By Philip Kiefer
Maya Bhalla-Ladd, who is beginning her second summer as an intern at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), didn’t think growing up that she would be a scientist. “In high school, I spent all my time on ballet,” she says. “I danced professionally. I lived on my own in New York.”
But when health problems forced her to turn away from ballet, she found herself drawn to the ocean. “I remember going to the aquarium as a kid and watching the rays,” she says. “The way they move is very naturally beautiful. So when I stopped being able to dance, I wanted to spend the rest of my life preserving that kind of natural beauty for other people to enjoy.”
Maya with a hand-crafted temperature sensor! (Maya Bhalla-Ladd/SERC)
Maya spent last summer at SERC’s Global Change Research Wetland (GCREW), investigating how climate change could affect photosynthesis in marsh plants. While there, she became fascinated with a tool used to measure photosynthesis in leaves. The tool seals a single leaf in a chamber and exposes it to light, causing the leaf to begin photosynthesis. It can then measure the precise gas composition of the chamber as the plant produces sugar. In effect, it can watch the plant breathe.
“I think that the instrumentation that enables science is so cool, and that we don’t spend enough time thinking about it,” Maya says. Click to continue »
Don’t panic. The new robot greeting visitors at the Reed Education Center isn’t about to stage a technological coup over the SERC campus. But it can pose for selfies, tell people about SERC programs and break out a dance move or two.
