TAMEST Member Profile: Stephen Fuselier, Ph.D. (NAS), Southwest Research Institute
Stephen Fuselier, Ph.D. (NAS), Executive Director of Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) Space Science Directorate, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2021 for his achievements in original research.
The New Orleans native got recruited to Texas in 2011 to work with SwRI after 25 years at what is now Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center. He is well-known for his fundamental contributions to the understanding of physics interactions between solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere, comets and the interstellar medium.
He holds key positions on several NASA missions and serves as Adjoint Professor at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) where he gets to collaborate and mentor early-career researchers in his field of space physics.
TAMEST connected with Dr. Fuselier to learn more about his career, passion for mentorship and the future of space research in Texas.
How did you first get into the field of space science?
I’m afraid I was one of those embarrassing kids who wanted to be a scientist my whole life.
I grew up in the Apollo-era where space was cool, and I wanted to be an astronomer since I was pretty much in third grade.
But you aren’t an astronomer, what changed?
When I got to graduate school, I took a class in plasma physics and that was it. I really got interested in studying the stuff between the stars, as opposed to the stars themselves, so that was really how I got into space science.
What do you find is the biggest misconception of your work?
I work in the unmanned exploration side of things and when you say you, “work with NASA,” people immediately think of astronauts.
When you try to explain space physics, they then think of astrophysics and when they need an explanation about space physics, they go to an astrophysicist rather than coming up with somebody, like me, who really does study the stuff between the stars.
It is what I have always wanted to do — be a scientist and go out and discover things. It is my dream job and I really enjoy doing it.
You spent 25 years of your career working at Lockheed Martin. What made you leave and transition into your work at Southwest Research Institute?
The work I was doing at Lockheed Martin was and is very similar to what I do at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). It may have been in industry, but it operated very much like a research institute or university.
We wrote proposals to NASA and, if we won them, then we built the instruments, flew them, analyzed the data on them and then wrote papers on results. That’s pretty much what I do here in Texas.
I just got recruited to come to Texas and felt it was time to move on. SwRI offered me the opportunity to be not just a line manager, but also to still be a scientist. It afforded me an opportunity to also mentor students at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).
Why is making time to mentor graduate students as an Adjoint Professor at The University of Texas at San Antonio so important to you?
I often hear these horror stories about people going through graduate school and struggling. They are having a difficult time and spending years and years working for what seems like forever on their degree.
Well, that wasn’t my experience at all. I really enjoyed graduate school. I was there a relatively short amount of time compared to others, but I had a fantastic advisor. I said if I started advising students, I wanted to be like my advisor.
I want my students to have the same kind of experience in graduate school that I had – just purely positive. My advisor taught me more about how to do research as opposed to hyper-focusing on a particular subject I was researching. That’s now what I tell my students.
I don’t look at anyone as a student. To me, we’re collaborators who do this work on an equal footing. In fact, I love to see my students graduate and move on to their next job where I still get to collaborate with them. It’s a lot of fun working with former students.
What role do you think Texas has to play in the future of space research and exploration?
Texas has a big role to play. Elon Musk is investing here and there’s going to be a launch facility down in Brownsville. However, that’s not all. There are a lot of other commercial companies coming in to work in Texas.
Southwest Research Institute also continues to be a heavy investor in space research. One mission we’re working on ends in 2037 – that’s a long-term investment.
It’s been amazing and interesting for me to watch projects develop, to think through things like seeing how many objects in our solar system other than comets carry water, travel to the outer planets, etc.; it’s just endlessly fascinating.
What advice would you have for someone thinking of getting into a STEM field?
It immensely helps if you can find someone to be your mentor and to work with them. I’ve had so many mentors along the way in my career, and when you find somebody that you’re sure you can work with, just be a sponge and absorb everything you can from them.
Learn how to do things, and if you’re passionate enough about it, it’ll come through.
What does being a member of TAMEST mean to you?
There are two things about TAMEST that I find interesting and exciting.
One is the collaboration it fosters. Collaboration to me is really the key to the success of my research. If you look at the papers I’ve written and you look at the number of different co-authors I’ve had, you can really see that.
The second thing is TAMEST tries to develop the next generation of academy members. One of my great interests is mentoring promising early-career scientists and watching their careers take off.
Why do you live and work in Texas?
Absolutely I stayed here because of the work. SwRI has been a spectacular place for me to work for and the people I work with are the very best.
Up until the pandemic, I could say that coming into work was just the delight of my day. I’m having too much fun to think about retiring any time soon. Even though the Texas summers can be brutal, the work makes it all worth it.
