A bonus Turnstone

More from the interview with Isabelle Chambefort (6 minute read)

When I spoke with Isabelle Chambefort about her work on geothermal geology, we spoke more widely about her work and career. So, here is some more from Chambefort, about her work as the programme leader for Geothermal: the next generation.

Me: Can you tell me how you got to be where you are? Because it’s an intriguing field, but you don’t get six year olds saying “I want to be a geothermal geologist”.

Chambefort: My dad is an engineer, so I was always inspired to go into science. There’s no geologists in my family at all but I have always been fascinated by volcanoes and mountains. But earth sciences were not really well presented at school. You learn about biology, you learn about chemistry but you don’t learn about geology very much.

I was not a particularly good student in high school. I just needed to find something I liked, I think. When I went and I studied at university, I succeeded because I just wanted to know more. So I did Honours, Masters, PhD, like the whole lot. I was lucky enough to succeed in academia, not because I was a good student but because I found something I was passionate about and I just went for it. There are some days when it’s work and some days where it doesn’t feel like work and it’s just passion.

My masters was on deep mantle rock, nothing to do with geothermal or even volcanoes to be honest. Then I was accepted for a PhD at the University of Geneva in Switzerland to work on a gold copper deposit in Bulgaria. It’s like you are taking a place on earth and you are trying to untangle the earth history. I just wanted to understand all of that. The stimulation of doing research is that there’s always a question, there’s always something you want to understand a little bit more and it’s a job that never leaves you. It can be hard because you go home and you are still working in your mind.

When I finished my PhD I moved to Oregon State University to do a two year postdoc over there to look at magmatic sulphur in ore deposits. I spent two years there and then I accepted another postdoc in Tasmania, Australia. But I wanted to start a family and I needed something different.”

My skills were easily transferrable to New Zealand’s geothermal systems, so I applied for a job but I didn’t get it. The team leader at the time called me on the phone and said ‘we’re not going to give you the job because you’re going to be bored in two months’. But they said to me ‘can we keep your CV’ and a year later they contacted me, they had a new opening and they asked me to apply. Even better, when I applied I was pregnant and they waited for me. So I knew that was a good company to work with. In some other countries over the world, they don’t have so much respect for your life outside of work, so that was actually really nice.

And so I arrived at GNS twelve years ago as a geothermal geologist.

Kuirau Park, Rotorua (I don’t have many pictures of geothermal features, this one is from 2008)

Me: can you tell me more about what you’re doing day to day for your work? Do you do field work?

Chambefort: Unfortunately no, my field days are a bit over. Sometimes I go on a field trip but it’s mainly office. It’s science leadership and I find that extremely rewarding. I have five PhD [students] and I have a postdoc that’s just finished.

There’s a lot of project management, budget reports. If I can manage to raise some funds for someone else to do some work that is useful, it’s a win–win for me. There are things that I don’t have the skills to do myself – I’ve been funding people that do numerical modelling and physics and equations. But I need to come back to do science, to write papers and do analysis from time to time, just to keep me sane and to remind me how it is to be a scientist. I don’t want to lose that connection. It’s what gets me up in the morning.

It’s a luxury to be working in an institute that is not a university. We have an entire group of scientists working on geothermal, whereas generally in a university you have one professor. You’re on your own. This interaction is so, so powerful, the community knowledge is insane. And it’s a privilege to be sitting in meetings with geophysicists, with planners, with companies, with people doing strategic thinking on energy. So, maybe I don’t do as much science these days but it’s still rewarding.

Me: what’s the hardest part of your job?

Chambefort: The hardest is the administration. Looking at the contracts and making sure of the budget and making sure that everything is legal, all these things. It’s not the fun part, not hard, but just tedious.

One of the hardest jobs a scientist has to do is writing. Writing their results, going through the peer review. It’s not only for a scientific audience. I think a lot of scientists are realising that they need to convert the data to something for a large public audience as well. So we are trying to get the scientists to write some blog posts about what are we doing – why did you write that paper? What does it mean for the taxpayer? It’s hard. A lot of us are not English first language. I think it’s one of the things that a lot of people don’t realise when they are going into science is that the main job that you are going to have to do is writing.

It is rewarding, don’t get me wrong but converting your thoughts into a logical structure in both for scientists and the public is hard. And most of the scientists, when you are trained at university, you’re trained to write for a scientific audience. You think that once your paper is written and out there, it’s done. But the government doesn’t care that you published in a Nature journal, that’s not helping them.

Me: of all the places your research has taken you – and that’s been a lot – what’s the most interesting place that you’ve gone with your research?

Chambefort: Well there’s two places. I fell in love with New Zealand. This was a dream job, working on geothermal systems. And I love the life here, it’s laid back compared to Europe, things are quieter and there’s less people, it’s just nice and beautiful nature.

And I must admit Oregon is my second family. That’s Western Oregon State, it is quite similar, volcano and beach. Except the desert, we don’t have a desert in New Zealand. And it is a similar mind frame.

I found I need to see trees and green. To be doing geology in this environment is always, always a privilege. I have a window in front of me right now and I can see Mount Tauhara. I’m very privileged whereas some people doing the same research as me are locked in an office on the seventh floor and having a view of a roof or other buildings. I’m in the best place, and I’m doing what I’m passionate about. I mean, how lucky is that?

This interview is part of my series of bonus Turnstones. At present they remain free but in future these will be only for paying subscribers.