Never Stop Exploring

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 Dana Hall Bulletin.

Some of Cindy Pilskaln ’74’s earliest memories are of being around the ocean. She grew up in southern California and spent ample time near the water, playing in tide pools and conducting little experiments with the hermit crabs she found there. That childhood inquisitive spirit grew into a lifelong passion, taking her not just across the country but around the world, on an oceanographic research journey from the deepest lakes in Africa and Siberia, to the Black Sea, the Antarctica and beyond, including submersible dives to depths of more than one mile.

She has a resume scattered with notations like “first woman faculty hire” and “first woman scientist hire.” She was named the State of California’s Woman of the Year and Maritime Woman Explorer. She’s worked as the chief scientist or co-chief scientist on more than 60 oceanographic and large lake cruises, and more than 50 submersible vehicle cruises. Along the way, she has also advised and mentored 25 future scientists and oceanographers. Pilskaln’s far-reaching dedication to her field earned her Dana Hall’s 2024 Distinguished Alumna Award, which was announced at Reunion in April.

Pilskaln’s family moved from California to New England when she was 12 and she attended Dana Hall as a day student. “In school, science was fun for me,” Pilskaln said, “Dana was the first time I could focus on core science subjects, such as chemistry and biology. I learned to love science and became very curious about how the natural world functioned, particularly in the ocean.”

Post commencement, her path took her north to the University of
Vermont (UVM), where a strong environmental program drew her in.
There, Pilskaln fell in love with geology and graduated with a geology degree before moving on to Harvard to begin a Ph.D. in geochemistry and geology. Out of the six who started, she was one of three women in her Ph.D. cohort to finish the doctoral program.

“I had to put my blinders on to stay committed to what I wanted to do — succeed as a scientist and an oceanographer — because I received some significant pushback being a female in a very male-dominated discipline,” Pilskaln said. “I ignored it, or I tried to. I just would not let it deter me from my goal.”

During this time, one of her advisors introduced her to an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Pilskaln’s love of heading out to sea on research vessels was born. Following Harvard, her postdoctoral position at UNC Chapel Hill took her to the Bahamas and on her first submersible dive in the DSV Alvin. With a group through the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, N.C., she began working in the Rift Valley lakes of Africa and analyzing the lake cores to understand the sediment record of regional and global climate fluctuations. In addition to collecting sediment cores, much of her research over the past 40 years has involved deploying large instrument moorings in all the major ocean basins to quantify the ocean’s role in taking up, or sequestering, atmospheric carbon dioxide.

In the late 1980s, Pilskaln was invited to join the newly formed Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, which brought
her back “home” to California and gave her ample opportunity to spend time far offshore in deep water. During her time in Monterey, she conducted many research cruises in the Subtropical North Pacific and in Monterey Bay, with funding she received from the Packard Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

She returned to the East Coast in the early 1990s, becoming a tenured professor at the University of Maine for eight years in geological oceanography, particle dynamics and carbonate geology, and then moved to the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay, Maine, where she focused on 100% research with national agency funding. Pilskaln made one last move to UMass Dartmouth’s Graduate School for Marine Science & Technology, where she retired in September 2023 from a full professorship, but continues her research as an emerita professor.

She credits sports — particularly soccer at both Dana Hall and UVM — with teaching her how to be a team player, a skill that became incredibly useful when she started working on research vessels. “You get on a ship with all these people, many of whom you may not know, and you have your own projects and tasks, but collectively, we’re all working to make it successful for everyone,” she said. “Just like in team sports, if someone is having trouble, you pick them up if they fall off their game. The ship is a small space. In oceanographic research, you must be a team player.”

While Pilskaln felt her calling to science from a young age, she doesn’t want to discourage students who aren’t as clearly drawn to a specific field or discipline. “If you don’t have that pathway in your head early on, it doesn’t mean you can’t discover it,” she said. “You need encouraging teachers and advisors who will ask you what you really like. Seek them out.”
She also encourages women, especially those in traditionally male-dominated fields such as the physical sciences, to support other women and find more voices to add to the chorus.

“My first research cruise in 1979 was a funky ship whose deck was constantly awash,” Pilskaln recalled with a laugh. “And the cabin the women were in had a leaky air conditioner and the carpeting was wet all the time, but I thought the whole experience was the best thing in the world. And there was a woman running the cruise! I thought, ‘She’s chief scientist? I can do that.’ You can craft your opportunities in as many ways as you want. You can make that choice. No matter what you do — go far from your coast or stay close to home — it’s okay.”

When asked if, now that her time teaching and advising students has come to a close, she’d find her way back to the other coast she loves so much, Pilskaln smiled and said, “You know, I went back to my Laguna Beach tide pools recently. The hermit crabs were happy to see me.”