, develop a set of graduate
seminar courses to support it.
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And, of course, the ability
that that Grant gave us to recruit
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students, support them with stipends
and all the rest.
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But the Neurodiversity Inspired Science
and Engineering, or Nice program
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was developed with the idea
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that especially
but not only for neurodivergent students,
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in science and engineering,
having an interdisciplinary PhD program
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that would support them in their journey
toward a PhD.
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In coming up with ideas, inventions,
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technologies, scientific approaches,
and algorithms, all the kinds of things
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that PhD students do
in the course of their doctoral training.
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But to invite students to be thinking
creatively
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about those things research
projects, dissertation projects
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that would intentionally
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include their neurodiverse perspectives,
we believed,
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and it had been borne out
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after five years of running the program,
that we would be able to better recruit
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neurodiverse students
to better support them,
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and have better outcomes
in terms of their own PhD completion.
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But also just
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the great discoveries and innovations
that they would create along the way.
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For example,
we have had PhD students who have designed
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virtual reality platforms
that teach autistic adults
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how to engage in social communication
that will allow them to be
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more successful in gaining employment
and being successful on the job.
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We have had PhD students who have created.
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This has nothing to do with autism per se,
but bringing their creative perspective.
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Have designed and patented detector
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for mining a rare earth
material from asteroids that
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and we have, an
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autistic woman,
who is finishing her PhD now
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in biophysics, who, based on her own lived
experience, has designed
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and is commercializing an ear implant
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that will allow individuals
to fine tune their auditory experience
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if they have auditory sensitivities
that can create challenges for them
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as they move through the world,
you know, much more
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intelligently than a simple noise
canceling headset, right?
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I mean, by inviting that creativity
and that inventiveness that springs
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from one's own lived experience,
we're seeing a tremendous outcomes.
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As just one more example, we have
an autistic man in our neuroscience
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PhD program
because participating in our Nice program
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and our program, who,
when he completes his PhD in neuroscience
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in a couple of years,
he will, to our knowledge,
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become the world's
first non-verbal autistic neuroscientist.
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Think about that.
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These are outcomes and opportunities
that are now possible
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because of the advent of technologies
that we didn't have available to us
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even ten years ago.
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And, you know, these folks are changing
the world, changing
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how we understand
the very nature of the human mind.
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Right?
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Because they are now able to bring
and communicate and express
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and share their unique perspectives
and their inventiveness and creativity.
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It's really cool because maybe even 20
or 30 years ago like that wouldn't.
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Happen, right?
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The path to that opportunity
wouldn't exist, right?
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The time. It's so cool.
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And this work has been acknowledged
in a big way.
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This year. You got the MacArthur
fellowship.
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Can you talk a little bit about
your experience getting the genius grant?
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What was that like?
What does that mean to you?
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Oh my goodness.
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Well,
I mean, first of all, just what an honor.
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And, you know, it's the kind of thing
that I think you can't expect.
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I mean, it's not something you apply for,
and it's
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such an out, outrageous
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recognition
that I certainly never imagined it coming.
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It was very unexpected
and and just a tremendous surprise.
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But a great honor.
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One of the things that I am grateful
for about it
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is that it gave me an opportunity
to talk about this work
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that we've been discussing,
and to talk about it in the terms
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that the MacArthur
fellowship is intended for,
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which is about creativity,
you know, sort of creative genius.
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And I don't mean to apply that to myself
necessarily, but rather
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that the work
that I do as an astrophysicist,
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but also as a developer of Stem talent,
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is really very much inspired
by the idea that creative genius
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is out there and oftentimes
in unexpected forms or in ways
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that we in the past
have not understood how to recognize.
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I think of that actually
as sort of my life's work,
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beyond my legacy as a scientist and the
scientific discoveries that I'm a part of.
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It's all learning
how to recognize and enlist human talent
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for scientific discovery in new ways,
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recognizing creative genius
in new and different ways and new forms.
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The MacArthur gave me an opportunity
to speak to
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that work that I find so meaningful,
and to speak to it in those terms.
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I think that was important.
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Now, you mentioned NSF support
slightly earlier,
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and I like to try to work that in
since we're yeah, where we are right now.
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What difference has things
like your career award
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made to the trajectory of your career
itself?
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Like what difference has the NSF support
made for you?
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It is not an exaggeration for me to say
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that NSF support
throughout my scientific career,
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from the very beginning to
this day, has fueled,
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00:17:00,452 --> 00:17:05,524
has accelerated, has enabled in ways
otherwise not possible
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that every stage and at every turn
in my career NSF support has been
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the enabler, has been the fuel has been
the accelerate technology.
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Yeah.
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As a graduate student,
I received a graduate research fellowship
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from NSF that gave me a recognition and
and premature,
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but also a certain amount of independence
to be able to shape
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my own PhD experience in ways
that I might not have
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otherwise been able to,
including as a graduate student
295
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undertaking some professional
and leadership development activities
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that would later position me to be able
to, for example,
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create the partnership program
between Vanderbilt and Fisk
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that has become one of the top producers
of PhDs to underrepresented
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minorities and neurodiverse
people in the physical sciences.
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The ability that I had to develop
that work
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as a part of my NSF career,
grant supported early career work
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was very much enabled by NSF support of me
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as a PhD student to begin learning
those leadership development skills,
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and then later the NSF partnerships
first right
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I in astrophysics research and education,
the pair grant
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that we receive to really build out
and scale up and institutionalize
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the Fisk, Vanderbilt Partnership
program was critical for taking
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what was initially an individual
Pi project, but
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really scale it up and institutionalize it
into what it has now become
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all the way to now, the active
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NSF Research Traineeship grant
that has allowed us to create and operate
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the Neurodiversity Inspire Science
and Engineering PhD program.
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These have been NSF supports
to me as an individual,
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but even more important
to the sort of the Institute symbolization
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and scale up and model development
kind of work that has enabled
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not just the support of me as
an individual scientist, but the creation
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00:19:04,743 --> 00:19:09,448
and dissemination of model programs
that touch lots and lots of lives.
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It has all been enabled
and fueled and accelerated by NSF support.
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So my last question here
is thinking about the future.
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What do you see ahead in your work
or more broadly,
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if you want to, I'll, I'll leave
how you answer this question.
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Up to you.
But what do you see in the future?
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What makes you optimistic about
what's coming up in the next few years?
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Well, I'll give you an astrophysics answer
and I'll give you a human talent answer,
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because I think very much and very hard
about both of those things.
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On the astrophysics front, I am excited.
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Literally every morning
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I wake up just filled with excitement
about the discoveries
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that I know are right on our horizon
around habitable worlds.
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Signs of life elsewhere in the universe.
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I mean, these are real discoveries
that are waiting to be made,
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and they feel like
they're right around the corner.
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And to have a front row seat
and to be actively involved, to have my
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fingers literally.
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And the data that we're collecting to make
those discovery is this.
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Oh, I just it feels like
I'm a kid in a candy shop with that.
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And at the same time,
I feel so privileged to be
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working at a time when we are learning
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how to recognize human talent
for the science and technology
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workforce needs
that we're going to have now,
341
00:20:31,997 --> 00:20:35,968
and that we're going to have more and more
through this century, learning
342
00:20:35,968 --> 00:20:39,705
how to recognize human talent in new ways,
where we didn't know
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how to recognize talent in the past,
that human diversity of mind that we need,
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00:20:45,077 --> 00:20:48,880
and learning how to recognize
and support it, that excites me, too.
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It fills me with that very human
kind of hope
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that we really will be able to tackle
and solve big, big challenges
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that only scientists and engineers
and technologists can solve.
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00:21:00,659 --> 00:21:03,862
There is a depth and a breadth
to the talent
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that exists in the diversity of human mind
that is available to us,
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and we're learning
how to recognize and tap into it.
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00:21:10,402 --> 00:21:12,070
Special thanks to Keivan Stassun.
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00:21:12,070 --> 00:21:14,039
For The Discovery Files, I'm Nate Pottker.
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00:21:14,039 --> 00:21:15,207
You can watch video versions
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00:21:15,207 --> 00:21:19,111
of these conversations on our YouTube
channel by searching @NSFscience.
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00:21:19,411 --> 00:21:22,381
Please subscribe wherever you get podcasts
and if you like our program,
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00:21:22,381 --> 00:21:24,750
share it with a friend
and consider leaving a review.
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00:21:26,318 --> 00:21:27,252
Discover how the U.S.
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00:21:27,252 --> 00:21:30,555
National Science Foundation
is advancing research at NSF.gov.
