Courtesy Photo | Staff Sgt. René Castillo, 87th Aerial Port Squadron load planner, poses for a picture...... read more read more
It started with ramen noodles Staff Sgt. René Castillo, 87th Aerial Port Squadron load planner, was 11 years old when she decided to become a geologist.
“I was in fifth grade,” said Castillo, now 26. “My mom used to pack ramen noodles for me to take to school for lunch. One day, she stopped. When I asked her what happened to the ramen noodles, she said that the grocery store didn’t have them anymore.”
A naturally curious child, she turned to the internet for answers.
“I learned that a huge earthquake had devastated Japan and wiped out the factory that made the noodles we bought,” she recalled.
The Tōhoku earthquake, a 9.1 magnitude megathrust earthquake, was the world’s fourth most powerful earthquake recorded in history, and nearly 20,000 people died as a result of the quake and ensuing tsunami.
“That stuck with me,” Castillo said.
Her interest in earthquakes and tsunamis grew, and she soon realized she wanted to be a geologist.
“In fifth grade, I made up my mind,” she said, “so that’s what I did.”
Science and service converge Both Castillo’s parents served in the U.S. Army, so the family moved around a bit. Castillo and her older sister grew up in California, Texas and the state of Washington.
She began her geology education at Texas A&M University while she was still in high school, participating in camps and other special programming. She later majored in geology there and played tuba in the band.
Following in her parents’ footsteps, she also pursued military service, completing Air Force ROTC at Texas A&M. Upon graduation, she was given the choice to either go into active duty or enroll at the Air Force Institute of Technology in a chemical engineering or engineering graduate degree path.
Ultimately, Castillo decided to remain true to her dream of becoming a geologist, so she enlisted in the Air Force Reserve, drilling at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas.
“I never want to stop learning,” she said.
It was the driving force to learn and grow that brought her to The Ohio State University. She earned a master’s degree in geology, and she is now in her third year of the PhD in Earth Sciences program at OSU.
From Texas to Ohio and beyond During the course of her geology and geophysics studies, Castillo traveled to Austria, Costa Rica, England, Germany, Greece, Japan, Mexico and Scotland.
She was also a sedimentologist team member for Expedition 405 of the International Ocean Discovery Program, working with a team from across the globe who conduct research on the world’s largest scientific ocean drilling vessel, Chikyu, owned by the Japanese government. The technologically-advanced ship can drill more than four miles into the Earth’s crust, extracting layers of ocean core for research.
“I take those samples of rock and mud – all little pieces of a puzzle – and I assemble them into usable data,” she said.
From this compilation, researchers draw conclusions about the environment and natural world. Data, coding and exploration work in harmony in the field of geology. Castillo learned Python coding during her time at Texas A&M.
Now, she interns at NASA as a software engineer, coding the database that organizes information supplied by a satellite on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Her work is part of a NASA New Frontiers’ mission called Dragonfly, scheduled to launch in 2028.
“The Dragonfly satellite will travel around Titan for three years, collecting samples from various areas. The researchers will ask, ‘What are we seeing on other planetary bodies, and how can we analyze and categorize those samples, then map them?’ That’s a geologist’s job,” she said. “That’s what I do.”
Titan is of special interest, she explained, because, while not a planet, it is one of the most earthlike of the planetary bodies. NASA is exploring the habitability of Titan’s environment, according to the official webpage of the mission.
“It has a liquid, methane, at its surface, which makes it particularly interesting,” she explained. “Geologists often study methane as part of their earthquake research.”
A looming threat No matter how far her research takes her, Castillo says she won’t forget her roots.
The west coast of the U.S. is in the Cascadia subduction zone, leaving her childhood states vulnerable to megathrust earthquakes, catastrophic events which occur when one tectonic plate is forced beneath another. Powerful tsunamis and flooding often follow these seismic events at convergent plate boundaries.
Each spring, she travels biweekly to Forks, Washington, and teaches geology and geophysics at Quileute Tribal School as part of the Cascadia Culture and geoScience Exchange (CASE) program. The Native American students and their community are near to her heart; Castillo is an enrolled member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, a band of the Lakota Nation.
“One day my dream is to open an Indigenous geology institute,” she said.
The school where she currently teaches was relocated in 2022, part of preventative measures the Quileute Tribe took based on emerging research about earthquakes and tsunamis.
They continue working to mitigate the coastal geohazard risks in the Pacific Northwest through their Move to Higher Ground project, according to the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center.
Other communities in the region aren’t as prepared, Castillo said.
“We, as researchers, are expecting the next megathrust earthquake to hit Cascadia in the next 50-60 years,” she added.
When asked what’s next, Castillo said she plans to continue researching and educating for the rest of her life – “This is what I’m meant to do.”
| Date Taken: | 11.02.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.08.2026 10:29 |
| Story ID: | 557702 |
| Location: | OHIO, US |
| Web Views: | 22 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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