NSF’s Discovery Files Podcast

Antimatter Explained

Ahead of a special announcement coming later this week, Kevin M. Jones, the William Edward McElfresh Professor of Physics Emeritus at Williams College and a program manager in the Division of Physics at the U.S. National Science Foundation joins to explain what antimatter is, what happens when it comes into contact with other matter, and why you might win a Nobel Prize if you could figure out why it’s so rare.

Cattle in the Americas

In the United States there are over 95 million heads of cattle, but their known history stretches beyond the farms and cowboys of the Wild West back into the galleons of Spanish colonists. Nicolas Delsol, a postdoctoral associate at the Florida Museum of Natural History joins to explain how he traced their arrival in the Americas.

Secrets of the Storm

Airborne Phased Array Radar will provide a generational leap in severe storm and climate research. Wen-Chau Lee, APAR chief scientist and senior scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research Earth Observing Laboratory, joins to discuss radar use in storms, improving modeling and why sometimes it’s better to collect data from inside of a storm.

Impacts in Sports

After an incident as a young water polo player, Nicholas Cecchi began investigating brain injury. We’ll hear about how an early study resulted in a rule change, approaches to analyzing the severity of hits and impacts in sports, and how he used an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to develop liquid shock absorbers for football helmets in the Camarillo Lab at Stanford University.

Shape of Lithium

Yuzhang Li, assistant professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA, is working to create the next generation of batteries. We'll learn about why lithium is volatile and how knowing the true shape of lithium will impact the development of safer and more powerful batteries.  

Revealing Cryptofauna

Cryptofauna are creatures that live hidden among microhabitats. Our guest is Paul Sikkel, a research professor at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science who has discovered two species of Gnathiid isopods. We’ll hear about these creatures' life cycles, their role in the marine food web, and why Sikkel named them after musicians Bob Marley and Jimmy Buffett.

Forests in a Changing Climate

William Anderegg, director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy and associate professor in The University of Utah School of Biological Sciences, joins to discuss how forest ecosystems are reacting to climate change. He is a 2023 recipient of the Alan T. Waterman Award, the nation's highest honor for early-career scientists and engineers.

Wildfires in a Changing Climate

Extreme weather events are increasing every year and wildfires are getting worse. We speak with Phil Higuera, a professor of fire ecology at the University of Montana, to explore the causes and consequences of wildfires and how they are impacting people and the environment.

I Am STEM

A major initiative at the NSF, is broadening participation in STEM. Our guest today, Natalie S. King, a science educator at Georgia State University founded the I AM STEM program in 2017 which has served over 2,000 K-12 children and their families across 22 U.S. States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Her work was recently recognized with the Alan T. Waterman Award, the nation’s highest honor for early-career scientists and engineers.

Revolutionizing Cancer Screening

A new integrated HPV DNA screening platform could transform cervical cancer screening around the globe. We'll speak with Kathryn Kundrod, who helped develop the test as an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship recipient at Rice University, to learn about the challenges with cancer screening and how researchers are working to prevent it.