Io Kleiser is an astronomy and astrophysics PhD student at Caltech and is currently a visiting student at Berkeley. In our conversation we discuss how Io decided to go into the sciences and some of the challenges that have come with that path – among them building a foundation of subject matter knowledge in order to pursue the career she wanted as well as the reality of being a female in a male dominated field. Io’s current work focuses on supernovae (which I learned is the plural of supernova) and the phenomena associated with exploding stars.

“We can’t stand for this, it’s not just because we want to have warm fuzzy feelings about diversity -- it harms the field, you could be getting rid of some of your best talent if you’re providing women with these extra challenges that have nothing to do with science.”

"It really takes a conscious effort to try to put down all that "I need to be successful," "I need to be smarter than other people," "I need to be better than other people," it's hard to put that mindset down and think about why we're all actually doing this in the first place which is because it's really interesting and because nobody's done it before."

Show Notes:
MESA Stellar Evolution Code - http://mesa.sourceforge.net/

Musical Notes:
Modest Mouse – Gravity Rides Everything
Floating Points – Vacuum Boogie
Beach House – Myth
Pink Floyd – The Great Gig in the Sky
The Juan MacLean – A Place Called Space

Photo Credit: Christian Cortés
Episode Mixed by Mike Benz - www.mixcloud.com/djtashtego/

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