Jenna Everard

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This transcript is based on a video-recorded interview deposited at MarE3, JAMSTEC (Yokosuka, Japan).

The transcripts of the research project Oral Histories of Scientific Ocean Drilling are polished representations of oral conversations, and are intended solely for the purpose of preserving and documenting personal accounts and memories. They are not a literary product, and are not intended to exhibit literary qualities.

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Interview of Jenna Everard by Beatriz Martinez-Rius on 2024 September 13, D/V Chikyu (Japan). [link]

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is September 12 of 2024. I’m Beatriz Martinez-Rius, postdoctoral researcher at JAMSTEC, and I’m with Jenna Everard onboard Chikyu, IODP Expedition 405. Can you please say your name, affiliation and current position?

Jenna Everard (JE): My name is Jenna Everard. I’m a second year Ph.D. student at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

BMR: What’s your background, where do you come from?

JE: I’m originally from Kirkland, Washington, and I grew up in Quebec, Canada for a few years, as well. Both of my parents worked in the tech field, but we lived a very outdoorsy life. We grew up right next to a state forest and so spent a lot of time outdoors, hiking, exploring the outdoors.

BMR: When do you say tech field, do you mean engineering?

JE: Yeah, electrical engineering, project management, that sort of thing.

BMR: Not academia.

JE: No, definitely not academia. Neither were scientists for say, so, didn’t really know much about the sciences until college, and later in my life. Grew up mainly… I originally thought I was going to be like an artist or a writer. I was a classical pianist for most of my life, as well as a ballet dancer. And hadn’t really considered the sciences as a career. I’ve been told by my elementary and middle school teachers that I thought too far out of the box and I was a bit too creative for the sciences, which I would disagree with. Now I think you have to think that way for the sciences, and that’s kind of what drew me to it in high school when I sort of learned that. But the sort of like self-exploration was a lot of what made the scientists, and really excited me about science.

BMR: That’s so nice. Many people don’t realize that they like sciences until they really are… So why Earth Sciences? Why not Mathematics or Engineering?

JE: I had a bit of a convoluted path to get to the Earth science. I think I always saw geology and the earth sciences sort of as a passion of mine, but hadn’t really thought of it as a career. Like I said, we’re a very outdoorsy family. My grandpa was in the military and he traveled around. And as he traveled around, he would collect rocks and bring them back. And so, I inherited a lot of those rocks. So I have many gallon buckets of rocks in my basement. And that was sort of how I connected with my family, I think, and with him particularly; with learning sort of about my family’s history through these rocks that were collected in various locations around the world. And so I was always in the rock hounding outdoorsy. We had many rock collections growing up.

But then, when I initially got into the sciences, I focused a lot on biology and computer science. Worked in the medical field for a while at the hospital, during COVID. I thought I was going to do pre-med. Then when I realized that wasn’t exactly for me, I thought I was going to do astronomy. And my school didn’t actually have an Earth sciences department. They only had environmental science or environmental biology, so that’s what I ended up majoring in. But then when I found out about Lamont and started working there, I met two researchers, Sidney Hemming and Stephen Cox, and both of them are just very energetic and fabulous mentors. And are so excited about Earth science that… initially I came into that thinking it was just a summer job, but then I got really excited about the field and realized this is what I wanted to do for my career. I really love sort of the balance of being able to go outdoors and explore the Earth, and it sort of made me look around and look at my environment in a different way that I really enjoyed.

BMR: That’s kind of a pathway! (both laugh). How did you come to know about scientific ocean drilling?

JE: I actually knew about it from continental drilling. So when I first got through science, I knew I wanted to do something that had an impact on society. And one of the projects where I saw that from was studying earthquakes. And so, I initially got started by looking at the San Andreas Fault. And I was using samples from the same Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth, which was this borehole that they drilled through the San Andreas Fault due to actively deforming strands like that. So my samples were initially from there. And then, when it came time that the project was really developing and I wanted more samples, I reached out to the IODP, and realized that the core had been curated in a long time. So then, once I graduated my undergrad, I went, and I worked at the IODP to curate the San Andreas Fault cores. And while I was there I learned a lot about ocean drilling since I was around all those other IODP cores from the ocean. And that sort of got me really excited about scientific drilling, and having these records of the past.

Jenna examining a just-recovered core onboard Chikyu, during IODP expedition 405. Credit of both images ©️Doriane Letexier / JAMSTEC / IODP

BMR: Why did you apply specifically for this expedition? Or is only that you just wanted to be onboard?

JE: (laughs) Well, I did want to go to scientific expedition since it seemed like a great adventure side of things, but from the science side of things, the application of earthquakes. After I had been working on the San Andreas Fault, I inherited these J-FAST samples from Heather Savage, who was another scientist on window two of this expedition. And was applying similar methods, and finding some results that were exciting and some things that I was like, I would like to go back and sample these areas. I’ve learned a lot from what I’ve done on the San Andreas Fault, then how we can do it better in the future? So when I found that they were doing another expedition out here, I was like, “This is the perfect expansion of this research”. It seemed like the perfect fit.

BMR: Why do you think they choose you to be onboard? I understand that many early career applied, so what did you explain in your application?

JE: I think the science I do is a bit different than some of the other people here. Not different as like, “nobody else does it”, but just different in that there’s not as many people on board to do it. I work in an isotope geochronology lab, so what we do is we measure noble gas isotopes mainly. And try to date sediments. So, my goal here would be to collect the slip surfaces that we can see in the core, just tiny, tiny amounts of sample. And then I can run it through our mass spectrometer and get argon isotopes and potassium isotopes, and calculate the age of the past earthquake events on these slips. And what I envision is that there’s multiple slips with multiple different timing of events, and can sort of expand that geochronological record that wasn’t as clear in J-FAST, but hopefully with our better approach now can be more clear in J-TRACK. So that was half of my proposal.

And then the other half is a lot of education focused, because I am very interested in education and mentoring younger scientists, as women and as specifically queer women. I didn’t have a lot of people who shared those identities to look up to when I first got into the sciences. So I think it’s important to be that mentor for other people. And I like to use this research I do – because I know earthquakes excite a lot of people, like… All of geology has societal applications for earthquakes are one of those things where these big events that you see in the news and hear about in the news and they have those immediate large scale impacts. And it excites a lot of people, and it’s easy to get people interested into, and can use it as a basis for teaching people about maybe the most exciting chemistry side of things, but that can hopefully become exciting.

BMR: That’s right. It’s very difficult to communicate the interest of deep Earth sciences sometimes. I mean, scientific ocean drilling does it, but sometimes it’s difficult to show the relation between the samples and, then people asking well, can you predict earthquakes?

JE: Exactly.

BMR: This is your first offshore, right?

JE: This is my first time offshore.

BMR: What’s the first impression so far? What has impressed you the most, the things you are enjoying?

JE: I really enjoyed… I think the greatest thing that stood out to me is just the sense of community, and just the strength of the community. And everyone is getting excited about the same things. Like the other night, when we were trying to align with the wellhead from J-FAST, just everybody sitting in front of the TV and like… Gasping as we were getting close! And then, it’s just been a great like, to have everyone excited about the same things. And then, just finding – it’s such a small world in the geosciences, we all tend to finding out that we know the same people. I’ve been talking to, the graduate students, I’m like, “Oh, you know, so-and-so, I know so and so!”. And just sometimes, when I’m in my research lab, at home doing my little thing, it feels kind of like I’m all alone. Some things I do, like high resolution clay mineralogy, X-ray diffraction… And there’s not a lot of people in my lab who know about that. But then here, another one of the graduate students was also working on the same thing. So we’ve been sitting in the lounge poring over these patterns together, and trying to learn from one another. So just that co-learning process, and basis of support has been surprising and nice!

BMR: Yeah, that’s very nice. Its surprising to realize how fast this sense of community is growing, and this sort of environment. Now comes the difficult question. Where do you see yourself in ten years?

JE: That this is a very difficult question (laughs). I know – I don’t exactly know the time scale of all of these things, but my ultimate goal would be, I would like to have my lab, specifically noble gas mass spectrometry lab, because I like the balance doing the chemistry side of things with also somewhat of the engineering side of things. I did study computer science in college, probably inspired by my parents, but I do enjoy it. And I have found a lot of interest in building the mass spectrometers, and building the extraction lines, and the tools that we use to make these measurements in geology. And so I would like to run my own lab, I would like to teach others at the university. But that feels somewhat far down the road.

I think immediately after my PhD, I would like to maybe step outside academia for a bit. I really enjoyed the curation work I did at IODP. I think ocean drilling is very important and it’s a shame that it’s not as becoming as well funded by the US government. So I don’t know what the prospect for jobs there will be, but I would like to be involved with that side of things for a bit. I enjoy museum work. I think that’s also very important so I can see myself in ten years, so doing that before returning for teaching in a lab.

BMR: Is there something you’d like to add, that we haven’t talked about?

JE: No, I can’t think of anything else.

BMR: Thank you.

JE: Thank you!