Kaitlin Naughten from the University of New South Wales works on one of the most pressing issues facing modern climate science: interactions between the ocean and the vast ice shelves fringing Antarctica. Existentially, this interaction has the potential to largely determine the rate and amount of sea level rise disgorging from the continent. Will it be 20 cm by 2100? Or 15 m by 2500? The atmosphere is a key player, but ice-ocean interactions will remain critical for centuries. To get the big picture right, however, we need models that physically couple ice sheets/shelves with the ocean. This is hard, really hard, on scientific and computer engineering fronts.

For her PhD, Kaitlin Beneath took the plunge into a massive — and successful — model debugging project that identified and fixed a vexing numerical instability involving sea ice production. In her postdoc, soon to start at the British Antarctic Survey, Kaitlin will be working on similarly challenging modeling, this time for the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf.

So, safe to say that Kaitlin excels at identifying and working through major scientific challenges. But she has also had to work through another challenge: a stutter. We talk about the many, and serious, challenges of having a stutter while pursuing a career in science – which inevitably involves a lot of talking. There are many facets to having, and managing a stutter: the triggers, how to give a scientific talk or conduct an interview, making career choices. Maybe the most important point for me is Kaitlin’s suggestion of how best to talk with someone with a stutter. Don’t do any of the things that might occur to you. Don’t try to finish a stutter’s sentence. Don’t fill empty space with empty talk. Wait. Just wait.

I should also say a bit about how I edited my interview with Kaitlin. I edited out umms, errs, and the like. I trimmed sections of the conversation where Kaitlin began one thread of conversation but then went a different way. This is exactly what I do for all guests. But it wasn’t clear how or if to edit Kaitlin’s stutter. If I edited out all the stutter, then it wouldn’t be Kaitlin’s voice, and we both felt this was not the way to go. We discussed other options, and decided to edit out some of the more extended blockages, but to leave others. This way, the listener will have a clear sense of what Kaitlin’s stutter is like, but the interview itself is somewhat compressed. Keep in mind that, when you meet Kaitlin in person, the stutter might be more or less than what you hear in the interview.