How an aspiring actress from Brooklyn stumbled into an astrophysics career at NASA

How Erini Lambrides went from seeking theater stardom to studying the stars at NASA

This young researcher’s unlikely journey into academia will change the way you think about science, failure and belonging

This episode is part of “ The Young American Scientists, ” an editorially independent project that was produced with financial support from Regeneron .

Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American ’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.

We’re skipping our usual news roundup today for a special series. This week, we’ll be dedicating all of our shows to SciAm ’s inaugural class of Young American Scientists. This group of groundbreaking researchers represent the future of science, technology and medicine. You can find out all about them in the latest print issue of Scientific American , which is coming out tomorrow. And you’ll also hear from a few of them this week on Science Quickly .

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Today’s guest is Erini Lambrides, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who’s also affiliated with the University of Maryland, College Park. She’s here to tell us about her unusual path from aspiring actress to astrophysicist.

Feltman: Thank you so much for coming on to chat with us today.