In this week's episode, Manasi and Sualeha sit down with Kimberly Arcand, a visualization scientist and Emerging Tech Lead for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has its headquarters at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

We open this episode with Kim's initial start in public health and molecular biology while she was an undergraduate student and her pivot to working for NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1998. Kim expands on the evolution of her role as both the fields of data visualization and astronomy have further advanced over the last two decades.

Specifically, she shares how she led a team in creating the first-ever 3D print of an exploded star which was put into a VR application, and showcased the power of 3-dimensional interactivity with data by enabling people to walk around a dead star for the first time on Earth.

We transition into how her work has focused on changing the way that we observe our universe and she shares how we can design hardware and tools to better understand and synthesize scientific discovery in a field where so much about our observable universe continues to be unknown.

Kim transitions into black hole exploration across governmental organizations and the private sector and innovation in the methods we use to continue exploring black holes. We close the episode by discussing Kim's ability as a science data "storyteller" through publishing numerous non-fiction books such as "Coloring the Universe: An Insider's Guide to Making Spectacular Images of Space" and “Stars in Your Hand: A Guide to 3D Printing the Cosmos."

Learn More:

https://www.kimarcand.com/

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/12/a-virtual-reality-experience-of-being-inside-an-exploded-star/