Meeting the Science Team
Posted on December 9th, 2010 by Alexis Wright

Personal Log.

This is the end of my first full day aboard Atlantis. It’s kind of a strange feeling, to go from being a straight scientist to being the commanding officer of a Science team. I mean, I’ve had a LITTLE leadership experience here and there, but nothing like this before. I suppose there’s nothing like a trial by fire, though!

I’d like to make this as a reminder to myself about my team, since I met them all today, along with their specialties and my observations. I should clarify, though, that even though many of these people have listed specializations, they are still very capable in a wide array of scientific fields.

My second in command has been the acting Science officer, but was more than grateful to relenquish those responsibilities to me. His name is Ensign Lucas Taylor, a human from the North American Midwest. He is probably about 24 years old, tall and lanky, with an unruly mop of brown hair. His specialties are particle physics and chemistry, which are nicely complementary to my own specialties. He’s soft-spoken and witty with a charming accent, and as much in love with science as I am. We hit it off almost immediately – I think we’re going to be a great team.

Our third in command is the newly minted Ensign Yuki Watanabe, a very small, petite, and lovely young Japanese woman. She’s only 19 years old, but she’s a brilliant biochemist, biologist, astrobiologist, and anthropologist. She’s truly a genius in her fields of study, pioneering scientific advances as early as age 14. I’d actually heard of her in the academic world before we met here on Atlantis, and she’d heard of me as well, which I was thrilled to hear. She’d actually read my articles on Xenobiology and complimented them very highly! She’s very shy, but friendly and polite.

I didn’t get as much of a personal feel for the rest of my team, so I’ll just list them for my personal reference…
Chief Warrant Officer 2nd Class Luis Flores, Surveying/Engineering
Chief Warrant Officer 2nd Class Bridget O’Flanagan, Archaeology/Architecture
Chief Warrant Officer 1st Class Jonah M’tumbe, Botany/Agriculture
Chief Warrant Officer 1st Class Xia Ping, Astronomy/Physics
Chief Warrant Officer 1st Class Neomi Sladek, Structural/Chemical Engineering
Chief Warrant Officer 1st Class Gianni Roselli, Geology/Earth Sciences
Warrant Officer Siobhan O’Shea, Mathematics
Warrant Officer Tran Nguyen, Mathematics/Cryptology
Warrant Officer Arnold McIntyre, Physics
Warrant Officer Darren Byron, Geology

And the Enlisted…
Allison Wainwright, Stellar/Planetary Cartography
Vince Madsen, Chemistry
Milo Coperna, Biology
Fernando Ortiz, Archaelogy
Heather Fry, Anthropology
Jim Ploughman, Generalist
Kim Plocek, Generalist
Dinah Johnson, Generalist
Duk Toombal, Generalist
Don Wang, Generalist
Corbin Dees, Generalist

I have a feeling I’m going to be referring to this a lot. End Log.