Episode 21: Waleed Abdalati - NASA Chief Scientist and how to live a life led by your curiosity

Waleed Abdalati looks at the Earth differently. His visionary thinking transcends the boundaries of science and society. Waleed sends the message that ‘whatever you do in life must give you energy and not draw energy from you’ that rings true across his life and will bring meaning to each of us.

Waleed Abdalati looks at the Earth differently, he conceives of it in ways that bring new understanding and his visionary thinking transcends the boundaries of science and society. Waleed gave advice in a talk in 2012 that ‘whatever you do in life must give you energy and not draw energy from you.’ I was in that audience as an impressionable graduate student and those words altered my life. His trajectory carries that same gravity and he gives beautiful language to it during this conversation.

Dr. Abdalati is director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, one of the premier institutions for Earth Science, where he integrates observations and models of incredible diversity into a coherent picture of the Earth system. 

Beyond the university, his passions have led him all over the research and physical worlds. He spent 12 years in various roles at NASA, including notably the head of the Goddard Space Flight Center’s Cryospheric Sciences Branch and culminating in his becoming one of only 10 individuals ever to hold the title of NASA Chief Scientist. During his time at NASA, Waleed  led a number of landmark missions such as the Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (or ICESat) missions. His work has taken him to all corners of the Earth for the sake of discovery, including Antarctica, the Arctic, and the Patagonian Ice Sheets. 

Waleed was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Service Medal in 2004, and was chosen for the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 1999. 

He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Syracuse University in 1986, and Masters and PhD degrees from the University of Colorado in 1991 and 1996, respectively.

Waleed gave advice in a talk in 2012 that ‘whatever you do in life must give you energy and not draw energy from you.’ I was in that audience as an impressionable graduate student and those words altered my life. His trajectory carries that same gravity and he gives beautiful language to it during this conversation.

Waleed is an embodiment of the ideal to be ‘led around by your curiosity,’ and is an inspiration. His perspective is expansive in the manner that the world desperately needs today, one that has changed my own life, and that I’m deeply excited to have on Origins.