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Arts & Life
The Clarion \ October 23, 2019
Faculty Profile
Astrochemist Robin Pulliam
Finding joy in the new world of Brevard College
By Zach Dickerson
Campus News Editor
Robin Pulliam has been hired by Brevard
College for her first full-time teaching position
as Assistant Professor of Chemistry and
Physical Science.
Pulliam is an astrochemist which means
she studies the abundance and reactions of
molecules in the universe and their interaction
with radiation. It also involves trying to make
connections with the chemistry out there
compared with what we are seeing in our solar
system.
“What I did for grad school at the University
of Arizona,” Pulliam said, “I studied heavy
metal formation around stars. These stars are
very massive and some of them form heavy
metals such as Iron, Titanium and Zinc.”
“They are around these massive old stars, the
stars are pushing a lot of that material around
them,” Pulliam said, “and what happens is that
material that is pushed out forms molecules.
Those molecules then rotate and when they
rotate they send radio signals to Earth in very
small powers and we take radio telescopes and
we were able to detect those signals around
stars.”
Pulliam focused on the signals from stars in
graduate school, but for her postdoctoral she
focused on molecular clouds, where stars first
form.
“It’s really complex and they start thinking
about amino acids and things like that that start
forming,” Pulliam said. “With the amino acids
forming they start thinking about the start of
life, so how are molecules forming in these
clouds and we’re able to see these signals and
then how then are these molecules collapsing
to form stars, and then you start thinking about
how this whole cycle of the cloud collapsing
and the chemicals forming in the stars and then
they’re coming back out with the stars pushing
them out and then getting recycled around and
then you follow this whole process.”
Pulliam’s work with these topics did not stop
after she finished school. She then worked with
a startup company called BrightSpec, which
is an innovative life science tools company
with a range of instruments that tap the power
of molecular rotational resonance (MRR)
spectroscopy.
“We took that technology I used and I went to
a startup company after my postdoc,” Pulliam
said. “The technology that we used in grad
school and postdoc was very expensive, but
because the technology is becoming cheaper and
cheaper as we go along, it’s now becoming cheap
enough that we can put it into an instrument and
we were trying to take that instrument and sell
it to the commercial market for society to use.”
Pulliam’s interest in studying astrochemistry
came from her love of knowledge and wanting
to study multiple fields at the same time.
“I went into undergrad thinking I was going
to do Biology,” Pulliam said, “because I didn’t
really know what science I wanted to go into
so I started with that, and I immediately got
interested in Chemistry and Physics. Also going
into undergrad, one of my life long goals was
to become an astronaut and that just came from
a love of Astronomy and having telescopes and
looking through them at the Moon and stuff
when I was younger.”
Pulliam quickly realized that she did not like
the different fields of study just by themselves,
but she did like them as an interdisciplinary
approach where she could learn them all.
“I like where you can take Environmental
and Chemistry and put it together and study
Environmental Science,” Pulliam said. “Or take
Biology and Astronomy and do Astrobiology,
which I did some of in graduate school by
looking at the biological implications of these
molecules.”
She wanted to find something that would
incorporate as much Chemistry, Physics,
Astronomy and Biology as possible and she
found that in Astrochemistry.
Pulliam’s husband also worked at BrightSpec
and they both knew that they wanted to teach.
She found Brevard through something called
the two-body problem, which relates to the
difficulty of both spouses finding jobs at the
same university or within reasonable commuting
distance from each other.
“So what happened was he found a job first in
Asheville,” Pulliam said, “we came down here
from Charlottesville, Virginia and I took a year
off to stay with our family and then I started
looking. Brevard was very close, it was a small
college which I was looking for, I don’t want
to teach at a Research 1 institution because I
came from a small university and I know the
impact that teaching at a small university can
have because that’s how I ended up with my
undergrad professors helping me out.”
“I was also looking for something that had an
interdisciplinary approach, which this school
does,” Pulliam said, “and it was very convenient
that Brevard College is associated with PARI.
So I applied the first day the position was open.”
Pulliam’s semester has gotten off to a great
start for the first half “I’m very happy with it,
I love it here, the students are great, the faculty
members are all great and it’s a very welcoming
and open community and I love it.”
Mock Inters-lews j 10/29, 9am' 4pm
email jobSi^brevanledu to iebedule an. inten-iew
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Sixth Annual
Harvest Festival!
Join the Campus Activities Board in
front of Myers Dining Hall at 4:30 p.m.
on Thursday, Oct. 24