A month ago I was invited by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space to be a part of a delegation led by the Minister Ofir Akunis, to visit to Houston, TX as the Israeli representative at NASA Ames Research Center. After it got canceled for the first time, I didn’t believe it would eventually happen, but I am so glad it did.
I woke up early in the morning to catch a flight from SFO to Houston. Immediately when I landed the extreme heat and humidity reminded me of my precious Israel. I planned a whole day of sightseeing but the 10 minutes walking from the bus station to the hotel, reminded me that it’s impossible to this in 40° C. So instead I went to the Texas shaped pool in our hotel.
We as Israelis and Jews are all ambassadors of Israel. Whether we like it or not. We will get asked questions and what we say will matter.
The next day, I got a chance to meet with the leaders of the Jewish community in Houston. After giving us a tour at the JCC they shared a lot about their recovery from Hurricane Harvey which was a big disaster in Houston. It’s amazing to see the fast recovery and how they stood by one another during the tough times. In my mind I was thinking about how data science can help predict such distastes. Later, we got to have a lunch meeting with the leaders of the Jewish community. While Minister Ofir Akunis talked he mentioned I am a part of the international relationship between Israel and the US and if I could say a few words after that. I smiled and said sure, and quickly started thinking what am I going to say. My research? My background? The program I am in? In the meantime the leaders talked a lot about how all their community worked together after their disaster and expressed their challenge to support Israel when it has many internal conflicts. So this is what I said:
“ First of all great job on recovering from your disaster. I am Noa Yehezkel Lubin and I have been living my dream in the past two months thanks to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space. I am doing a research at NASA Ames in the mission of identifying exoplanets. I can tell you all about my research after lunch but I am choosing to talk about something different. I apologise, Ambassador Katz, but we as Israelis and Jews are all ambassadors of Israel. Whether we like it or not. We will get asked questions and what we say will matter. Sometimes we can find ourselves explaining decisions we disagree with and dig into the complexity of the situation. It is our duty, if we won’t do it no one else will. In my internship at NASA, my mentor happens to be Iranian.”
Ofir: “Iranian Iranian?” Me: “Born and raised in Iran.”
“Since I am Israeli I have to be escorted to NASA campus. So while we were siting in the car having a conversation, my mentor told me: “Noa, I am so happy I hired you, you changed my opinion about Israel”.
Everyone clapped their hands and came to talk to me after the lunch. Even Ofir said I spoke well. I was proud.
This day I also felt what being a politician feels like and I must say it’s very different then being a scientist, but I like my position better ;)
Today, we got to visit Johnson Space Center! The cherry on top of the Houston cake. This whole city seems to be heavily inspired by astronauts, and this didn’t fall short when we visited. We first got a congratulations fro JSC and a picture with the Israeli flag who had been on the ISS was brought to the Minister as a present. There I got to speak about a research of my colleague of eye vessels image processing to monitor sight loss of astronauts. Then we visited building 9, the astronaut training facility. The tour was given to us by Reid Wiseman, an astronaut who spent 165 days in space. I talked to him about my exoplanet research and about his experience, it was great. We got to see the tiny capsule for the launch itself and even got to step inside the ISS mock-up where astronauts are training. Later, we went to the Mission Control Center, it was very cool to see the Ground Control of the ISS it felt very familiar to me.
Houston, we don’t have a problem at all ;) it was great!
