Janet Green tried to leave science several times and in her words – is something she “can’t not do.” Like many scientists, Janet is interested in solving puzzles and problems.

One memorable moment for Janet came on the first day of her high school physics class. Her teacher presented a pendulum to her class. She was so intrigued by the pendulum because she could use all of the math she knew to explain its behavior.  She was very excited by this discovery – the connection between math and how the pendulum swung.

After high school she went on to study physics at University of California at San Diego. This was the closest area of study to space weather available to her. She even worked on a space weather project studying how solar wind impacted the tail debris of the comet, Swift-Tuttle.

However, after graduating from college she could not find a job in physics. She found a job as a hostess in a restaurant and a job as a video game tester. Her job as a video game tester was to play and replay a game in as many different ways as possible to see if the game would “break.”  When the game would not behave the way the programmers had intended it to play, she then had to write up a report.  Janet had to describe how she played each segment of the game so the programmers could fix the problems she found.

Because she did not have someone to tell her how to go to graduate school Janet had to find her own way. She soon took a job as a computer programmer at the University of California at Los Angeles with a space physicist.  At UCLA she programmed computers to process the data from the Galileo satellite that was collecting information about Jupiter’s magnetic field.

After working as programmer, she applied to get her PhD at UCLA. She did not enjoy her first researcher project so she asked to study the radiation belt of Earth. She enjoyed this very much and soon completed her PhD.  Upon completion of this degree she did a one-year post doctoral study with the Space Weather Prediction Center. Janet then went to the University of Colorado to further study Earth’s radiation belt at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

After working at LASP she was offered a job with the National Weather Service at the Space Weather PredictionCenter in Boulder Colorado where she continues to study space weather. She is part of a team of scientists and engineers that watch the sun and predict what solar events might impact our power distribution systems, satellite based communications, and airplane communication and navigation.