Research Geophysicist Ashton Flinders
Ashton Flinders inside Kīlauea caldera, on the edge of a subsided crater formed during the 2018 eruption of the volcano Kīlauea in the Hawaiian Islands. The crater was subsequently filled with lava from a series of ongoing eruptions. The orange pants are part of a fire-retardant helicopter flight suit; you have to take a helicopter flight to get down there!
In 2019, I landed a permanent research position at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, where I am today. I still consider myself an applied physicist, as well as an experimentalist. My experiment is the volcano—I have some power to deploy configurations of sensors in order to make observations and propose and test hypotheses. However, I am still on a volcano! This makes some of my efforts and goals logistically difficult to achieve—and sometimes impossible.
My area of expertise, gravity and gravity instrumentation, is very much focused on the cutting edge. One challenge is that it’s not as easily made operational as other classic geophysical monitoring techniques, such as seismology and global navigation satellite systems monitoring. Just last year, we purchased a $650,000 absolute quantum gravimeter, the first in the US government!
My advice to current undergraduates is to be curious! Be adventurous! Don’t settle on a linear path from A to B. Take classes in everything, even if they seem completely unrelated to what you want to study or do. The best asset we have is our imagination, and our ability to imagine and play is fueled by our exposure to new ideas. Some of the most impactful research advances I have seen in my field were instigated by someone stepping out and adopting methods, techniques, and theories from seemingly unrelated fields of science.
Also, don’t be discouraged if you don’t get where you want to go—just keep swimming! Eighty percent of everything is being in the right place at the right time.
Physicists Can Do What?
Ever wondered what you can do with a physics or astronomy degree? Check out the Hidden Physicist stories published in Radiations, the magazine of Sigma Pi Sigma. Real people with backgrounds in physics and astronomy who didn’t become professors write about their careers in baking, science journalism, data privacy, and many more areas, and share advice with undergraduates. Go to sigmapisigma.org/sigmapisigma/radiations/hidden-physicists .
