Jenny Paul:
... having to work while going to school, and a lot of that struggle. And I really had to focus on the end goal of I wanted a PhD, and I wasn't going to stop. And there were a couple of semesters that I didn't do well in classes and had to retake them or different life situations. But I remember waiting tables and telling people what I wanted to do. Maybe those career goals changed along the way, but it was always science. And I would talk to some people that said, "Oh, I always wanted to be a marine biologist, but now I'm an accountant." And the way they said it was almost like, "Well, I gave up on my dream, so you will, too." And I just remember that being fuel of, that's not going to be how my story ends.

Speaker 2:
This is the ORISE Featurecast. Join host, Michael Holtz, for conversations with ORISE experts on STEM workforce development, scientific and technical reviews, and the evaluation of radiation exposure and environmental contamination. You'll also hear from ORISE research program participants and their mentors, as they talk about their experiences and how they are helping shape the future of science. Welcome to the ORISE Featurecast.

Michael Holtz:
Welcome to the ORISE Featurecast. As ever, I'm your host, Michael Holtz, in the communications and marketing department at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. And I'm really excited to be talking to the first this year of three winners of the ORISE Future of Science Awards. Jenny Paul is one of the recipients of this year's Future of Science Awards, and I'm so excited to have her on the podcast. Jenny, welcome to the ORISE Featurecast.

Jenny Paul:
Thanks for having me. It's a great opportunity just to talk with you and tell a little bit more about our program.

Michael Holtz:
Absolutely. So thank you so much. So you're one of the three Future of Science award winners. Tell me how you feel about having been named one of the recipients of this award.

Jenny Paul:
It's a little humbling. My mentor wrote a very shining recommendation letter to me, and she actually sent me a copy of the letter when she sent in my recommendation, but I was a little too shy to read it. And then when I got nominated, I started reading through it and I was like, "Wow, I didn't realize I was doing was so many things." Because you get kind of tunnel vision on your little projects. And when she had laid it all out there, it was really awesome to see everything that I was doing on paper, but then also, it was kind of humbling to see how much respect she had for me and the work that I've done. So I was caught off guard, honestly, by it. It was great.

Michael Holtz:
And now you're being noticed, right? Because, like you said, you're going along, doing your little projects, working on your research, and then boom, you're nominated.

Jenny Paul:
Yeah. And I think with my appointment specifically, I didn't have a well-defined project. I was brought on to support the estuary program, the Pensacola and Perdido Berries Estuary program, which is a new entity that was just getting started here in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. As well as research in my host lab.
So I have one appointment with a regional office, the Gulf of Mexico Division office in Gulfport, Mississippi. With the Region 4 lab I was brought on to support the estuary program. But through that, I also have an appointment through an Office of Research and Development Lab, the Gulf Ecosystem Measurement and Modeling Division in gulf reefs Florida. And so I do primary research through the research lab, but it's designed to support the estuary program. So it's kind of like full circle.
But within it, my appointment was to support the estuary program and fill in research needs in the area, but it's kind of hard sometimes to know if I'm doing enough or not enough. And so for the last couple of years I've just been getting involved in this project. "Oh, that sounds fun. Okay. Yeah, I'll hop on that project and then I'll hear something else." Like, "Oh yeah, that sounds cool. I could probably fit in and collaborate with that." And then by the time this nomination rolled around, I didn't realize that I was involved in five different projects that are pretty big interdisciplinary projects. And so it's pretty nice to be recognized. Yeah.

Michael Holtz:
And so you've got a lot going on, obviously, right?

Jenny Paul:
Yeah.

Michael Holtz:
Was science always something that was of interest to you, Jenny? Is this something that you sort of came to you high school, college? A, you do a lot of research in water, so I'm thinking water must be part of your life. And I love water in general. I love water in general, so I'm wondering if a life around water has sort of led to you wanting to study estuaries and water ecosystems and that sort of thing.

Jenny Paul:
Sure. Well, I kind of found my way here by accident. I thought I was going to be a wildlife veterinarian, working with big jungle cats or something like that. But I just followed opportunities as they presented themselves. And I found myself in a freshwater ecology lab as an undergraduate and never looked back. And really, I dug deep in benthic ecology, which is the study of life at the bottom of a water body. And so I spent the last 10 years working in rivers and streams, so I was a freshwater biologist. And then with this postdoc, I took a little bit of a shift to marine systems.
But I've been working in freshwater or aquatic systems for the last 15 years, but it wasn't necessarily what I set out to do. But then looking back on it, it makes sense because I always grew up camping and we had a boat, so we spent a lot of summers on the lake, just flipping rocks and being out in nature. And so I always knew that I was going to do something with animals, something outside. I'm just lucky enough, I found my way to bugs and worms. It's a great career move.

Michael Holtz:
Right? Obviously, you enjoy it or you wouldn't have stuck around for 15 years, right?

Jenny Paul:
It's great. The more you know about something, the more you come to care about it. And I didn't start out as a benthic ecologist, but when I started to learn about aquatic invertebrates and how important they are in the ecosystem/ I mean, there are critical links between different parts of the food chain, from the lower tropic levels to the fish and the humans and everything else, it depends on them. And so without the bugs, there goes us all.
And it's really been interesting the more I learn about them, not just their critical roles, ecosystem services, but also as tools that we use to monitor aquatic ecosystems. I've just dug deeper and deeper into it, and it's created an awesome career where I wouldn't have had the same opportunities had I ended up studying something big, charismatic, like Peregrine falcons or something that I initially thought that I was going to be doing. In part, because there's not as many people that want to study bugs, so it's not as saturated of a field.
But also, they're really amazing tools as bioindicators of habitat health. There are canaries in the coal mine of aquatic ecosystems. And because of it, I've been able to travel the world bugging bugs in several different continents. I did my master's, part of it in Patagonia, Chile. So I was able to help one of my friends who was studying how the stream communities change as you go up in altitude up a mountain. And we had an opportunity to work in this island that had been kind of off limits for a long time because of the Chilean government just weren't letting people on the southernmost tip of South America. But then some decades later, they're starting to go out there and study the river systems. And it was really cool, because it was my first time to see a truly pristine, unpolluted system, where I could walk to places where we might've been the first people to set foot there in a hundred years. And it was fully-funded NSF fellowship just to collect some bugs.
And then for my PhD, I worked in Central Europe, studying a large river that had a big mine tailings disaster. So we did a study about 15 years after looking at the metals in the invertebrates and the fish. But, I mean, that sent me all over, Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, chasing bugs, bugging bugs. I just don't think that those same opportunities would've been available had I not followed the opportunities as they presented themselves, and found my way to an invertebrate lab. I just don't know that I would've been able to do those things. It's been a great career.

Michael Holtz:
Right. It sounds like it's important if you're speaking to scientists who might be following in your footsteps, it's important to keep an open mind and be open to other possibilities. Because, like you said, you could be studying jungle cats or Peregrine falcons, but opportunities have led you to this really important research in aquatic insects and bugs and benthic ecology, and that sort of thing.

Jenny Paul:
Yeah, exactly. I didn't even know what benthic invertebrates were when I started college. I didn't even know that this field existed. And then taking an opportunity as an undergrad to take position in a lab, I was just trying to gain some experience and I fell in love with it. And then even this ORISE, I tried so hard not to end up in Florida. I was a rock climber, whitewater kayaker, freshwater ecologist. I tried so hard to stay around Southeastern Tennessee, Asheville, where a lot of my friends, and my fiance, he was in Atlanta at the time. And I ended up getting this ORISE, and it was such a great opportunity, I had to take it. And I thought, well, I could do a year or two in Florida, studying marine invertebrates, which was something completely new to me. And now I'm digging my heels in and never leaving.
It was actually funny, because when I met my boyfriend, he was working in St. Augustine. He's also a biologist, he's a herpetologist. And I told him that he had to move to me, I would not move to Florida. And then he moved closer to me, and then six months later I took a job in Florida. He's down for now and loving it, because we just love the biology and animals and everything down here. But if I hadn't taken the ORISE, I would never have known how much I love the ocean and how much I appreciate marine benthic ecology. And there are a lot of gaps that I can fill with my freshwater knowledge, that I can now apply to the marine systems and do things that are useful. And I'm doing research that is directly applicable to the people that need it, managers that are trying to develop monitoring programs, like the estuary program that I mentioned earlier. And I wouldn't be here if I didn't take a chance on the opportunity.

Michael Holtz:
Right. I wonder, too, you mentioned that aquatic insects can sometimes be the canary in the coalmine, so to speak. What do we generally take for granted about insect populations and how they are indicator of the health of water bodies and the ecology that surrounds us?

Jenny Paul:
I can give you a really good example. We were coming back from a little bit of field work, some colleagues and I on the boat, and we had gone out into the Gulf of Mexico to collect some water samples. And we were on our way back taking it really slow, because the water was clear. And I was looking down over the side of the boat into the water, and all I saw were little feeding pits from macro invertebrates and feeding mounds, and little trails of snails that had been meandering their way across the sand. And just taking it in awe of how dense the benthic community was and how much life there was. In otherwise, what might've been a desert of sand, there was just all of this life.
And my colleague who had worked a lot in the Virgin Islands is standing next to me and he says, "There really isn't anything out there, is there?" And I look at him and I was like, "There's so many benthic vertebraes. The benthic community is so rich." And it's just when you don't know about it and you don't know what you're looking at, all you're seeing are ripples in the sand. And I realized that we're seeing two completely different things. And so in areas where you might think that there's no life or there's very little life, there can be a very rich ecosystem, it's just below the surface.

Michael Holtz:
I love that. And I love that will make me pay attention more closely next time I'm near the water, because I think I would've been colleague from the Virgin Islands [inaudible 00:16:32]. But I don't know what to look for or what I'm looking at, I'm not going to see it, right? So, Jenny, you talked early on about your mentor and the glowing letter, the glowing recommendation letter. Talk about the importance of this mentor in particular, but of mentorship in general, and how important that has been to the development of your career.

Jenny Paul:
Mentors are incredibly important. I have had good mentors and bad mentors. By bad, necessarily maybe not getting the right kind of guidance to push me in the direction that I needed, or sometimes I needed more attention or less attention. And so when I've had a mentor, like Janet Nesselrode, that I work with now, she supports me in the things that I want to do, but also she has a vision beyond what I necessarily have for myself. Because I am, from an early career scientist looking forward, I don't know everything. And so what she has been really good about is putting me in the right working groups, in the right situations to where I am meeting people in my field that are able to take me to the next level or put me onto certain projects that maybe I didn't think were as important to my career at the time. But now they put me in contact with the right people, that it's really securing my place in this small field of marine benthic ecologists.
And without her knowledge of the field and the players and what those opportunities are, I would've missed out a lot. And so it's really thanks to her giving me support and not just tangible tools. I'm learning new statistics and I'm learning new pieces of equipment, and all of that is great, but those were things that I was working on in graduate school. I was trying to build just my toolkit. And now I'm at a point where I'm trying to build a career. And before my ORISE, before I took this appointment, I didn't have any postdoc experience. I was out of grad school and I was trying to pursue some of these high-level jobs, and I just couldn't get an interview. I just wasn't competitive.
And now, with the people that I know now, not just the connections, but I know a better idea of where it can be useful and how to apply for jobs that.... I don't know exactly how to word it, but I'm definitely more competitive after having my mentor and everything that I have done on my ORISE. It's thanks to her and her giving me these opportunities. I'm not going to say that I haven't chased down a few on my own, but really, a lot of it is thanks to her. This would be a good idea to get involved with [inaudible 00:20:39] project.

Michael Holtz:
Okay. Jenny, have you had the opportunity to mentor younger scientists yourself?

Jenny Paul:
Yes. That's probably the most rewarding thing that I get to do. I've always looked back because I always wanted to be the big sister I never had in school to other people. And so I've always really enjoyed teaching. When I was in grad school, I loved teaching and mentoring other students. But as a federal research fellow, obviously, we don't teach as often. But I was lucky enough to snag a position with a collaborative marine science techniques class, with EPA Region 4 Gulf of Mexico Division and the University of Southern Mississippi. And so this will be our second year doing this.
During the winter and summer breaks, we take eight marine biology, marine science students from the university and take them out into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on 135 foot research vessel, the Point Sur, and do experiments in deep water. We bring them near shore so we can do some estuary work, what I like to do. But along the way, we get to mentor the students. The EPA scientists are the instructors, and so we need different modules. And there's about eight to 10 students and about six EPA scientists that trade off. And it's been great.
And when I first started that I thought that my biggest contribution would be the skills that I was showing the students, the equipment that they were learning to operate, but I've maintained... I've kept up contact with all of these students, from every semester that we've taken them out. And looking back, it was actually just being me and being a young scientist that's very motivated on the ship was probably the best mentoring that I could have done. And a lot of them have asked me for letters of recommendation. I've seen them go on to get amazing internships and graduate positions and a lot of opportunities. And thanked me and said it was in part that trip gave them some of the confidence in their leadership abilities.
And we pushed them them out of their comfort zone. We put them in wetsuits and throw them in the middle of grass and have them surveying invertebrates and different things. Some of them, it's their first time snorkeling like that. And it's so great just to put animals in people's hands that they've seen in books or they've read about in their classes, and then were in the actual environment. I don't know, I feel like all of those experiences are gifts that I can give them, that they couldn't get in school.

Michael Holtz:
That sounds amazing. And I want to be an EPA student. I want to come and be on the boat.

Jenny Paul:
Yeah. It's my only time that I've gotten to go out to sea, because before this, I was a stream ecologist, so I worked in a very shallow water. I carried everything on my back. We'd hike in, do our sampling, and hike out. And now it's pretty great because I'm on a boat when I do a lot of work. But most of the work we do is in the estuary, which is still 30 feet deep over 3 feet, but it's nothing compared to the 10,000 feet that we see out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

Michael Holtz:
Amazing.

Jenny Paul:
Yeah.

Michael Holtz:
Just amazing. Jenny, are there particular obstacles that you have had to overcome in your career to get to where you are?

Jenny Paul:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's the typical financial issues, you having to work while going to school and a lot of that struggle. And I really had to focus on the end goal of I wanted a PhD and I wasn't going to stop. And there were a couple of semesters that I didn't do well in classes and had to retake them, or different life situations. But I remember waiting tables and telling people what I wanted to do. Sometimes maybe those career goals changed along the way, but it was always science. And I would talk to some people that said, "Oh, I always wanted to be a marine biologist, but now I'm an accountant." And the way they said it was almost like a, "Well, I gave up on my dream, so you will, too." And I just remember that being fuel of that's not going to be how my story ends.
And so my undergraduate degree took me almost six years, maybe five and a half, and it was all said and done. And then my master's took a little bit longer, too. It took me 16 years, when it was all said and done, from starting my undergraduate semester to getting my PhD. And I really think that you have to be tenacious and maybe okay with a little bit of self-suffering a little bit to get through it.

Michael Holtz:
A little bit of patience for [inaudible 00:27:03].

Jenny Paul:
... how long it takes. You just have to have a long view. And I would see some of my friends along the way that would have gotten their MBA or whatever degree they had, and they entered the workforce, and I was still on the [inaudible 00:27:17], having five roommates, on the pennies of grad school allowance or whatever. And I wouldn't change-

Michael Holtz:
Having ramen for dinner.

Jenny Paul:
Exactly. But when there's something that you want and you work really hard for it. And then my job right now, I'm a research fellow, but I'm doing what I wanted to do when I started school, basically. And I feel like it's a huge success and it makes all those years... It's not like I'm rolling in money right now, but it makes all the years of graduate school worth it.

Michael Holtz:
Yep. And you'll be doing something that you have set out to do for all the years you've been trying to get to where you are. But I think that [inaudible 00:28:10] the tenacity and patience that it takes, put in the work for that long. I had to work when I was in college and grad school, and it takes longer. You can't just go to school when you have to do life around that.

Jenny Paul:
Yeah. And I think it's good to have short-term goals, because they keep you motivated. If all your goals are 10 years off, it's kind of hard to stay on track.

Michael Holtz:
Sure.

Jenny Paul:
But it's also good, especially if you're earlier in your career, take opportunities as they present themselves, because you never know what's going to become available. But at the same time, have a long-term goal, know where you're running at. Because you blink and five years is gone, bye. And it's like, "Oh, well, I always wanted to do this cool thing," or, "Finish my education," or what have you. And if you don't keep your eye on that long-term goal, you're not going to get there or it'll be harder to get there. And now, when I look at some of my friends that maybe I was jealous of their life 10 years ago, now I spend a lot of my time out on the water, I do a lot of snorkeling and scuba diving, looking at the animals that I'm trying to learn about. And my friends are like, "Oh, you've got the best job." They see my Instagram.

Michael Holtz:
And you're like, "Yeah, I know."

Jenny Paul:
Yeah. It's like, I've worked hard for this. But I would also say on that, too, you don't have to go to school for 16 years to appreciate nature and appreciate being outside. And a lot of the cool pictures that I post and animals that I see, it's just me on my free time because I like to go out there. And so you don't have to have a PhD to have amazing experiences, you just have to get out there and do it.

Michael Holtz:
That's good advice for folks who are listening. Just go have fun. Nature is there, right? So go explore and find things that you don't know about and learn.

Jenny Paul:
One of the students on this last trip, she was so great, but she was obsessed with nudibranchs, sea slugs, and that was her thing. I remember one time we were having this conversation, she said, "Well, my family, they just said there's not a career in nudibranchs. I just don't know if I'll do that for career." And I was like, "Well, maybe you will, maybe you won't. But whether that's your career or not, no one can stop you from studying nudibranchs and going out there and looking at them, if that's what you want to do. You don't have to be a PhD in nudibranchs to appreciate that."
It's just been interesting, the more I get into it, there's a lot of scuba divers and a lot of avid ocean enthusiasts and whatnot, and they know a lot about the ocean just because they're out there and they're hobbies appreciate it. So there's a lot of cool things you can do with or without a PhD, so you don't have to... But if you want one, go for it.

Michael Holtz:
It's out there, right?

Jenny Paul:
It's not that hard, you just have to be tenacious.

Michael Holtz:
Right.

Jenny Paul:
I always say anyone can get a PhD, you just have to be stubborn.

Michael Holtz:
And keep going. Yeah. This is an obvious question, but you clearly are enjoying your OS fellowship. You would recommend, I assume, to other folks to find an OS fellowship that works for them.

Jenny Paul:
Very much. Anyone that's listening, that's considering an ORISE, for sure go on Zintellect. How do you say it?

Michael Holtz:
Zintellect. Yeah, Zintellect.

Jenny Paul:
Zintellect, yeah. Get on Zintellect, browse through the opportunities that are there. And even if it's not anything that you immediately envision yourself doing, go ahead and apply. And you never know, it might be a new career opportunity for you. That's what I did, and it definitely has been a experience of a lifetime. It's not just the funding opportunities to travel to conferences and things like that, but the support that you get by mentorship in the agency that you want to go into, or just getting some agency experience in general. That's things you cannot get in academia or it's harder to get in academia. I mean, everyone I talked to that's asking me about opportunities, I'm like, "Look for ORISE. ORISE ooh rah."

Michael Holtz:
Look for them. They're there. Hungry.

Jenny Paul:
It's great, too, because, yeah, we're kind of like a cool little club in both EPA offices that I work in, but the other ORISEs, we definitely interact and-

Michael Holtz:
That's awesome.

Jenny Paul:
... support each other as well. So it's kind of like having your own little graduate cohort with it. I mean, I'm a postdoc, so I'm out of school right now, but it feels a lot like when I was in school, because you have your...

Michael Holtz:
You still have your hangout friends and your buds that you're working with together, all of that.

Jenny Paul:
Someone that's your level and not just all the mentors that... Federal scientists that you're working with. It's fun to have some other people that we're all kind of figuring it out.

Michael Holtz:
I like that. Last question for you, Jenny. What brings you joy?

Jenny Paul:
Oh, that's an easy question and a hard question, because you might be able to tell, I can get excited about anything. And so I think it's easy to find joy in your everyday life. But I'd say what brings me the most joy is service. Service, so when I'm out on that ship with the University of Southern Mississippi students, when I'm out there in a role of I'm there for them, mentoring them, I get the most out of it. The research, when it's something that is solving a problem and helping, that's the most rewarding. And so I really think it's service to the community around you. Around me is what brings me the most is joy.

Michael Holtz:
Awesome. I love that answer. Jenny Paul, thank you so much for spending this time with me and talking about your ORISE fellowship and your Future of Science award, and just a great experience that you've had. I really appreciate this time.

Jenny Paul:
Yeah, I appreciate it, Michael. It's been great talking to you.

Michael Holtz:
Thanks. Great talking to you as well. And I hope you have a great day, and I hope our paths cross again soon.

Speaker 2:
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