She submitted the proposal and a professor from Duke decided to sponsor her. After finishing her Ph.D. in 1975, she went to Dalhousie University for three years as an endowed post-doctoral fellow, then on to her own stint at Brookhaven, where she was a research scientist for 15 years, chairing the Oceanographic and Atmospheric Sciences Division for two years. While she now has her sights set on plankton life in the arctic, she hopes for another chance to return to the Indian Ocean before retirement. Knowing that to pursue her own research interests, she must convince others of their value, Smith has become proficient at writing grant proposals, primarily to the National Science Foundation, for which she worked in 1988-89. And requests are far different than they used to be.
Ships only offer a snapshot.
We need long-term observation, instruments we can leave in the sea to collect data. It was a global model, but most of the discoveries were under the ocean, where the plate boundaries are. A circuitous route led her to MIT, where she taught for 15 years and directed the Joint Program in Oceanography with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. I was intrigued. It s important to find synergy between projects, to make the sum of the work greater than the individual parts.