Colleen Zumpf researches ways to use plants to help the environment in her role as a bioenergy and agricultural systems ecologist postdoctoral appointee in Argonne’s Environmental Science (EVS) division. 

As early as grade school, Colleen enjoyed science, especially science fairs. When she was a sophomore in high school, a visit to the Women in Science and Technology Conference first exposed her to Argonne, and she told herself ​“If I ever got the opportunity to work at Argonne, I would do so.” 

As she entered college, she shifted toward an environmental science major. ​“It touched so many different disciplines; I believed it would give me the opportunity to have a broader education and pursue more diverse career opportunities – and I wasn’t wrong,” she said. 

Before joining Argonne with the initial role of field manager, Colleen explored numerous areas of environmental research in her education and career, including environmental education, environmental biology, and land management. All this experience proved useful when a recruiter called her out of the blue about a job opening at Argonne. 

“I almost dropped the phone and – once recovering from the shock – I said ​‘Yes, absolutely I will take the job, you don’t have to tell me what it is, it’s at Argonne, I accept!’” she recalls.  

After her first few years at Argonne, Colleen built upon her experience by transitioning to a PhD program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she continued to focus on an Argonne research project while gaining experience in a new field: agriculture. 

Today at Argonne, Colleen continues to study new ways that plants, through the right selection and placement, can support the environment. 

“We can select and use plants to clean our water and soil, prevent flooding, reduce the amount of water needed for crop production, or even store carbon from the atmosphere,” she said. ​“Also, maintaining or restoring healthy ecosystems can be expensive – so our research not only looks at the benefits we receive from having a healthy ecosystem, but also how much these practices cost.” 

One important thing that Colleen points out to students is that her own education and career path leading up to Argonne was far from linear. 

“It is okay if you do not have an idea, right now, of what you want to do as a career,” she said. ​“Try out different volunteer, internship, or job opportunities. Take advantage of school clubs, trips, afterschool events, or in-school class opportunities that could introduce you to something new. Even when something may not seem directly connected to your future career, it may still provide useful skills.” 

In particular, Colleen emphasizes the importance of the arts – using the acronym STEAM for science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics. 

“There is a reason that the Arts are included in STEAM, in my opinion,” she said. ​“There are a lot of parallels between the sciences and the arts – the passion, creativity, focus, and the confidence needed in yourself to present your work to the world. Never stop learning, even now. Learning does not stop once you graduate. There is always something new to learn.”