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Dalia: My name is Dalia Kirschbaum, I'm a researcher in the Hydrology Lab

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at Goddard Space Flight Center and my focus is landslide modeling.

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I'm also the GPM applications scientist, meaning that I help to

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communicate the science and the data that we get from the GPM mission to the public and end users.

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I grew up in Minnesota, we have flooding, we have drought,

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there are no landslides, except in the northern areas of Minnesota and very small ones at that. So looking at earthquakes

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or hurricanes was such a crazy phenomena, and I loved the idea that nature was just so powerful, and

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that we could actually use data from above the Earth to figure out what

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is happening on the surface and in the atmosphere.

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So I was always very

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interested in math, and so all through school I kind of thought I was going to be either a math

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major or do something with math. And then freshman year of college actually I took a very

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interesting class on different environmental issues and I found that I

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was really fascinated with natural disasters, but what I realized was that

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you can actually apply math and you can apply science to real-world topics

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and you can use the information that you get or the

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results from your models to really help people and try to mitigate against these hazards. So I decided to go to

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graduate school with a focus on applying remotely sensed or satellite data to evaluate hazards, all different types of

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natural disasters. And in my dissertation I focused in

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landslides because I felt that it was a very underrepresented hazard in the grand scheme

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of natural disaster research. I really am looking in quite global scales and I'm trying to figure out how landslides are occurring

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and modeling the activity, from everything from the local, one hillslope scale to the regional level, like Central America

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to then the global scale. Most of my studies were done in the computer lab or looking at different

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models, but I did take some very interesting field trips during graduate school

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and even during undergrad, to look at different rock formations to look at landslide scars, and what you realize

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is how important it is to really understand the total

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environment in order to really get a sense of what is causing these hazards.

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I think the most important thing is to continue learning and to continue pushing what you think is interesting

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and find a way to get yourself there.

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Music

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Rain drops