Bianca Baldassari did her fellowship in our site at Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF) in the Philippines.

Learn more about Bianca’s adventures below! If Bianca’s experience piques your interest in becoming a fellow yourself, apply here!

In a world brimming with innovation and discovery, the fusion of science and community has never been more vital. Recently, Science Corps had the incredible opportunity to send Bianca Baldassarri, a passionate fellow, to the Philippines, where she dedicated her time to teaching Research and Physics courses at a local site. Her journey is not just a tale of scientific endeavor; it’s a heartfelt story of connection, learning, and inspiration.

Bridging Cultures Through Science and Education

Bianca’s adventure began with her participation in the 10th Jagna International Workshop. Here, she engaged with a diverse group of scientists, educators and enthusiasts, sharing her insights and learning from others. One memorable moment was when she immersed herself in the local culture by learning to wear the “malong,” a versatile Philippine garment that can be used in myriad ways—from a head-dress to a cozy wrap. This simple act symbolized her openness to embracing new experiences and highlighted the beauty of cultural exchange.

Engaging Minds with Physics

Bianca’s primary mission was to ignite a passion for science in her students. With her dedication, she crafted Learning Activity Sheets (LAS) for both research courses and Physics performance tasks. Through engaging projects focused on the dynamics of forces and Newton’s Laws of Motion, she turned complex concepts into exciting challenges for her students. Every day, she would painstakingly handwrite lessons on the board, following the typical CVIF-DLP method, ensuring each student felt connected to the material.

One of her standout contributions was her talk, “Fun Topics in Physics,” delivered as part of the Maria Victoria Carpio Bernido Lecture Series to Grade 11 students. This wasn’t just a lecture; it was a heartfelt invitation to explore the wonders of Physics. Bianca aimed to inspire these young minds to consider careers in engineering and physical sciences, opening up a world of possibilities for their futures.

Celebrating Achievements Together

Bianca’s journey wasn’t just about teaching; it was also about celebrating milestones. She attended the graduation ceremony at CVIF, sharing in the joy and pride of the students’ accomplishments. This moment reinforced the impact of her work and the importance of nurturing young talents who will shape the future of science and technology.

A Journey of Friendship and Growth

Beyond the classroom, Bianca’s time in the Philippines was enriched by her friendship with Alfilgen, a fellow at the Bernido guesthouse. Together, they shared laughter, scheduled reading sessions, and found moments to exercise, creating a bond that transcended their professional roles. These connections remind us that collaboration and camaraderie are integral to personal and professional growth.

Exploring the Beauty of Bohol

After attending the 10th Jagna International Conference, Bianca had the chance to explore the breathtaking landscapes of Bohol, including the famous Chocolate Hills and the enchanting Loboc River on a floating restaurant cruise. These experiences not only filled her heart with joy but also deepened her appreciation for the vibrant culture and natural beauty of the Philippines.

Inspiring a New Generation

During her fellowship at the Central Visayan Institute Foundation in the Philippines, Bianca Baldassarri made a remarkable impact through her dedication to teaching and her ability to connect with senior high school students. By advising them on their research projects and sharing insights during career talks, she fostered curiosity and inspired the next generation of scientists in Physics and beyond. If you’re interested in the meaningful work Science Corps is doing to empower students and educators in underserved communities, check out the Science Corps website. Additionally, if you wish to support our mission to enhance STEM education, consider making a donation here.

The post Fellow Update! Bianca Baldassarri in CVIF, Philippines appeared first on Science Corps.

Our fellow, Kris Sales shares his experiences in our site at Rabat American School, Morocco.

Learn more about Kris Sale’s adventures below! If Kris’ experience piques your interest in becoming a fellow yourself, apply here!

1^st month

Why Did You Become a Science Corps Fellow?

My Science Corps Fellow timing was slightly unusual. Often, fellowships take place between the PhD exam and the next adventure, but I was two years into a researcher role when I spotted an advert on an Evolutionary Directory email list. Science Corps was attractive because it offered:

1. An experience abroad in a very different culture. I was ready for a change since my experience had been mainly laboratory evolutionary experiments, and I had spent nearly a decade learning and researching on the same University of East Anglia campus in Norwich (famous, among other things, for strong Colman’s mustard and the comedy character Alan Partridge).
2. Teaching as a core activity. While there wasn’t an expectation for PhD students to teach, I helped as much as possible. I loved sharing knowledge in classes where I was previously a student (like a Field Ecology course in Ireland) and getting school kids excited about the often astounding field of biology.
3. Promoting upward social mobility. Only two people in my extended family went to university, and I didn’t know what one was until I was 17. I’m strongly in favor of an inclusive meritocracy and support anything that facilitates this.

Originally, I was heading out to the American School of Tangiers in early 2021, but like for most of the globe, Covid forced other plans. It was only possible this year to finally reach Morocco after travel restrictions eased and my life stabilized. In total, it was four years between applying and flying out! My new destination was the Rabat American School…

How’s the 1st Month Gone?

It’s been an adventure! This fellowship is quite unique. It’s the first Sci Corps placement here, which means plenty of solution-finding and negotiating through uncertainties over logistics and a teaching ‘niche’ (excuse the biology pun).

It’s instantly impressive how passionate, experienced, friendly, and socially aware the teachers are. It’s also impressive how busy the school timetable seems! Even from day one, a week before students arrived, most of my time was filled with training sessions like positive discipline. As a host, RAS is well-resourced and well-connected.

My Science Corps Fellowship placement attracted much intrigue from the teachers. To help give more context to the staff, I gave presentations about the charity, my research and teaching experience, and potential directions for my time here. I also sent out a Google poll survey for staff to vote on future collaborative activities and topics I could offer. The outputs from the fellowship will likely be an interaction between Sci Corps aims, my background, and RAS’s needs; I’m very keen that resources are translated and distributed to other schools. I aim to repeat the survey with the students, too. I hope that teachers will approach me for help on specific modules and lessons, and I can provide school-wide support on broader research projects and topics. Some direct connections with other local schools and charities may also form.

Besides helping build resources for biology lessons and acclimatizing, I have been learning about the local ecologies and have started to survey the local biodiversity. It’s at about 100 species so far! The iconic Monarch butterflies, which migrate thousands of kilometers across the Americas, seem to have set up residence here, which surprised me. I’ve also encountered beautiful, yet potentially deadly, fat-tailed Androctonus scorpions. The recent earthquake had a devastating effect between Agadir and Marrakech, and the school has not been immune to its wider repercussions, with some of the community’s friends and relatives being impacted. If the quake had happened two weeks later, the secondary school classes would have been on a week-long ‘Week Without Walls’ camping trip in that area.

2^nd month

Preparation, Presentations, Plants, and Ponds

After presenting to all teaching staff about the charity, my background, and potential ideas for the school, I followed up with a questionnaire to determine how my time should be best spent. The most popular answers from around 50 topics were:

• More information about the species on the school’s campus
• Nature walks
• Promoting upward social mobility. Only two people in my extended family went to university, and I didn’t know what one was until I was 17. I’m strongly in favor of an inclusive meritocracy and support anything that facilitates this.
• How do non-animals communicate?
• Extinctions (especially from climate change)
• Animal behavior
• Dealing with online misinformation
• Cool parasites
• Fixing the school’s pond
• Fixing the school’s community garden

These will now form the core areas that I will focus on.

I gathered or created over 150 resources that I have shared with teachers so far. Phew! These have mainly supported lesson topics such as food webs, evolution, plant taxonomy, making infographics, statistics, and climate change. I’ve helped diagnose the likely issues behind the garden and the pond, and I have designed improvement plans for student volunteers and maintenance staff to implement.

I’ve been sharing research news about female Moroccan scientists, insect sentience, and biases in artificial intelligence. It’s been great when teachers come to me with photos of creatures to identify, research papers to be translated into simpler messages, and requests for my research to be included in their lessons. Students have also been approaching me with some great science questions!

Perhaps the most impactful and nerve-wracking thing I did this month was presenting and then being interviewed at the elementary school’s assembly; an audience of over 200 children, parents, teachers, and the director. I made sure to slow down and simplify my language, include body language, audience participation, and lots of pictures and video clips. My main messages were: 1) scientists are now diverse, and any of the children could become one; 2) it’s OK to change what they want to do as they get older; and 3) not to touch wild animals, as it’s stressful for the animal and could be dangerous.

3^rd month

Work: Field Ecology, Evolution, Climate Change, Statistics, and Infographics

The past weeks have been busy. All the classes at the school have had introduction scientist talks, and I’ve been creating resources across several projects.

The ecological surveying continued, with almost 200 species found within 5 km of campus. The plan is to turn this data into a spreadsheet with their locations and various aspects of their biology. Questions and pictures from teachers about nature at the school have continued to come in. Excitingly, teachers from other state-funded schools have started reaching out through mutual colleagues or the RAS’s Fulbright network.

The social science faculty requested my help with infographics after they saw an animated video on my research during the staff talk. They wanted to improve the effectiveness of projects where students design posters and infographics to share their research with the public. I collated two dozen examples from my previous work with annotations for my choices of colors, shapes, and layouts, as well as information on science communication.

A teacher running field trips to Svalbard, Norway, saw that I had worked there as a marine biologist for several months and requested I put together lessons on climate change, ecology, and conservation issues in that region.

Three of my larger projects included: 1. Turning evolutionary biology concepts into card and dice games; 2. Developing new lessons on the impacts and solutions of climate change; and 3. Conducting workshops on how scientists use data and statistics to draw conclusions, reach a consensus, and then share conclusions with the general public. Satisfyingly, enough resources and demonstrations were provided for the teachers to run these sessions without my presence.

A highlight was being invited on the elementary overnight trip to Khemisset, a rural area between Rabat and Meknes. Armed with a butterfly net, pots, and identification resources, I opportunistically caught insects and sampled plants to prompt short hands-on talks about how to identify them and what their significance is. The morning of the second day started with unveiling a moth trap (a bright light over a black box). It was filled with live moths and highlighted that they aren’t all boring brown ones that feed on clothes! It was satisfying to see teachers break off into small groups and run through problem-based exercises based on nature observations and ecological concepts that I’d created. We also visited a co-operative farm and the local souk (market), which presented some challenging animal welfare scenarios. Here, I was keen to promote respect for nature and conservation alongside an appreciation of the natural world.

4^th month

Holiday: 1,100 km Moroccan Road Trip

With my wife visiting over half-term, we decided to adventure by looping around North Morocco. From the current capital, Rabat, we traveled east through the Maamora Forest. This ancient woodland, extending 133,000 hectares, is the largest expanse of cork oak internationally. The forest is a valuable resource for Moroccans, providing cork, timber, and acorns. It’s also important for life generally, capturing atmospheric carbon and providing habitat. Some of the more charismatic residents include gazelles, booted eagles, ravens, and Greek tortoises.

The road to Meknes was a gentle incline into an increasingly arid red-beige sandy landscape. Morocco has three historic capitals, and Meknes is relatively less known, having been the capital in the 1600s. Many of the attractions relate to projects initiated by Sultan Moulay Ismail, including his mausoleum, a grain store that could house 12,000 horses, and a prison said to be such a labyrinth that bars and doors weren’t necessary. The city’s vibe was distinctly non-tourist, with the medina (town center) souks (markets) being mainly filled with food and modern items.

With my background in forestry, our next stops at Azrou and Ifrane, high in the Middle Atlas mountains, were spectacular. Growing up to 40 m and with blue-green needles, Atlas cedars are common centerpieces in UK parks and manor gardens; however, Morocco has 80% of their global range.

Nurturing Curiosity:

During his fellowship at the Rabat American School in Morocco, Kris Sales made a profound impact by engaging primary school children in the exploration of local flora and fauna. His interactive lessons ignited a passion for the environment among young learners, fostering curiosity about the natural world. If you’re interested in the meaningful work Science Corps is doing to inspire students and promote STEM education, check out the Science Corps website. Additionally, if you wish to support our mission to enhance STEM education in underserved communities, consider making a donation here.

The post Fellow Update! Kris Sales in RAS, Morocco appeared first on Science Corps.

Our fellow, Ilyada Karada shares her experiences in our site at City University, Bangladesh.

Learn more about Ilyada’s adventures below! If Ilyada’s experience piques your interest in becoming a fellow yourself, apply here!

1^st month

Becoming a Science Corp Fellow

As someone who had never taken a gap year in my 24 years of continuous full-time education and had always yearned to, when I came across the opportunity to become a Science Corps Fellow, I was ecstatic to be accepted at the start of 2023. At the time, I expected to have completed my PhD thesis before heading out to Bangladesh, but like many other students, the writing phase took longer than anticipated. I was still finishing things up when I headed for Bangladesh at the start of September. Upon arriving at City University, I became a member of the Mechanical Engineering Department.

The Rain

Bangladesh is known for experiencing six seasons, and when I first arrived in the country, it was towards the end of their rainy season (Barsa Ritu). As a Brit, rainy days are something I’m very familiar with; however, the wet weather in Bangladesh was a whole different experience. No light drizzles—only torrential downpours. Thunderstorms were very frequent and closer than I had ever experienced. It was incredible to see how the weather conditions, which would be seen as extreme in the UK, completely unfazed the locals. You would see people going about their days as normal, with children playing in the flooded streets.

Singapore

Therefore, it was a momentous occasion when I finally submitted my thesis at the end of my first month in Bangladesh. However, the euphoria was rather short-lived as I found out on the day of my submission that the visa I had arrived with could not be extended and that I would need to leave the country immediately. It wasn’t all bad, though, as I packed my bag and headed to Singapore for a short trip and a new visa. I experienced quite a few visa hurdles and frustrations throughout my time in Bangladesh, which were incredibly humbling and led me to realize how much I take for granted the strength of my passport.

2^nd month

Lecturing

In my second month, I had the privilege of beginning to co-lecture the Metallic Materials Course. This was my first experience lecturing, and it was very exciting. As someone hoping to pursue a career in research and academia, lecturing was something I found very daunting, but the whole experience was very positive, and I look forward to leading courses next semester. I enjoyed being able to teach the theory by relating it to real-world problems. As several of the students were part-time students already working in the engineering industry, they were able to bring their own experiences to the discussions.

Cricket Mania

I was shocked at the extent of their love for the sport as a nation. The national kit can be spotted everywhere, and down narrow streets where you would expect to see kids kicking around a ball, they had a game of cricket going. I was there during the Cricket World Cup, and it was being screened on every television. People stopped to watch the game in shop windows; they gathered around a tiny TV at the gym, and it was even projected across the wall in the mechanical engineering offices.

3^rd month

Lecture Series on Research Work

As I had just submitted my PhD thesis while out there, I was interested to see some of the research that was being carried out at the university. Reading through past theses that had been submitted for the degree of Bachelor of Engineering, I noticed a trend. The research being carried out was great but was let down by the presentation. I began developing a lecture series focusing on critical thinking, which I was able to present in my third month on-site.

The lecture series targeted two groups of students: those who were at the very start of their projects and were required to write a research proposal, and those who were almost at the end and were writing up their work. The size of the lectures ranged from batches of 15 to 40, including young adults and mature students. The students were very engaged and brought up great questions. At the end of the session, many used the Q&A portion to ask about further education, and it was lovely to see how many of them were interested in taking their studies further. Many of the academics in the department attended the lectures, and they will continue to present the series each semester to students once I have departed.

Earthquake Experience

In my third month in Bangladesh, I experienced my first earthquake tremor. It was a small one, and I didn’t understand what was happening until it had passed. It was a very strange experience. The best way I can describe the sensation for those of you from a rather unmoving country, such as myself, is as though a high-speed train is passing by and causing the building to shake, but it goes on for just a little too long, and there is an eerie silence that accompanies it as everyone is trying to piece together what they are feeling.

Empowering Future Leaders:

During her fellowship at City University in Bangladesh, Ilyada Karada made a significant impact by engaging with university students to support their thesis work. Her dedication to fostering academic growth inspired students to dive deeper into their research, cultivating a new generation of leaders in STEM. If you’re interested in the transformative work Science Corps does to empower educators and students around the globe, visit the Science Corps website to learn more. Additionally, if you wish to support our mission to enhance STEM education in underserved communities, consider making a donation here.

The post Fellow Update! Ilayda Karada in City University, Bangladesh appeared first on Science Corps.

Reinabelle Reyes, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the National Institute of Physics (NIP) in UP Diliman, where she heads the Data and Computation (D&C) Research Group. She serves as a data science consultant for UNDP Philippines, Z-Lift Solutions, Inc. and Citizen’s Budget Tracker. She is also co-founder of Pinoy Scientists and adviser of SEDSPH (Student for the Exploration and Development of Space – Philippines Chapter).

Learn more about Reina’s STEM journey through her conversation with our Education and Research Fellow, Swastika Issar:

Let’s go back to the beginning, could you paint a picture of your childhood for us? Did you have any siblings? What was a typical day like for you when you were growing up?

I grew up in a town called San Juan in, in Metro Manila, which is the capital region of the Philippines. It was a very urban environment. I’m second-generation Filipino Chinese. Three of my four grandparents immigrated to the Philippines from China. Many people from my parents’ generation in the Filipino Chinese community were entrepreneurs and ran their own businesses. My family ran a construction supply shop that sold everything you’d need to build and paint a house. Typically, families like ours would live on the top floor of the shop. So, my siblings and I grew up living on top of a bustling hardware shop in one of the busiest parts of town opposite the tricycle station and the wet market of San Juan. I spent a lot of my time as a child looking out from the window of my bedroom, just watching people come and go. I’d wonder what they were thinking and what their lives were like. The biggest contrast for me when I moved abroad for my studies was how quiet everything was. I used to have a hard time sleeping when it got so quiet.

Coming back to my childhood, my parents ran the shop together and they had three daughters. I’m the middle child. Me and my sisters would sometimes help our parents run the shop. We would manage the cash till or write cheques for our suppliers. We learnt to do quick mental math- addition and subtraction without using a calculator- so we could return change to our customers quickly. A lot of what we did were exercises in school too, but we learnt them in a more practical manner. Along with occasionally helping at the store, our childhood revolved around going to school, learning and playing with our friends.

Was education considered important in your family and did both your sisters go for higher education as well?

My mother was one of thirteen siblings. At that time in Chinese Filipino culture, the women didn’t really need to finish school. They used to get married off at a young age. My mother insisted on going to college. Only two out of thirteen siblings wound up going and my mother was the first in her family to finish college.

So, I’d say it wasn’t unusual that my sisters and I also wound up getting a good education. I was the only one who went into science and to graduate school. My older sister has a degree in business and the younger one studied industrial engineering.

While you were growing up, were there any subjects that you loved or hated in school?

Math was my favorite subject. I was exposed to it at home early on. In school, I really loved it because it wasn’t subjective. When you’re solving a problem, you just need to follow the right steps to arrive at the correct answer. You don’t necessarily need the teacher to tell you that you’re right. This idea that if I got that answer, I’d get a perfect score appealed to me a lot.

In high school, I was introduced to physics. And physics became my new favorite subject. There’s a lot of math involved when you’re solving problems in physics, but it has real world applications. I hadn’t really thought at that time that I’d like to become a physicist. I’d just liked the subject more than chemistry or biology.

Was there one person, or a group of people, who influenced your choice of this career path?

I’d say all of my teachers through high school and middle school have been the most impactful. Most of our family friends and relatives were also in business. So, the closest anyone in our circle would be to a physicist is probably an engineer but I didn’t really know anyone who was an academic. I had found out about the Philippine Science High School (PSHS) and told my parents that I wanted to try to study there. My parents didn’t know about the school because people from the Filipino Chinese community tended to send their kids to a Filipino Chinese school. Mostly because everyone in their social group was doing the same thing. So, it was a big deal that PSHS was not a Chinese school. There aren’t many parents in our community who would’ve been willing to let their kids go there. Ultimately this was possible only because my parents were open minded enough to let me pursue my interest in science by going to PSHS.

It all really began for me when I cleared the competitive exam and began my first day at PSHS, which is a magnet school for students interested in science and engineering. The government provides resources to promote STEM talent and tuition is free. We were really lucky to get to interact with researchers. Many of our teachers were also pursuing graduate school at the University of the Philippines or Ateneo de Manila University. It wasn’t just our teachers. This is the first time I got to meet kids my own age who enjoyed math and science and were really good at it. And this was really inspiring for me too.

Was there any particular moment in your life when you felt a pull towards becoming a scientist in your field of specialization?

While I was at PSHS, I was a part of the team that represented our school at the Philippine Physics Olympiad which is a competition where you get to solve advanced physics problems. Me and another student were in our third years, but the rest of our team were seniors in their fourth year of high school. I was at a stage in life where I was trying to figure what’s next for me. I remember thinking going into the Olympiad that if I do well, I’d take it as an affirmation that this was the right career path for me. I wound up placing third in the nationals and got the sign that I needed to pursue a career in physics!

For any young students who are thinking of a career in physics and machine learning, what kind of courses did you study at university as an undergrad?

I got my bachelor’s degree in physics from Ateneo de Manila University. There was a big emphasis at Ateneo on holistic education. So, it wasn’t just all about your major. Along with physics, we also took a lot of philosophy, theology and language studies courses. I really enjoyed that well rounded education. I learned how to write well, how to read philosophy and appreciate the humanities. At the same time, I really wanted to specialize in physics. There was a hunger in me that motivated me to pursue graduate school. We had a group of 5 friends in college and we started something called ‘The Kindergarten Club’. We discussed physics papers and problems on top of what was required of us in school because we really enjoyed learning.

At that time though, my idea of what I wanted to specialize in was very naive. I wasn’t really exposed to all the research happening around the world. When I was in high school, I’d read many popular physics books on the theory of everything, string theory and the fundamental particles. So, I was really interested in particle physics* because this was the most fundamental you could get.

*Particle physics or high-energy physics is a branch of physics that deals with fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation.

What came after your undergrad studies?

I ended up pursuing a diploma in high energy physics at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. It is an ideal bridging program for students from developing countries who are interested in graduate studies abroad. If you’re selected for a scholarship, you get a full stipend and living allowance for the entire time you’re there. It really opened many opportunities for higher education for me.

Being at ICTP felt like being a part of the United Nations to me! There were students from Brazil, Palestine, Trinidad & Tobago- many people from developing countries and also around Europe who all shared this love for physics. I felt a lot of kinship with our cohort.

Were there an equal number of male and female students?

In my class of 20 students, there were four women and then the rest were men. I’d say most of the programs had a majority of male students, which is not uncommon for our field in general.

And you went on to pursue a PhD in the US thereafter?

During my diploma at ICTP, I’d also become interested in cosmology. Along with our classes, we were required to work on a small research project with an advisor. I approached Prof. Uros Seljak, who was a cosmologist at ICTP, and my project with him was focused on theoretical cosmology. I was advised by a mentor to consider pursuing a PhD in astrophysics. In my grad school application essays, I talked about wanting to pursue research at the intersection of particle physics and cosmology. I applied to several different graduate schools in the US and was accepted to the astrophysics program at Princeton.

How was your grad school experience?

My primary training before grad school was in theoretical physics. At Princeton, I got to learn and absorb this whole world of astrophysics and ended up becoming an observational astrophysicist. We dealt with large data sets and my work became very data driven. Every semester for the first couple of years, we did a new project with one of the professors at the department. Being new to observational astrophysics, I wanted to work with someone who was friendly and patient in explaining concepts. One semester I worked with Prof. Michael Strauss. The project was an extension of his former student Nadia Zakamska’s PhD project. At that time, she was a postdoc at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), also located in Princeton. She had done the foundational work of building the first catalog of Type 2 quasars*. Eventually, we got to publish this work together.

*Called the ‘brightest objects of the universe’, quasars are distant starlike heavenly objects that produce tremendous amounts of energy. They give off very strong blue & ultraviolet light and powerful radio waves. A quasar is always found near a supermassive black hole.

Most of the professors in our department were men but a larger cohort of the postdocs were women. Looking back, supportive postdocs played a really big part in my growth as a scientist. Often there can be this culture of “sink or swim” in competitive labs where the student is left to their own devices. But that’s not at all what I found. My senior colleagues made me feel like a part of the team and almost made it hard for me to fail.

What was your PhD on?

My PhD was in the field of gravitational lensing. I did my thesis in Prof. Jim Gunn’s lab. I worked with his postdoc Rachel Mandelbaum, who did her PhD with Uros and was a postdoc at IAS at that time. Gravitational lensing stems from the fact that starlight is bent when it goes around the sun or galaxies. On a cosmological scale, the light from faraway galaxies gets distorted by big galaxies or clusters of galaxies along the line of sight. My thesis was on measuring the effects of gravitational lensing on the shapes of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which was what Rachel worked on for her PhD thesis. We used gravitational lensing to empirically test Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This got us a lot of press and a Nature paper!

And what came after your PhD?

After my PhD I followed the usual path of applying for postdoc positions. I had considered the question of coming back to the Philippines right away but decided to do at least one postdoc in the US.

Astronomy is a relatively small community. So basically, you apply to places where they do science similar to what you’re doing. You go meet people, give talks about the findings of your research. And then decide from the offers you receive what you find most exciting. I ended up at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. They’re involved with the Dark Energy Survey, which is the next generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I’d been working on data from the Sloan Survey earlier. The Dark Energy Survey has images of millions of galaxies that are much further away and formed earlier. So, I spent a good few years studying gravitational lensing in galaxies across the universe.

Was there a big Filipino community that you could connect with at the University?

This is something that was on my mind a lot. And it prompted me to start Pinoy Scientists so I could build connections with the Filipino science community, both in the diaspora- because Filipinos have moved to many different places in the world- and with scientists back at home. I invited everyone I knew, be it former professors or former classmates and started sharing their profiles on a Tumblr blog.

Is this initiative still running?

Yes, and it is still evolving! When I started it was just a personal project back in 2012. I followed this Tumblr blog called ‘Looks Like Science’. I don’t know if they still exist, but their idea was to feature diverse scientists from many different walks of life and fields of research. It challenged the stereotypical white man in a lab coat idea of a scientist. Inspired by that, I decided to start a blog for Filipino scientists.

“Pinoy” is a colloquial term for Filipinos and the two can be used interchangeably. Our tagline was “Yes, we exist”. I came up with a simple questionnaire. I asked the featured scientists to send me a write up about their work, what they do for fun and a picture of themselves. The content wasn’t just focused on the serious side of science, but also showed that scientists are relatable people with lives and hobbies outside of science. This was the initial idea, and this experience really enriched me.

Of course, it was just me doing this on the side at first. It started with the people I knew and then it became the people they knew. I added a Facebook page. Pinoy Scientists grew from there to a much bigger network. Many people helped in this evolution. Kami Navarro, our current Managing Director for Operations and Communications- who has a Master’s in science communication- approached me in 2019 with the idea of starting an Instagram page. Our featured scientists take over the page for a day and interact directly with our audience. A lot of our older audience is on Facebook, so we cross post across different media platforms.

We have another partner, our Managing Director for Technology, Gerson Lacdao who is a web developer. We’re all volunteering our time towards this project and are joined by eleven more interns. We also launched our website this year! The growth of Pinoy Scientists has been very organic, our volunteers see the value of our platforms and want to help us grow. This has been very affirming for us.

What’s next for Pinoy Scientists?

We’re actively establishing partnerships with organizations with shared advocacies. Specifically, we are pursuing joint projects with the Philippine-American Association of Scientists and Engineers (PAASE) and WeSolve Foundation to strengthen our programs and better serve our community.

Exciting times ahead! It’s wonderful that this initiative continued to grow when you came back to the Philippines. When did you return?

The story goes that I decided to come back home right after my postdoc. I didn’t apply to an advertisement. I spoke to my alma mater at Ateneo de Manila University, and they were happy to have me join them as an Assistant Professor in 2014.

What prompted this decision to return to the Philippines at this stage in your career?

29-year-old Reina had noticed that many scientists returned to the Philippines after they retired. So, they spent most of their careers abroad, either in academia or in industry. And they live with this urge to give back and contribute to their home country all their lives. I wanted to move to the Philippines as a young scientist so I could spend many productive years here contributing actively to research.

Did you move to the University of the Philippines recently?

I started in 2020. Before that, I also worked in industry roles both as an independent consultant and as a data scientist in many different sectors ranging from telecommunications to e-commerce platforms and even healthcare.

Could you give us a summary of your work and the research being carried out in your group?

In my current position at UP Diliman, I teach and run my own research group called the Data and Computation Group, D&C for short. Our research primarily spans two major research areas. One is data-driven astrophysics and the other is what I like to call ‘data for social good’. The second area is broader. We use machine learning to study data sets for studying trends in education, for detecting fake news or for any other project my students care about. I’m happy to see that the younger generation is very socially aware, and they want their science to impact society.

The first area involves using machine learning for applications in astrophysics. One of my graduate students is working on time series forecasting of gravitational waves, using deep learning. So, technology allows us to predict merger events- where two compact objects such as neutron stars merge- about 10 seconds before the event actually occurs. The application is that the Gravitational Wave Observatory can then alert the other telescopes to observe that object in space. You could get different wavelengths of observation such as radio and optical. This is called multi messenger astronomy, which is an emerging field where you get signals from different sources that allows you to build spectrograms of events occurring in our Universe.

What is it that you’re most excited about your current position at UP Diliman?

I’d say the research I’m doing with my students and collaborators. I’m only just starting to collaborate with my fellow faculty. And the possibilities excite me.

I always tell my students: “This is your thesis topic and you’re going to be working on it for a substantial amount of time. You might as well choose something that you actually care about and are really interested in.” I like to give them the freedom to pick a topic and then we look at potential projects together. For instance, one of my students composes music. She’s a foley artist who creates ambient sounds for video games and movies. She wanted to do her thesis on sound design. She looked at related literature and found cellular automata sound synthesis. This entire process from conception to developing the algorithms that create sound which is then turned into audio, it’s just such a joy. And even sweeter because it’s full of challenges. Helping the students troubleshoot the issues they face is also something I really enjoy. Now the student is ready to defend her thesis. This whole journey that I get to go on with my students brings me a lot of happiness.

What are your plans for the future?

Our lab is at a nascent stage, and I’ve got the chance to work on many different projects with my students since we started out. The next step for us is to build on each for these projects so we can put together complete stories for publication in peer reviewed journals. For instance, I have an undergrad who finished last year and has now joined us for his Master’s degree. So, this gives us more time to build on the work and get it ready for publication. Unlike in industry, where projects are three to six months long, research projects take time to come together. This is what I’m going to be focused on for the next few years.

Do you feel, throughout your journey, that you have had equal opportunities compared to your male counterparts? How do you think being a woman has impacted your scientific career?

Looking back, I think it did influence my specialization. While I was at Princeton, I was interested in pursuing particle physics, which is fundamental theoretical physics. While looking for potential advisors to do my project with, I approached a professor in the Physics Department who was a theoretical cosmologist. He was welcoming and included me in some group meetings with his students. And he told me that I could attend some of his classes too. What I remember when I sat in those classes is that I suddenly realized that I was the only woman there. It wasn’t a very small group, there were about 30-35 people in each class. I think this is partly why I didn’t continue. Some male dominated fields aren’t very welcoming towards women.

I ended up working with other groups focused on observational astrophysics. I received a lot of support and good mentoring from the female postdocs in the lab. I think that made a big difference to my career, so I don’t regret making that choice in any way.

What would you wish would change in your field to make it more inclusive for women?

Having more women professors in senior positions can make a difference. The dominant culture in academia from the language used to drinking & socializing to the social mores all still tend to favor men.

Of course, it’s also generational. People from different generations think very differently from each other. I think having women guiding and supporting both younger women and men in their fields will help change perceptions and work culture.

We know that academic careers can be very demanding. How do you take care of yourself on the daily?

Or how I should be. My usual go-to is exercise but I’ve been falling behind on my workouts recently, so I’ve taken to yoga and jogging, which are less intense.

Meditation also helps a lot. I’m a serious practitioner of Zen and go on silent retreats with my Zen group. These retreats are always something that I look forward to.

When you’re not working, where can we find you?

On a bike trail or a basketball court.

Rapid Fire Round

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when I say ‘gravity’?

Black holes

If you were a plant or an animal, what would you be? And why?

A hedgehog because they’re cute.

What are two non-essential items that you’d want with you if you were shipwrecked on a deserted island?

Any book by Murakami and a basketball.

Photos courtesy of Reinabelle Reyes.

The post Filipinas in STEM: Reinabelle Reyes appeared first on Science Corps.

Cassidy Childs is a research associate for International Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress. Prior to joining American Progress, Cassidy was an environmental justice graduate intern at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, working on the Justice40 Initiative. She graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs with a Master in Public Administration in environmental science and policy. She earned bachelor’s degrees in political science and society and environment from the University of California at Berkeley. Cassidy is deeply passionate about bringing equity and sustainability to environmental and climate issues.

Learn more about Cassidy’s STEM journey through her conversation with our Education and Research Fellow, Swastika Issar:

Let’s go back to the beginning, could you paint a picture of your childhood for us? Do you have any siblings? What was a typical day like for you when you were growing up?

I grew up in Northern California, in a town called Santa Rosa. And I have one twin sister who is now an environmental engineer. My mother is from Pampanga, a province in the Central Luzon region of the Philippines. She emigrated to California when she was younger, while the rest of her family- her siblings and parents- are all in the Philippines. So, we would visit every year or so to catch up with my cousins and my Titas and Titos.

My mom works as a registered nurse. On a typical day, she would drop us off for school. We went to school on the side of town where she worked. We’d always do some after school activities and our mom would pick us up afterwards. Those activities were really great for our education. We had robotics clubs and science fairs- I think that’s where my love of science started.

On the subject of school, were there any subjects that you really loved or hated?

I loved it all. I know that sounds really nerdy! But I think the reason I chose an interdisciplinary field like climate change policy was because I loved English and writing. My day to day has a lot of writing in it. At the same time, I was really interested in STEM- physics and math in particular. That’s how I got into climate policy and environmental science. So, it feels like two different parts of my brain are always working in tandem.

Was there one person, or a group of people, who influenced your choice of this career path?

I can’t say I can pinpoint just one. I’m really thankful for the community of teachers that helped me along the way. I had a seventh grade English teacher who taught me that I could really write. My eleventh and twelfth grade physics teacher encouraged my love of science and math. My history teacher in twelfth grade really got me into political activism and caring about social issues, such as, climate change and climate justice. A thousand pushes in the right direction from many different people helped me in my journey. I think it’s crucial to have those teachers and those mentors at different stages of our life, all encouraging us in the path we envision and daring us to dream.

And did you pursue your interest in combining STEM and activism right away at university?

I started as a political science major at Berkeley, which was a lot more politics and very little science. But we had a wildfire in my hometown that year and that inspired me to think about climate change. I was also in an intro to climate change class at the same time and everything we were studying felt very real and personal for me. I felt like it was a good bridge for me to get into political activism and advocacy. I had always loved science, so it was a good return to STEM for me to learn about how our social, political, and economic world interfaced with our changing environment. That was the big moment where I changed from caring about social issues in general to focusing on climate policy.

I started out in a Bachelor of Arts program and by the end, I also had my Bachelor of Science. My Master’s degree at Columbia University was STEM certified.

Asking for our young readers who are thinking of a career in climate policy, what kind of courses did you study at university as an undergrad?

It was a mix of political science and environmental science courses. I learnt about how Congress works, how the executive office works, how bills are made into law. I also took climate change & environmental science courses, studied political ecology and global environmental politics. Reading all of those UN treaties is directly related to what I do today.

What came after you finished your undergraduate degree?

I really wanted to continue a career in climate change policy. It was this niche field that I didn’t know- when I graduated my undergrad- if I could even land a job in, and then the pandemic hit. The job search got even more difficult. But the truth is climate change* issues are not going away anytime soon. In fact, the environmental effects of climate change such as the fires in California continue to get worse. So, I decided to pursue a Master’s. The timing was quite fortunate that the Biden administration really does care about climate change. This led me to intern at the White House on environmental and climate justice. That’s how I landed my job as a research analyst for climate policy at the Center for American Progress after I got my master’s last year.

*Sometimes in mainstream media, climate change is projected as a big debate among scientists. In reality, over 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate and that human activity is the principal cause of current global warming and climate change. 

Could you maybe tell us a little bit about what your day to day looks like?

My days are quite varied, depending on what my assignments are that week or month. For example, the UN IPCC Climate report was released last week, this is the synthesis report for the sixth assessment cycle. A lot of my work last week was reading the work of hundreds of scientists on what the state of our climate is and what we’re expecting in the next decade of policy making to make sure our planet remains, quite frankly, livable. My work revolved around rapid response uplifting on social media, sharing the IPCC report, and its briefings to my team. I also wrote an article about losses and damages from climate change, particularly for climate vulnerable countries. So, I released that at the same time that the IPCC report came out. I focus on advocacy for what the US government’s doing on climate change, bilateral relations between the US and other countries such as India or the EU and how they could align their energy or climate policies. Figuring out where our policymakers and decision makers can find alignment is also part of my job.

It’s so incredible how much our politics, economics and history have shaped the world that we live in now, not just from a societal point of view but also the natural environment. And voting is such an essential part of exercising influence over what the future might look like…

Exactly. I know so many people who are discouraged by the political systems that they live in or believe that participating in the United Nations doesn’t actually work. The way I think about it is that silence won’t help, you can’t boycott political systems. Because then you’re allowing other people to make choices that will influence your life. Even if you think that the systems don’t work perfectly, we all need to participate in it.

Does the work that you do influence decisions at an international scale?

I wish I could say that the US is the most productive country in international spaces when it comes to implementing environmental policy. Oftentimes, my work involves encouraging the US to either work with countries or find creative solutions for low-income countries that can’t represent themselves equitably at these international conferences. I think that finding ways to build the technical capacity of those countries so that they can have their own scientists representing their interests at international platforms is very important.

Does the Center for American Progress work exclusively on climate science and energy?

The Center for American Progress or CAP, as we like to call it, is a think tank and a nonprofit in Washington DC. CAP works on a lot of different issue areas, basically anything that’s related to politics. It could be access to healthcare access, reproductive rights, environmental issues or gun control. Issues that Americans care about. I work on International Climate Policy in our Energy & Environment Department.

What are you most excited about in your current position at CAP?

I work on loss and damage in our international climate justice portfolio. This year, the loss and damage fund that was decided at COP27* is going to operationalize by the next climate conference in November. We’re seeing developed countries really take the concerns of climate vulnerable countries seriously by considering different financing solutions to support the technical capacity of vulnerable countries to become more resilient. And that really speaks home to me. The Philippines is one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. So having their concerns addressed at the global stage is exciting for me.

*Conferences of the Parties (COP) of the the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) are annual conferences that serve as the formal meeting of the UNFCCC parties to assess progress in dealing with climate change

What is loss and damage? Is it different from adaptive or mitigative measures against climate change?

Climate change mitigation aims at preventing emissions and adaptation aims to minimize the impacts. ‘Loss and damage’ sits separately from adaptation and mitigation. The term refers to everything that’s lost due to climate change. For example, Super Typhoon Haiyan, in the Philippines in 2013 was one of the costliest storms in world history. Preventing countries from falling into debt, or ensuring they have the financing to address all of this loss and damage is crucial.

And this irreparable loss and damage is expected to expand in scope and severity in the years to come…

Absolutely. There’s a perfect graphic in the UN IPCC report that came out last week. It shows people born in 2020, their lifespan and their comparative climate risk, compared to previous generations. It really drives home that people born today are not born into the same world as people born even fifty years ago.

What are your plans for the future?

I’d like to continue working on climate resilience, climate policy and justice. It’s really exciting, the work that I’m doing, and it’s desperately needed. So much of climate policy in the past has excluded climate vulnerable countries and the people who are most affected. So, wherever my career takes me, I’m hoping to continue that thread.

It is a very dynamic field as well- in terms of the different career paths you could take.

Yes, I could go back into scientific research or academia or even work for the government. My supervisor and my supervisor’s supervisor both have PhDs in science. A lot of schools now allow you to pursue a part-time PhD while actively working in the climate policy field. This field is very open and in some ways, that’s liberating but it can be confusing or intimidating because there isn’t a play by play available to tell you what your next steps should be.

Now let’s talk about what it’s like to be a woman of color in STEM. Do you feel you have equal opportunities compared to your male counterparts? How has being a woman in science impacted your career?

I think it’s really difficult being a woman of color in STEM in the US because you not only face the gender issues but you’re also facing racial discrimination along the way. The biggest thing I struggle with is the sense of belonging, or the impostor syndrome that comes with getting into spaces that are dominated by either men or white people. In the environmental field, at least in the US, the gender balance is okay at the junior staff level or even the manager level. But the higher you go into leadership positions, the fewer women- and even fewer women of color- you see. If you don’t see anyone who looks like you, it in turn becomes difficult to imagine yourself in those positions.

In my field, so much of our work happens through conversations or in meetings. If the men or white people are taking up the majority of the conversation, it can be really hard to make space for yourself.

What would you wish would change in your field to make it more inclusive for women of color?

Some of my mentors and supervisors are doing really great things that I’d like to highlight. They are making sure that the women and people of color on their staff have professional development opportunities and making space for everyone to speak up in meetings and voice their opinions. I really like that for events where we’re hosting experts, the people at CAP ensure that there’s gender diversity in the panel and that the panel is not all white. It helps with representation a lot. It also spurs people to consider the diversity issues in the field and why it’s so hard to build a diverse expert panel, especially consisting of people at top leadership levels. People in positions of power sit in a system that benefits them. They need to make sure it benefits everyone in the same way.

Do you feel like your work is demanding? How do you take care of yourself on the daily?

It is definitely demanding. Anyone who works in DC feels this sense of hustling, putting in the hours and making sure everything goes right. The way I take care of myself is by setting boundaries and finding time to do what I really love. Whether that’s playing video games or reading fantasy books and other things that are not directly related to my work. Working in policy, you can spend so much of your life reading the news or being on social media and getting outraged. I feel that I have to draw a clear line- I sit in the politics every day and therefore, I don’t need to sit in the politics outside of my work. It protects me from feeling really drained.

When you’re not working, where can we find you?

I’m probably on my couch reading or I like doing Friday night dinners at my local Thai restaurant.

Rapid Fire Round

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when I say ‘wildfire’?

Danger

If you were a plant or an animal, what would you be? And why?

If I could be a plant, I would be a pothos because I’m quite persistent.

What are two non-essential items that you’d want with you if you were shipwrecked on a deserted island?

I would want a fuzzy blanket and a journal. I would take it as a vacation!

Photos courtesy of Cassidy Childs (unless specified otherwise).

The post Filipinas in STEM: Cassidy Childs appeared first on Science Corps.

Bea grew up in the island province of Bohol in the Philippines. She has been surrounded by nature all her life which led to her interest in natural products, initially from plants and now from venomous marine gastropods.

She discovered a hormone-like peptide from slow-hunting cone snails, which has biomedical applications. She loves sharing her insights into the fascinating world of cone snails through science education and outreach projects. Having recently finished her PhD, she is continuing her research at Helena Safavi’s lab at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

When she is out of the lab, Bea is a photography enthusiast who enjoys traveling and exploring the outdoors.

Let’s start by talking a bit about your childhood and where you grew up.

I grew up in Bohol, which is an island province in the Philippines. I have a younger brother, and, like any typical Filipino family, we grew up living very close to our aunts and uncles. So even if it was just the two of us, my brother and I always played with our cousins because they lived nearby. Both my parents worked in a hospital in Bohol. We lived near their workplace initially and then moved close to the beach to help heal my brother’s asthma. I remember long walks by the beach so he could take in the sea breeze. It really improved his condition. Because we lived a bit far from the city, I had to travel a couple of hours or more each day to go to school and come back home.

I went to elementary school in Tagbilaran and to Silliman University in Dumaguete for my high school. So, I moved away from home at a young age.

While you were growing up, were there any subjects that you loved or hated in school?

Because my parents worked in a hospital, I was surrounded by people in the medical field. I was really interested in science, and also social studies and history- mostly because my parents and grandparents were very into talking about history. Our conversations at home or when we went to play in our grandparents’ garden would revolve around Filipino culture and history.

Was there one person, or a group of people, who influenced your choice of this career path?

Being in the medical profession themselves, I think my parents might’ve wanted me to be a doctor, which most of my cousins are. Our family gave us opportunities, through books and conversations, to explore scientific topics and ideas. My cousins and I played with fake blood that we made from bougainvillea leaves to fool our friends. My grandma liked collecting beautiful shells and other objects from the seashore. Just growing up with all that nature and exploration got me pretty interested in pursuing a STEM related course for my bachelor’s degree.

So, my family definitely ignited my interest in science. I gravitated towards the field of research that I’m currently in because of a talk I attended by Dr. Baldomero Olivera– who is a renowned cone snail venom researcher- when I was at the University of the Philippines, Diliman during my undergraduate studies. He talked about cone snails* and when he showed us videos of the snails hunting prey, I was pretty amazed. That’s what got me excited about cone snail research.

*Cone snails comprise over 900 species of highly venomous marine snails found in warm tropical seas and oceans all over the world. All cone snails are carnivorous, venomous and capable of stinging. They use a modified feeding structure that is shaped like a harpoon and a venom gland to attack and paralyze their prey before swallowing it. Learn more about their hunting strategies and venom here.

And how is it that you arrived at your chosen field of specialization, studying conotoxins within cone snail research?

I was studying chemistry at university. Natural products are a big research field in the Philippines and within our department. Herbal medicines are used a lot in the Philippines. So, I was interested in natural products and curious about what compounds in plants might make them effective remedies for certain conditions. I wanted to test whether these herbal treatments were just old tales or if there was concrete evidence that could be backed by science, to support their efficacy. So that’s how I started studying plant natural products for my undergrad thesis. Later this interest in natural products took me to conotoxins.

Which plants did you working on for your Bachelor’s thesis?

I worked on the sacred garlic pear, Crateva religiosa. Its local name is Balai Lamok. If you go to the University of the Philippines-Diliman campus, you’ll notice a lot of greenery there, including Balai Lamok trees. Traditional medicine claims that the tree has analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties and my thesis revolved around testing extracts from the leaves of the tree and isolating active compounds from them.

When did you transition to studying snails after that?

I always thought of natural products as materials, ingredients or extracts derived from plants. Attending Dr. Olivera’s talk really changed my mindset. Natural products from animals are very under-explored in the Philippines, especially marine natural products. I worked at the Marine Science Institute at the University of the Philippines for a long time and that’s when I became deeply involved in this work. It was similar to what I was interested in doing in plants- isolating active compounds from different plant parts- but now I got to study these fascinating venomous animals.

Were there any courses during your undergrad that you enjoyed a lot or any that came in particularly handy during your PhD?

I took up a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. We had plenty of compulsory courses such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. All the basic sciences. My university didn’t offer any course focused exclusively on marine biology, but you could take electives in general marine sciences, which were hard to get into but so much fun.

The non-science subjects I really loved were history, psychology, art studies and linguistics.

What came after you finished college?

Initially, I was exploring various career options, including industry-related roles, which are common for chemistry graduates in the Philippines. I had gained practical experience in analytical chemistry techniques and quality control during my on-the-job-training at a pharmaceutical company, but I found it somewhat uninteresting. I was more drawn to a career in scientific research, which I had really enjoyed while working on my Bachelor’s thesis.

So my passion for research took me on a different path and I began searching for research assistantship positions within the university after my graduation. I still had Dr. Olivera’s talk in the back of my mind, and it was during this time that I came across an intriguing opportunity at the Marine Science Institute, which involved studying marine snails, specifically turrid snails. These snails aren’t as well-known but they’re also venomous, so I like to think of them as the little cousins of cone snails.

This work allowed me to learn techniques in isolating bioactive components from marine snails. However, the smaller turrid snails made it challenging to obtain enough venom tissues to work with. I switched to cone snails, choosing the lesser studied deep-water cone snail, Conus rolani, which formed the basis for my Master’s project. It involved screening cone snail venom using various assay platforms and finally characterizing a bioactive peptide. Fast forward to my PhD at the Safavi Lab, I’ve focused on this bioactive venom peptide that I isolated and my research evolved to become more specialized and targeted.

Could you tell us more about your doctoral research?

My doctoral research built upon my previous work during my master’s degree, focusing on the isolation of bioactive components from marine snails. In my master’s project, I successfully isolated these bioactive components, which were primarily peptides. At that point, we had an idea of their functions based on their peptide sequences, but it was somewhat limited.

A pivotal moment in my research journey was the opportunity to collaborate closely with Dr. Olivera and other experts in his lab. This collaboration led me to my PhD supervisor, Dr. Helena Safavi, who had a project aligned with one of the peptides I had discovered.

My PhD research primarily focused on hormone-like peptides found in a specific group of cone snails. The peptide I discovered is similar to the vertebrate hormone, somatostatin, which is involved in various physiological functions. My work involved identifying the receptor targets of this somatostatin-like venom peptide and exploring its applications, particularly in the context of pain and inflammation.

The research process involved collecting these snails with proper permits and dissecting their venom glands, where the bioactive components are concentrated. We then froze these components with liquid nitrogen to preserve their integrity. In the lab, we purified and separated these components using chromatography and tested them in various assays to identify biologically active peptides.

My doctoral research expands our understanding of cone snails, their venom, and the potential applications of the bioactive peptides they contain. It’s an exciting journey that bridges marine science with the biomedical perspectives. What’s interesting is that the venom glands contain a vast cocktail of compounds and we’re finding is that every single peptide or every single toxin within this compound library has a different activity. So we’re constantly discovering many new things.

Is this cocktail of multiple bioactive compounds found within cone snail venom one of the reasons it’s been difficult to produce any anti-venoms for conotoxins?

Perhaps but it could also be because deaths caused by cone snail venom aren’t very common or not reported. I only know of one species, Conus geographus or the geographer cone, whose venom is potent enough to be deadly to humans.

So, getting stung by a cone snail might be painful and dangerous but isn’t usually deadly for humans…

Yes. How the toxin becomes dangerous is that it can cause breathing issues* in humans. Nowadays, this can be handled in hospitals with access to oxygen tanks and assisted respiration.

Having said that, Conus geographus is a common species in the shallow waters where our group goes on collection trips in the Philippines. So, we need to be very careful and keep the fisherman working with us well informed of all the safety protocols.

*Cone snail venom contains various peptide-based neurotoxic compounds known as conotoxins. Conotoxins have many different mechanisms of action and they each target a specific nerve channel or receptor, most of which haven’t been determined yet. Cone snail stings can cause intense, localized pain, swelling, numbness and tingling in humans. Severe cases can result in muscle paralysis and respiratory failure so medical attention must be sought immediately in case of a sting.

Congratulations again on having finished your PhD recently! What is it that you find most exciting as you continue working as a researcher at the Safavi lab?

What’s most exciting for me is to be able to continue working on the new questions and research directions my PhD work has generated. I’m getting to use newer tools to explore these questions and also expand to other study organisms. For instance, we’re now looking for somatostatin analogs in the venom of fish hunting cone snails like Conus geographus.

What are your plans for the future?

I would really like to continue doing research focused on venoms from cone snails. The possibility of finding new things and making novel discoveries is really fun for me. I’ve been involved in science education and outreach projects that I’d like to continue working on. Of course, this can be tricky especially if you’re working with younger kids in Denmark because you need to speak Danish really well to distill complex concepts into easy-to-understand ideas. So, it’s a work in progress.

Now let’s talk about what it’s like to be a woman of color in STEM. Pursuing a career in academia comes with its unique set of challenges. Do you feel you have equal opportunities compared to your male counterparts? How has being a woman in science impacted your scientific career?

I’ve always had strong women role models to look up to. My supervisor is a woman of color here in Denmark. I’m learning a lot from her experiences balancing her work and family life. I’m not sure I’ve considered my circumstances in the light of my being a woman in science too much. However, I remember coming up against this issue recently while looking for examiners for my PhD assessment committee. The university recommended that I have at least one female examiner on the panel, but we had a lot of trouble finding anyone suitable. This triggered a conversation around representation and diversity in our lab group.

For me personally, I’d say being a Filipino here in Europe adds another layer to my experiences. I feel that being a person of color who isn’t in their home country governs a large part of the challenges I face at the moment. Some of these, like struggling with a different language or bureaucratic process, are an integral part of moving to a new place. Others have more to do to specifically with my being a scientist. For example, opportunities for funding research are limited for me compared to my European counterparts.

What would you wish would change in your field to make it more inclusive for people of color?

I think funding opportunities that are catered towards people of color are not as common in Europe so that could be something that might help make my field more inclusive. Making the selection process for grants and jobs more transparent so that candidates know what goes on behind the scenes could help too.

Academic careers can be very demanding. How do you take care of yourself on the daily?

I think it’s really nice that Denmark is very bicycle friendly. I bike to the lab every day. Being outside and in nature is something that allows me to disconnect. I really enjoy being around kids so I also play with my friends’ kids or volunteer for outreach and education projects focused on making science fun for children.

When you’re not working, where can we find you?

If I’m not relaxing at home, then I’d probably be traveling and exploring Denmark and other parts of Europe. Probably taking lots of photos.

Rapid Fire Round

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when I say ‘snail’?

Conical

If you were a plant or an animal, what would you be? And why?

I’m sure you can sense a theme emerging, but I’d say a snail because I’m pretty shy. So just like a snail, I often hide in my shell and need to be tickled to emerge. But hopefully not to sting anyone!

What are two non-essential items that you’d want with you if you were shipwrecked on a deserted island?

Maybe a camera for fun. And perhaps a journal… I already said camera and now I won’t have anything to write with. If you allow me three items, I’d say a writing instrument. Otherwise, I’ll need to be creative about making one for myself on the island.

Photos courtesy of Iris Bea Ramiro (unless specified otherwise).

The post Filipinas in STEM: Iris Bea Ramiro appeared first on Science Corps.

Our fellow, Matt Solt, visited our host site in the Philippines last month. He has shared with us his experience becoming a Science Corps Fellow, teaching a robotics workshop at Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF), attending a physics conference, and exploring the Philippines outside of the classroom.

Learn more about Matt’s adventures below! If Matt’s experience piques your interest in becoming a fellow yourself, apply here!

Why did you become a Science Corps Fellow?

Like most Science Corps fellows, I was looking for a break between defending my PhD and the next adventure and I stumbled on Science Corps. I was accepted as a Science Corps Fellow back in 2019 with a plan to spend about 6 months at CVIF in Jagna, Bohol, the Philippines in the fall semester of 2020. Unfortunately, COVID-19 had other plans and I was forced to do the fellowship remotely, becoming the first remote Science Corps fellow. Between finishing my thesis and starting my postdoc, I was able to develop a curriculum for a computer programming and data analysis course through the so-called Dynamic Learning Programming (DLP) described below. Despite being a remote fellow in a very unique situation, Science Corps was always committed to sending me there in person, albeit on a shorter time scale since I have a full time job. I was able to complete my fellowship in person in July 2023.

What do you think about the Dynamic Learning Program?

CVIF is the center of the Dynamic Learning Program (DLP), originally developed and implemented by Chris and Marivic Bernido who are both theoretical physicists. It puts emphasis on students actively learning as opposed to teachers lecturing. It is a well-defined curriculum through individual worksheets called LAS where students work individually or in groups to learn themselves. I found it interesting how similar it was to my time as a teacher’s assistant (TA) in the Stanford Physics Department when I was a graduate student. Pushed by Nobel laureate, Carl Wieman, this method is now becoming more popular at physics departments at elite universities in the U.S.

In addition to a similar method at elite universities, this method of teaching has several clear advantages. First, it is scalable as the curriculum is developed centrally at CVIF and can be used by other schools in the area. In fact, the material developed by CVIF is used by 500+ schools in the Philippines! Second, it is resistant to disasters. Geographically, the Philippines is prone to natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes in addition to, of course, a pandemic. Recently, on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Visayas (the central region of the Philippines) was hit with a major typhoon. Because of the reliance on student independence, the DLP program which had already been fully implemented at CVIF and other schools enabled students to continue with their learning with minimal interruption. This method could also be resistant to violent conflict.

What did you accomplish at CVIF?

My main task while at CVIF was to plan and run a robotics workshop for the ICT and STEM students at CVIF which was a natural extension of the course material I had developed as a remote fellow. The workshop utilized a Raspberry Pi micro-controller that the students needed to connect electrically and program in order to run. I chose a Raspberry Pi because it was originally developed for educational purposes focused on student’s learning, the Python language (which was used in my course) could easily be used, it could be used as a personal computer with its own operating system (for students who may not have their own computer), and a variety of other potential uses.

The workshop lasted three days and went very well. The students were incredibly excited to work with the robot, many never having done so before. Before the workshop, the students had a pre-workshop to learn the basics of Python programming which is a necessary prerequisite for operating the Raspberry Pi. The students were enthusiastic, learned quickly, and covered a lot of coding material in three short days. After the first session, the students were already making memes about the workshop and sharing it in the group chat with instructors. The workshop consisted of about 20 students. I was impressed that every student was able to individually achieve the three milestones of the workshop – code a blinking LED on the Raspberry Pi (their first robot by our definition given at the workshop), connect and guide a robot through an obstacle course, and analyze public data taken from a Raspberry Pi on the International Space Station. The workshop concluded with a competition of who could guide the robot through the obstacle course the fastest and the top five students were given rewards. The students enjoyed this part the most, taking lots of pictures and videos to share on social media, cheering their classmates on, and even playing soundtracks like the Mission Impossible theme song as the classmates guided the robot through the obstacle.

What is the future of this robotics workshop at CVIF?

The goal of the workshop was not to just train the students who attended the workshop at this time, but to be able to transfer this knowledge to instructors to run future workshops and to make it easily transferable to other schools in the region. In order to have continuity of knowledge, it is important to implement material that can be used in the future. Because of interest in furthering knowledge of both the students who were at the workshop as well the instructors, the CVIF instructors will start a robotics workshop at CVIF where students can continue to work with the materials supplied by Science Corps and learn more of the capabilities of a Raspberry Pi. These are skills that can be utilized in any STEM field in college courses and beyond in their careers.

What were your thoughts on the physics conference you attended?

The timing of the workshop worked out perfectly so that I could also attend the Physics Society of the Philippines (SPP) conference in Del Carmen, Siargao. I was privileged to be able to give an invited talk on my personal research which involves exploring low mass dark matter at particle accelerators. The conference contained almost 300 people. When the Bernidos received their PhDs in the 80s, there were only about 10 physics PhDs in the entire country.

This conference attendance is a testament of the commitment of a few dedicated physicists who chose to devote much of their careers to improving the physics literacy of their country. In addition, most of the conference population was very young, being mostly undergraduates and graduate students (the first conference where I have been over the median age). This indicates that the future of Filipino physics is bright as the number of physics PhDs will continue to increase in the near future.

At the conference, I enjoyed conversing with many of the Filipino physicists. I was also able to meet the mayor of Del Carmen, and he complimented the DLP program and how it has impacted the students by increasing their scientific literacy in his region, especially with the most recent typhoon just two years ago.

To date, the Philippines has approximately 100 PhDs in physics, and with a population of about 100 million, they like to refer to themselves as “one in a million.” I was amazed at how many physicists were willing to stay in the Philippines to help out their country. Many were trained in other parts of the world such as Japan, Europe, and the U.S. and had opportunities to do world leading research in those parts of the world. However, many accepted their social responsibility to remain in the Philippines to increase the scientific literacy in their country.

How was your experience beyond work?

Outside of the robotics workshop and the physics conference, there was plenty of time to explore the beautiful nature within the Philippines. I was able to visit 5 different islands (of the 7200+ islands in the Philippines) in my short visit there. I snorkeled with whale sharks and jumped off waterfalls on Cebu. I also saw the Chocolate Hills and exotic animals on Bohol. This included holding a Burmese Python which, of course, we joked that I was deceived about the meaning of running a “Python” workshop. Lastly, I was able to surf on Cloud 9 on Siargao known as the surfing capital of the Philippines (though I am a beginner to surfing).

In addition, the Filipino people are very welcoming and generous. The faculty of CVIF were essential to running a smooth workshop and the success of the workshop. They were willing to show me around town and went on many adventures. They took me to the best food place in Jagna and I enjoyed every variety of Filipino food, though I had my limits as I politely declined to eat the local delicacy known as “balut”.

Apply for a Fellowship!

If Matt’s experience as a fellow and his adventures in the Philippines have inspired you, apply for a life-changing fellowship! Our current deadline for applications is September 30th, however, we review applications on a rolling basis throughout the year. Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information about our fellowships and application process!

The post Fellow Update! Matt’s Robotics Workshop, Physics Conference, and Adventures in the Philippines appeared first on Science Corps.

Ariane Peralta is an Associate Professor of Biology at East Carolina University located in eastern North Carolina, USA. Ariane attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to earn a BS degree in Biology and Chemistry and MS and PhD degrees in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology. Ariane’s dissertation examined how hydrologic changes during wetland restoration efforts affected microbial community structure and nitrogen cycling functions related to enhancing water quality. Then, Ariane moved on to a postdoc at the Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University and the Department of Biology at Indiana University. During this time, Ariane was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture to study the consequence of long-term cropping diversity on soil microbial community structure and disease suppressive function in soils.Since 2013, the Peralta Lab at East Carolina University has been examining how climate and human-induced environmental changes modify nutrient and water cycles to influence environmental microbiomes. The research team uses laboratory- and field-based approaches to study how climate and land use changes influence microbial community structure and functions associated with regulating air quality, water quality, and human, animal, and plant health. The Peralta Lab also conducts interdisciplinary microbiome research and collaborates with economists, engineers, geologists, and anthropologists to understand how ecological systems interact with human systems to better predict how microbial communities will respond to environmental changes.

Let’s go back to the beginning, could you paint a picture of your childhood for us? Did you have any siblings? What was a typical day like for you when you were growing up?

I was born in the Philippines in Manila, and we emigrated to the US after I turned one-year old. My family ended up relocating to Northwest Indiana, outside of Chicago. We went from a very tropical, warm place to a bitterly cold place. Some of my early pictures are of me in a snow suit. I went with my mom, her siblings, and my grandfather first and my dad and cousins came over a few years later. We’ve been in Northwest Indiana since and that’s where my family still resides today. I grew up in a multigenerational household with my grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It wasn’t until I was in elementary school that my parents and I moved into a different house just one block away. We were able to recreate some of that family connection that we had in the Philippines, which was magnified by many households, within our little family in the US. So, when I think of immediate family, I don’t think of just my dad and me. I think of all my cousins, aunts, and uncles, and family friends.

On a typical day, I remember a lot of time around the kitchen, and food, because that’s essentially what brings all of us together. I grew up in a really loud household, with laughter and a lot of kidding around. Maybe some might call it too much teasing but that gave all of us a very strong exterior. I’m an only child, but I grew up with my older cousins. They were five and seven years older, and so they wouldn’t pick on me. In fact, I looked up to them, but I remember them fighting a lot because they were closer in age.

Did you wind up going to school in the neighborhood?

Yes. We were in a primarily white town in Northwest Indiana. The few Filipino families we knew sent their kids to Catholic schools or private schools. But me and my cousins went to public school. We had a good public school system. So, I grew up going to a school that was one to two miles away from where we lived.

While you were growing up, were there any subjects that you loved or hated in school? And did you gravitate towards the sciences early on?

I did gravitate toward the sciences early on. I would say classically, math and science. I also really loved music. I was in music classes and took a liking to a lot of different instruments. I was always trying to balance music and STEM. Both those identities have followed me throughout my career.

Was there one person, or a group of people, who influenced your choice of this career path?

I would say I didn’t really know about being a research scientist back in the day. I think I was drawn to elements of it. My mother, Iris Legaspi Peralta, who passed away before I got into high school, was a family doctor. She had me during her residency and essentially raised me while she was still in training. She went into an area of medicine that was about the people. She took care of the entire family. And I just remember times where I would be in her office, and it’d be after hours. And this was a time in which you still had small family practice offices. Families would come in and they would bring in food or cake or whatever. Even if someone couldn’t pay she wouldn’t turn them away. During this time, family doctors were also delivering babies. I remember going with her to the store to get a gift for the patient that she was going to go see who was having a baby. Those are the things that I remember. I forget a lot of things growing up. But some of those first instances seeing her as a professional definitely made their way into how I approach my career. I saw that and grew up with that service forward idea of being able to use your science brain to help people.

I was always interested in medicine, I would say mostly because of what was around me. It was more of the science of what was happening within medicine that I was actually interested in and that I didn’t know about until I got to college. I just remember early on doing projects focusing on disease and outbreaks and my mom helping me do research. I really geeked out on it. My recollection was that she always supported me. Education was very important- and an expectation- in my family – we were often reminded that my maternal great grandmother was a teacher and grandmother was a pharmacist. So, I already saw that glass ceiling broken. And because of the folks that went before me, I knew that I could pursue a career in STEM too.

Was there any particular moment in your life when you felt a pull towards being a scientist in your field of specialization?

I came into college thinking that I was on the path to do an MD/PhD, so more of a scientist position. I don’t know why I knew that that existed. I chose the University I went to because of opportunities to do research as an undergraduate and also because they had a really well-known history of a lively independent (‘indie’) rock music scene. I knew I was going to be able to do both if I wanted to. I came in as a bioengineering major, mostly because my dad studied engineering and my mom was pre-med, but I found my way to a major that was research focused. It was in biology, but it was very much grounded in strong quantitative and research-based opportunities and classroom activities. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was really big. So, to be in a major with 30 people throughout your time was something that I was very excited to learn more about.

This idea of a hidden curriculum, this hidden knowledge of what you’re supposed to know, before you get to university is something that I noticed right away. Even though my cousins went to university in the US before me, I would say that they chose a more obvious and established career path in healthcare. So when I learned that there was a research-based major that I didn’t have to apply to before getting into college, but that you applied to get into the major after your freshman year, I was so excited to apply. I would say finding that major and co-curricular activities that help you hone your interests is critical.

As far as my interest in ecology and environmental studies goes, I didn’t know much about this area of STEM until I took organismal biology. We had a guest lecturer in our biology class who studied climate change research and forests. They were sharing their work on experimenting and manipulating concentrations of carbon dioxide on whole forests! This was the time when free air carbon enrichment studies, also known as FACE studies, were getting established across the US and also globally to understand whole ecosystem responses to climate change. When this profession shared the fact that you can manipulate whole ecosystems and increase carbon dioxide to understand what is going to happen decades from now, I was totally engrossed. I did not know any of that was happening and how important it was. I reached out afterwards and asked if they had any research opportunities.

During this time, I was working in a neuroscience lab, and I maintained that connection throughout my undergrad for three and a half years. But during summers, I worked in environmental sciences and ecology. Since the professor who studied plants and climate change did not have any space in their lab, I was encouraged to contact one of the collaborators who studied soil science. I would have never found my way to that lab, studying soil science, soil ecology, and sustainable agriculture, unless I had sat through that class, and then reached out and asked about opportunities. I ended up working in Dr. Michelle Wander’s lab during undergrad, and I ended up doing my Masters in the lab too. It was definitely a critical time for me to think of myself more as an ecologist.

For any young students who are thinking of a career in microbial ecology, what kind of courses did you study at university as an undergrad?

I did a lot of intensive lab-based courses that were open-ended which were so much fun. We studied ecology in the third biology class of the honors biology series. And I loved it. The stream lab, outside in waders in the winter, was so memorable. But I didn’t see myself as an ecologist or a microbiologist at that time. My first (and only) undergraduate microbiology class was bacterial pathogenesis which didn’t expose me to the microbial diversity we study from an ecological and evolutionary perspective. I think that a master’s degree was really critical for me to not only read more about the field but to learn more about what microbial ecology is, and soil ecology was the gateway to that, because the processes we were studying were microbially mediated or driven by microbes. And during that time, the technology to study microbes outside of the petri dish was increasing.

What I learned is that I needed to be open minded and willing to take courses or to read content that were completely different from each other. If I wanted to understand how to analyze data, I needed to do a lot of statistics and experimental design. If I needed to understand how different climate change variables affected the biology, I had to know how to evaluate that. I think that experimental design and statistics were topics that I loved right out of the gate during undergrad. We had to take an advanced statistics course during undergrad. I think that helped me get a foothold as well, because that really sparked my interest.

In terms of what courses to take, I’d say ecology and evolution. No matter what you’re going to go into in STEM, you can’t study and understand biology out of context. Even in medicine, understanding how humans interact with the environment is essential. How organisms change over time such as microorganisms becoming antibiotic resistance- that’s evolution. So, when I teach a microbiology class of mainly students interested in health care professions, they’re still surprised, but I definitely take an ecology and evolutionary biology approach to microbiology, because it’s so essential for us to meaningfully understand the system.

Which field did you go into for your masters?

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I stayed in the same institution for all my degrees, but I changed research areas. And I took time off in between my masters and my PhD as well. My master’s degree is in biology, but with a concentration in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

What was it like to stay in the same university? Did that give you some sort of continuity in what you were doing, or provide you a comfortable environment to really flourish?

I would say both. At the time, and even now, there is stigma associated with staying in the same institution and I understand why that exists. However, if you demonstrate that you’ve learned different skills and in different topic areas, I don’t think that should dissuade somebody or should put a stamp on you that says you’re closed minded, because people have many different reasons for staying and choosing a particular academic institution. After I got a review back from a graduate fellowship, it was clear that the reviewer did not read my application but only noticed that I went to school in the same place. The reviewer emphasized how I stayed at the same institution for my training and that I probably don’t have the breadth of training and experiences required to be successful.

One of my decisions to stay was because I was in this rock and roll band, and we were touring in the UK and playing gigs in the Midwest during my undergraduate and MS degrees. I didn’t want to stop school, and I didn’t want to quit the band. So, I stayed at the same University. I wasn’t trading off with being able to do cutting edge science. I was still able to do that. I just didn’t go for research experiences to Alaska or other off site places in the summertime, for instance. I still did research, but it was locally. I made some intentional decisions that helped me continue on my STEM path but also allowed me to keep being a musician at the same time.

Wow, that’s fantastic! Do you want to talk a little bit about your band?

The band that was called The Beauty Shop. We were a three-piece band. It was a cross between country and rock, more specifically in the ‘alt rock’ or ‘Americana’ genre. I played the electric bass. The band was led by singer-songwriter John Hoeffleur who played the acoustic guitar and different members who played the drums. We were pretty stripped back. I remember answering the ad that they were looking for a bass player, it was a handwritten flyer advertised outside one of the science building. I didn’t know half the bands they listed as inspirations, and I shyly called home and asked my old bandmates if I should try out. I had been playing covers of other people’s music during high school, and we played a lot of parties. In college, I didn’t think that it was going to go anywhere past playing at the coffee shop or clubs, but it did. We recorded albums and played at different venues. It was interesting to balance that life, being serious about practicing and playing gigs, playing at 1 am and then going to class the next day. I was an out of state student and there was no way I was going to skip class – I was getting full value out of my education. I might have been sleeping a bit during some classes, but I was definitely there. I think it helped me balance different obligations that were really important to me.

There were a lot of parallels to being a touring musician and being a scientist. A lot of the do-it-yourself mentality carries over; nobody’s going to advocate for you but you. We had to create our brand, we had to make sure that we were prepared to play the best show that we could every time, because you don’t know who’s going to be in the audience. We were creating music and making CDs and sending them to places that might be interested in distributing them. So, a lot of what I didn’t think were experiences that have anything to do with a STEM career later, totally give me an edge now.

Being open to any kind of audience is also such an important skill.

Yeah, I talked to a lot of different people. We sold t-shirts and CDs. I think it also helped me be less shy. It made me stronger. Maybe I was shielded a little bit from the challenges women in science face because of music but also because of my family experiences.

Coming back to science: the work that you did in the summer during your undergrad, did that carry over to your masters in ecology and evolution?

When I was an undergrad, I was helping graduate students with their thesis and dissertation topics. We all used similar approaches to understand how different land use changes to the soil environment influenced the type and amount of carbon getting stored in the soil. I did not know all the intricacies of how important soil carbon was and how difficult it was to study at the time. How critically important it is to promote soil carbon storage, while also being able to grow food. Being a part of that lab, and mentored by Dr. Michelle Wander at the University of Illinois. I also had the privilege of working with Michelle’s husband Jon Cherniss, successful organic farmer and owner of Blue Moon Farm in Urbana, Illinois. These research and on-farm experiences were really critical for me to wrap my head around why soil organic matter is important in context of food, climate, and policy. I remember being in a room with graduate students who were so passionate about sustainable agricultural management. It was just a great experience. We were mostly all women in the lab at the time and our advisor was the first woman to be hired in the soil science department.

I remember how welcoming and kind everybody was. Even though you think you don’t belong, being in a welcoming environment helped me overcome those impostor feelings. Those are all positive experiences that helped me continue onto graduate studies. I moved to examining the interactions that plants have with soils and microbes. You have to know about chemistry, physics and biology. It was this integration of all the foundational courses that I did in undergrad that was really exciting.

You mentioned these FACE experiments.

Yes, free air carbon enrichment (FACE). I had the opportunity to conduct research in a newly established FACE site that focused on the corn/soybean rotation for my masters. The question had to do with how elevated carbon dioxide and ozone concentrations treatments influence soil organic matter (as a consequence of changes to plant physiology and productivity).

How do you do an experiment like that? Is it in a greenhouse?

No, it’s out in the field. There was PVC piping that had holes in it, and carbon dioxide (and later ozone) was pumped into the specific area that we were studying. There were sensors to know where the wind was blowing, so the gas enrichment would ‘wash’ over the study area. Technology made it possible to move from greenhouse closed chamber experiments out to the field. My Masters focused on understanding changes in those early time points. At the very beginning before the experiment started, and three years later.

So, you participated in this cool FACE experiment during your masters. And then you decide to take some time off before you start your PhD. Did you work at the organic farm during that time?

I worked at the farmers market a little bit, selling vegetables. But I went on tour with the band. I was working as a lab technician, which kept my hours flexible. I pivoted to prioritizing a little bit of time away for my music, if we needed it. That time confirmed that I should go back and be a scientist. I would read journal articles at the bar while on tour. I knew that I wasn’t going to be playing music long-term. We did a reunion show in 2016 when I was already a professor here at East Carolina University (ECU). So, 10 years after I stepped away from the band and started grad school. We did one reunion show. I flew out to Champaign-Urbana. We practiced once and then we played, and it was really fun!

How long was the break? Was that a few years or a few months?

It was about a year between finishing up my MS degree and starting the PhD program. During this time, I was a technician in a new microbial ecology lab and ended up staying in that lab for my PhD. I brought my soil ecology experiences into a lab. I think that was helpful for me to experience what it would be like to be the technician, in contrast to being in a leadership role. My affinity towards leading projects helped me make the decision to go back and get my PhD, because I wanted to be in charge of my research agenda.

And what was your PhD on?

I focused on the microbial ecology of wetlands restoration. A lot of wetlands in the Midwest have been converted to agriculture. Some lands were then taken out of agriculture and entered into conservation reserve programs. This was because of a mandate that if you were going to destroy a wetland for development, for example, if you’re going to build a road through some wetland, then you have to restore a wetland of equal size somewhere else. This policy of no net loss is mandated because of the Clean Water Act in the US. Researching wetlands was ecologically important but also a policy relevant type of ecosystem to study.

My dissertation was on trying to understand how previous management of the land, while it was in agriculture, influenced the microbial ecology of the restored wetland soils. The surrounding water cycle and nutrient cycles had completely changed because of human influence. Microbes are critical at converting nitrate to di-nitrogen gas through the process of denitrification. Wetlands are really good at providing habitat for microbes to carry out denitrification. The idea of ecosystem services and ecosystem benefits is something that was really interesting to me. I wanted to mesh ecological questions with applied restoration and policy relevant questions. There were a lot of assumptions that were being made about how wetlands were functioning but little was known about the microbial majority that lived in the soil.

Wetlands are defined in different ways but essentially, they’re the areas between the land and the water. The classification is based on whether water-loving plants are there, whether soils are saturated throughout the year, and how much water is present over a given amount of time. The identification of wetlands from a policy standpoint had nothing to do with microbes. The assumption is that if you flood a system, you’ll get the microbes that are doing this job of promoting increased water quality. Essentially, taking that nitrate out of the water and soil and then converting it to an inert gas is the ecosystem benefit that is assumed to be provided by wetlands. But wetlands could also be producing greenhouse gases. There are potential tradeoffs that we’re not measuring. I wanted to understand what the microbes are actually doing in these restored versus natural wetland ecosystems. And are we restoring microbial communities in a way where they’re functioning to their pre-disturbance levels? And the answer is no, but they’re still there. They’re carrying out these water quality functions, but it’s a different community of microbes. And they’re functioning at rates that are not at levels that were measured in natural wetlands.

When did you finish your PhD? Did you go straight into a postdoc after that?

I finished my PhD in 2011. I worked on the organic farm and a wine shop in between the time of defending my dissertation and starting the postdoc. I was essentially trying to figure out the funding for my postdoc. I knew where I wanted to go and had already started writing grants with my future advisor. It was just a matter of time that I would have to wait. I wasn’t willing to take up a postdoc in an area I wasn’t interested in.

It’s risky to not always be in a STEM position. I was at a critical point where I could have easily left STEM if I wasn’t careful about what my next move was going to be. I give kudos to my postdoc advisor Dr. Jay Lennon. We’re still collaborators and friends to this day. Jay demystified the prospect of being an academic researcher. I didn’t start my PhD to stay in academia. On the first day of my postdoc, Jay asked me what my favorite parts about being a scientist were. I really liked designing experiments, working in the field, working with students, writing grants and papers. I like data analysis too. And he went “That’s a professor’.” He essentially helped me see what I wasn’t seeing. I knew that I needed to improve my proposal writing and my postdoc advisor was just excellent at those things. It was an enriching and encouraging space to continue my science journey.

Just out of curiosity, how long did you take off?

I defended my PhD in May 2011, but I turned in my dissertation in November and then started my postdoc at Kellogg Biological State, Michigan State University in December. So I took about six months off.

What was your postdoc on?

Initially, it was on how different organic, sustainable agricultural nutrient management influenced soil food web structure and soil organic matter concentrations and storage in perennial wheat systems. It was the project that first brought me to the biological station at Michigan State. Then I wrote my own grant submitted to the US Department of Agriculture as a postdoc fellow. I was at a biological station that maintained many different long-term ecological research experiments for over 25 years, trying to understand the role that both climate and also human management played on agricultural ecosystems. I really geeked out on one of their experiments that had to do with cropping diversity, trying to understand how increasing crop diversity over time (also known as crop rotations) influences soil microbial communities in ways that contribute to plant health. I was focused on how soil microbial diversity responds to cropping diversity, with specific emphasis on disease suppressive functions such as antimicrobial activity.

Did you move close by for your postdoc? Or was this far away from where you did your PhD?

I did my PhD in Illinois, two hours south of Chicago. And then I moved to Michigan for my postdoc, only a couple hours in a different direction from where I grew up. When I was in that lab for a year, the lab moved to Indiana. I was doing experiments both in Michigan and Indiana, but I got my job here at ECU pretty quickly.

And how long was your postdoc?

Two years. I started at ECU in 2014. I began applying to jobs within the first year of my postdoc.

Was it very different moving institutions, from after your PhD into your postdoc? And then once you started as an Assistant Professor?

It wasn’t so different, moving from PhD to postdoc in terms of the kind of research or the kind of institution. But when it comes to the institution I’m at now, it is a little bit different.

The other schools I grew up in scientifically were all agriculture-based schools. Their mission had to do with sustaining agriculture for that state and were very research intensive. ECU is still research intensive but a lot of value and emphasis is placed on teaching. The integration of both teaching and research is a really good fit for me.

Trading off with providing research opportunities for a range of different students is something I don’t want to give up. I like to think that teaching and research can go hand in hand. I really like being in a place where spending time on making sure teaching and mentoring is valued and appreciated without it feeling like a tradeoff. We have a really special community of scientists here that are truly interdisciplinary, working on both ecological and also the human dimensions of the system.

It doesn’t have to be basic versus applied sciences either. The fact is that you can do both if you want to or be in the middle. Being at that interface helped me see the type of research program I wanted to maintain in a creative way.

On that note, could you give us a summary of your work in microbial ecology at your current institution?

Our region experiences a lot of storm surges, sea level rise and atmospheric deposition of nutrients. We are in a hurricane and tropical storm prone area. Because of industrial agriculture and other industries, this area becomes a hotspot of nitrogen deposition. Many ecosystems across the US and the world are experiencing something similar. Ecosystems that were nutrient starved, historically, are now being fertilized. The question that I wanted to ask was how this increased fertilization of wetlands due to different climate change and land use change drivers affect the ability of wetlands to store lots of carbon. When you add fertilizer to anything, it makes things grow and forces a lot of microbes to increase their rate of metabolism resulting in carbon losses as carbon dioxide.

When I interviewed here at ECU, I learned about a long-term experiment that had been started 10 years prior and had to do with the fertilization of wetland ecosystems. This experiment was started by Dr. Carol Goodwillie at ECU. It provided this great infrastructure and opportunity to study what was happening between the plants that have already been surveyed every year by students, and the consequences of that on both the soil microbes, plant-microbe interactions and the soil’s physical and chemical properties.

This ecosystem is critically important for climate change mitigation and habitat for biodiversity. Are we overestimating the amount of carbon that we’re storing, because we might be increasing the activity of soil microbes and potentially disrupting this cooperative relationship between plants and their microbial partners by adding nutrients to the system? We’re exploring this question using multiple approaches. Some of the work is culture-based, where we grow soil bacteria in the lab. We’re adding different simplified bacterial consortia to wetland plants along a fertilization gradient to understand if we can demonstrate positive to commensal, to negative responses of plant growth. We’re doing simplified experiments in the lab. We’re also doing environmental DNA characterization to understand what has been happening over time to the relationship between the microbial below ground with the plant community above ground.

There are other parts of our research program where we collaborate and the leads are economists and engineers. In the US, if you are in a rural area, there might not be infrastructure available for municipal water. Typically, households have their own private wells. But there is no federal policy on protecting the water quality of these wells. After you drill, you have to test your water, and it has to pass certain regulations by an Environmental Protection Agency but there’s just no funding for, or emphasis on, retesting. Our team is trying to understand the patterns of water quality in this landscape. The idea is to use different modeling approaches to understand how water flows through the landscape and how land uses change through the landscape and how these features relate to the health statistics and other demographic information of an area. We’re using these updated models to predict hotspots of potential contamination based on coliform bacteria or nitrate concentrations in drinking water. We plan to communicate the level of risk to particular communities and potentially inform future policy on groundwater drinking wells.

There are so many different aspects of microbial ecology that your group is involved in exploring! What role do you play in this water quality project?

I’m the biologist on the team. I also understand soils and how water moves through soils. At the end of the day, I try to keep us in check. Not all microbes are pathogens. So, we need to think carefully about what these data actually mean.

I also am involved with some marsh restoration work and understanding how we can promote plant microbe interactions to enhance the establishment of coastal marshes and their success after planting in pretty stressful environments. This is a newer area of research. One of the big reasons why I came to ECU and why I continue to stay is the opportunity to do interdisciplinary projects on a basic to applied science continuum.

What is it that you’re most excited about your current position at ECU?

I’m excited to continue working on climate change and microbial feedbacks, both in basic and applied microbial ecology. We’re at a location where there are multiple stressors: a lot more storms, increased salinity, extra nutrients. The relationship between people and land is important as well. So, this push and pull of natural resources as well as agriculture is happening in a small watershed (our backyard), which makes it more tractable.

Being at a place like ECU allows for this community engaged research component. Working with communities, learning about what communities want to know about their environment, and what their issues are with water quality, for example, provides that real-world context to some of the questions that we’re trying to address. It’s both an opportunity and a challenge to work in a space that involves humans. Working in an intentional manner that brings in trainees, students and other interested parties to the table has been really fun.

I get to work with a wide range of students. Nearly 50% of them are the first in their family to go to college. A lot of my colleagues are also the first in their family to go to college, and they’re now their professors. For me, seeing that play out is really special.

It sounds like such a wonderful place. What are your plans for the future?

In terms of the science, there are many different things happening. I’m even involved with hosts-associated microbiome work. We have a lot of organismal biologists in our department and the gut microbiome is something that people are really interested in. We use the same tools so enabling graduate students to get into that field has been a lot of fun as well and I’d like to continue on this path.

Do you feel, throughout your journey, that you have had equal opportunities compared to your male counterparts? How do you think being a woman has impacted your scientific career?

We know that there is a bias against women of color, particularly in STEM fields. Knowing that at the outset was useful, but it didn’t mean that I was offered a salary on par with my male counterparts at that time. But then you start making excuses. “Well, I was really new.” “I was only one year out of my postdoc. So maybe it was because of that.” or “Because I’m a biologist and not a biomedicine type or the kind of ecologist who does a lot more molecular sciences.” So, a lot of excuses for the fact that maybe it wasn’t equitable at that stage. But it just made me more persistent. I love writing grants. What my experience has taught me is that if your ideas are good, you believe in your team, and you’re excited about the work then just keep improving and re-submitting those grants, and eventually you’ll get funded to do the exciting work and support training of early career researchers.

Thinking of the glass as half-full helps me to continue to be really aggressive with getting funding, not in a way that squashes people, but in a way that I hope builds our programs. I want grants so that it funds the research in my lab but I also want grants to enable more students to be paid to do research during the academic year and in the summer. I try to recognize challenges we might have and then try to do something that I know is within my skill set to help move the needle forward a little bit. That’s something I’m not shy to do.

If I’m in a room with administrators, I’m going to say “It doesn’t matter if that’s the way it’s been done. It doesn’t mean it’s right.” Trying to balance calling people out and calling people in is something that I continue to practice. If I continue doing this work to help improve our programs to be more accessible and inclusive, for me, that’s worth the extra work.

As a professor, I am able to do the research I want to do, grow my program, and enhance our programs at the university as well. I also try to build my mentees to be thoughtful about both their place and finding their way through STEM, recognizing their privilege and power and using it in different ways.

What would you wish would change in your field to make it more inclusive for women of color?

I’d say work to retain more mentors of color. If you see the makeup of my lab, for example, it’s pretty clear that there’s something about my group – folks are getting recruited into and staying. For example, there are many women of color that have come through my lab. Maybe it’s helpful that I’m a person of color myself but I’m also very intentional about working with students and meeting them where they are.

It is difficult and challenging to work with folks that are from varying academic levels. Not everybody has to do an independent project, but everybody could learn from doing research. So, whatever that looks like, it’s going to be different for every student. I think being open minded about the role of both student researchers in a classroom and independent researchers working in your group, is something that I am hopeful will change over time.

There’s also a perception that if students don’t come from a certain academic background or experience level, they’re not going to be able to do certain kinds of science that we do, which I think is absolutely false. It just takes a different approach. This type of inclusive research and mentoring is something that I’m on the road to helping illuminate.

What advice do you have for women of color who are just starting out or thinking about careers in STEM?

Don’t be shy to advocate for yourself. Start building your network of both peers and potential mentors who are supportive. I think we’re much more connected now than we were even five years ago. I think these connections are all critical for helping sustain going into this work.

The majority of male counterparts have always had a network. That has definitely shifted power and prestige. Equally, we also have these networks that are strong and supportive. Pursuing those, sharing your experiences with others and being generous with time, with the exchanging of ideas, I think that’s really our superpower.

Rather than it being “There’s not enough room for folks.” I think there’s plenty of work to do. Building people up and helping them achieve what they want to achieve is essential. Acknowledgement that we all have impostor feelings that will just grow and will never really go away is really important to discuss. As women of color, we are more likely to have had experiences that help us be more resilient and persistent. These are important for overcoming challenges. Just changing your mindset can be really powerful.

We know that academic careers can be very demanding. How do you take care of yourself on the daily?

I really enjoy casual interaction with both colleagues and friends, whether at work or with folks that I’ve worked with in the past. I strive to stay connected with everyone. It’s hard to separate work and home because a lot of my good friends are collaborators. I love to make interactions happen around food and drink.

And I put together a lot of jigsaw puzzles. That is useful for winding down and making your mind work. I multitask, perhaps too much, so my focus on things could be improved. I think that doing a puzzle helps me focus. I really enjoy that even if I’m on vacation. When we’re all at the beach with friends and family, there’s always a puzzle going. I also like listening to books. A lot of audiobooks. Music is all around too. But with the pandemic, I don’t go see music as much as I did but that’s starting to change.

I exercise in the morning mostly. It’s good for your health, of course, but mostly because I enjoy eating so much.

When you’re not working, where can we find you?

At my house, probably hanging out with my dog or making puzzles and hanging out with friends.

Rapid Fire Round

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when I say ‘bugs’?

There are some microbiologists who refer to microbes as bugs, which I don’t like. As an ecologist and someone who has friends that study taxonomy, bugs are insects. So, for me, this word brings back how annoyed I feel when I hear the word bugs being used to describe microbes, which could be bacteria, archaea, microeukaryotes, viruses or fungi.

If you were a plant or an animal, what would you be? And why?

Honey badgers, because they never give up.

What are two non-essential items that you’d want with you if you were shipwrecked on a deserted island?

A musical instrument of some sort and a puzzle. Anything that would help you get food or water would be essential, so I’m not going to say cutlery or some kind of weapon or sunscreen. This is what happens when you ask a scientist!

Photos courtesy of Ariane Peralta

The post Filipinas in STEM: Ariane Peralta appeared first on Science Corps.

Cynthia Garcia-Eidell (Sin-thee-yah Gar-see-yah Eye-del) is a Knauss Marine Policy Fellow supporting the Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). She is also a Ph.D candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is interested in carbon cycle changes along critical fringes of our planet such as coastal margins and marginal ice zones using satellite datasets. She got her M.Eng. in Environmental Engineering from the Catholic University of Korea and a B.S. in Biology from the University of the Philippines. She was trained on satellite data processing and geospatial analysis at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center where she was previously appointed as a Visiting Scientist. She is passionate about research, science policy, equity, and helping build supportive networks and alliances.

Let’s begin by talking a bit about where you grew up.

I grew up in Amadeo, Cavite* which is fondly known as the ‘Coffee Capital of the Philippines’. We have the largest surface area covered by coffee. In summer, you can smell the mild sweetness of the coffee flowers and the whole town becomes fragrant. After harvesting, the streets of our town are covered with coffee cherries, in all shades of red, green and brown at different stages of drying. The fruit is raked and turned throughout the day to help with the drying process. In the afternoon, you can hear people scraping the coffee from the pavement, trying to make a mound and covering it overnight to protect it from moisture. Then early morning you hear them again scraping the coffee back. In autumn, the entire town is filled with the delicious smell of roasted coffee. A lot of my sensory stimuli growing up had to do with coffee.

Amadeo is in the highlands so we had colder weather, lots of rain and lots of tropical fruit.

*Learn more about Amadeo’s ‘Coffee Festival’ here.

You’ve painted such a beautiful picture of your hometown! What was your childhood like? Do you have any siblings?

I really enjoyed growing up in our town. I’m the youngest of three siblings. My mom was a retired elementary school teacher and my dad a retired police officer. We are a family of educators and civil servants. My grandparents, my sister and my aunt are all teachers. My brother is an engineer. I grew up in an environment where education was very important. For my parents, displaying the diploma of their kids in our house was their biggest pride.

Our parents wanted us to be well rounded. All three of us had to pick a sport and a musical instrument. My sport was taekwondo. I started early and did it until high school. The cardio training for taekwondo required that I run every morning and late afternoon to our neighboring town and back. For my musical instruments, I played the flute and guitar. My brother used to play the drums. So I had a typical Filipino childhood, playing in the streets with my friends and heavily focused on education and training.

Traveling was another big component of our growth and upbringing. We were highly encouraged to travel, explore and expand our horizons.

Tell us about your time as a student. Were there any subjects you particularly loved or hated?

My mom taught Filipino language and grammar in school and I loved listening to her recite poems. I really gravitated towards Filipino grammar, the history of our language, and poetry in the Philippines when I was younger. I think our language is really beautiful.

Then I discovered science in Grade Four and Five. I was really a curious kid and always asked a lot of questions. Our science teacher was amazing. She invested so much time in making learning interesting, in showing us how things worked instead of just telling us. We’d do all these experiments in class, and she encouraged us to go to the field and to museums so we could learn outside the classroom.

I’d say Filipino language and science became my favorite subjects because of my mom and my elementary school science teacher. I enjoyed math a lot too.

There weren’t really any subjects that I hated but there were a few that seemed less interesting and unnecessary to me. We had to draw a lot of buildings in my drafting class. It was really tedious and ate up a lot of my time. Sometimes I’d sleep at 2 am while trying to finish an exercise. I just thought that it was unnecessary to have that as a compulsory subject.

Is there a person who you feel has been influential in you choosing your career path?

Seeing my interest in the subject, my elementary school teacher encouraged me to participate in Science Quiz Bees where I needed to dive deep into the subject and know well beyond what we were learning in the school curriculum. That’s how it all started.

I consider myself very fortunate to have had really supportive mentors in my life and throughout my career. I have a tendency to just throw myself into challenging situations. My mentors have caught me along the way, supported me and led me to the path that I’m on now.

Finding supportive mentors and building strong mentor-mentee relationships can be life-changing. Could you elaborate on how great mentorship supported you along your career path?

So I graduated from Amadeo National High School in the science path, as valedictorian of our class. I applied to the University of the Philippines and was fortunate to get accepted into the biology track for my Bachelors of Science.

I joined Dr. Marline Parungao-Balolong’s laboratory for a project focused on ethnobotany*. Dr. Parungao-Balolong, who sadly passed away last year, was an amazing mentor and a great educator. She advocated for preserving and protecting indigenous knowledge through rigorous scientific testing. We engaged with a lot of indigenous communities to study the medicinal properties of endemic plants in their local area. Dr. Parungao-Balolong has been a great role model for me, being a female scientist in University of the Philippines who became a Department Head. Her last position before her passing was as Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of the Philippines in Manila.

After my bachelor’s in biology, during our Recognition Day, our guest speaker was the (now former) senator Edgardo J. Angara**. At that time the senator was chairing the Senate Committee on Science and Technology. On our graduation day, he was interviewing students who had graduated with Honors for positions that supported the Committee. Our Chancellor asked if I was interested in applying and directed me to the senator’s Chief of Staff. When I went up to her, she said “Oh, the Senator would like to speak directly to students”. The senator just asked me one question “Are you interested in research?” And I said “Yes, Sir”. He went “Okay, report to me tomorrow at 8. Bring your resume for my Chief of Staff”. He even gave me instructions on how to get to the Senate.

So my first ever job was in science policy, working at the Committee on Science and Technology in the Philippine Senate. I was tasked with creating explanatory notes for the bills that we submitted to the Committee. It taught me to think deeply about different areas of research, to think about how the science affected communities or the societal benefit it provided.

I’d say the Senator has been another very influential figure in my life. He taught me a lot about how to lead, how to manage time and work on professional development.

*Ethnobotany is the study of how people of a particular culture and region make use of indigenous plants using traditional knowledge

**Edgardo J. Angara was a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as Senate President from 1993 to 1995. Angara served four terms and championed several landmark laws and bills such as the Senior Citizens Act, the free high school law and National Health Insurance Act during his twenty-three year long tenure at the Senate.

Sounds like a dream job for a 20 year old right out of college! How did this exposure to science policy and impactful STEM research influence your career path?

I was very happy working at the Senate. I got to learn so much while interacting with experts from many different fields during meetings and public hearings. However, I’d sometimes feel inexperienced and underprepared, as though my Bachelor’s was not enough. When I shared this with the senator, he suggested that I look into opportunities for higher education abroad. I remember he said “Make a list of everything that matters to you, not just what you’d like to study next.” At that time being close to home felt really important, I wanted to be able to see my family for Christmas easily. So I decided to look at scholarships in South Korea.

The Embassy of the Republic of South Korea in the Philippines is a fantastic resource for information on scholarships. My friends there suggested the Catholic University of Korea. It has a great international program that combines Biotechnology and Environmental Engineering. I got accepted into the course and took academic leave from the Senate for two years to pursue my degree.

My Master’s advisor was really into climate change mitigation technologies and smart agriculture so most of the classes I took were on remote sensing and satellite imaging. That’s when I started learning how to code. Korea is just amazing in terms of resources and classes. The professors were great and I got to immerse myself in a diverse student community.

Did you get a chance to learn any Korean?

The language of instruction at the University was English but you had to know Korean to teach undergraduates. My professor needed help in teaching lab classes so I wound up learning Korean when I was hired as an undergraduate teaching assistant.

What came after your Masters degree?

I returned to Manila and continued working at the Senate for sometime. Thanks to my chance encounter with Dr. Joey Comiso, a Filipino American scientist and visiting professor at the University of the Philippines, I got the incredible opportunity to work at NASA.

After attending one of his captivating lectures at the University of the Philippines, I approached him to express my interest in his work and my expertise in remote sensing. Coincidentally, he was looking for team members to process Aquarius satellite data sets, specifically focusing on the colder waters of the Arctic and Antarctic regions. I had initially assumed that I’d be working remotely, but it turns out that I had to relocate to the United States to work at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

What was it like working at NASA?

It was challenging at first, being a young, female, Asian scientist. People often mistook me for an intern. But Dr. Comiso and his team were an amazing support system. Under their guidance, I experienced a steep learning curve during the first six months and devoted long hours to my work, striving to absorb as much knowledge as possible. Everything moved so fast! At the end of my first year there, we had already published a paper on salinity distribution in the Arctic with me as the first author.

After three incredible years at NASA, Joey said “You’re really good at this, you need a PhD.” He connected me to Dr. Max Berkelhammer, my current PhD advisor at University of Illinois, Chicago. Working at NASA laid the foundation for my academic pursuits, and I am immensely grateful for the opportunities and support that propelled my career forward.

Time for a small digression: Many young students are curious about careers at NASA and NOAA. Before we jump into talking about your graduate studies and beyond, were there any courses during your undergrad that you think came in particularly handy later on in your career?

During my undergraduate studies, I took a range of courses that have been valuable in my career. Foundational science courses like botany, zoology, geology, physics, and chemistry were required for graduation. Along with my core science courses, I also focused on statistics and mathematics. I highly recommend building a solid understanding of statistics, as it has proven to be immensely useful for me.

To broaden my knowledge beyond the sciences, I explored courses in humanities and history. Studying Asian history, world history, and Philippine history offered valuable cultural insights and a broader perspective.

I found the communication and writing classes to be incredibly beneficial. These courses enhanced my ability to write speeches, condense complex information into concise explanatory notes, and present my ideas clearly. Strong communication skills are so important in professional settings, including scientific research and policy-making.

Beyond the core curriculum, I pursued additional subjects of personal interest. I chose courses in behavioral sciences, physical education, genetics, ecology, and ethnobotany, which explored the relationship between people and plants.

A well-rounded undergraduate education played a crucial role in shaping my career. The foundational science courses provided me with essential knowledge, while statistics and mathematics proved indispensable in data analysis and research. Humanities courses enhanced my cultural understanding, and communication and writing classes honed my ability to convey complex ideas effectively.

Let’s talk more about your PhD research and your work at NOAA.

For my PhD I’m using remorse sensing to understand changes in carbon cycling along the coastal margins of our planet. The ultimate aim is to assess how the terrestrial and marine carbon sinks could act in tandem with one another to mitigate the buildup of carbon dioxide.

I initially joined NOAA in 2022 as a fellow of the prestigious Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship, which is designed for graduate students interested in ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes resources. As part of this fellowship, I chose to work at the Arctic Research Program at NOAA, focusing on identifying key scientific needs and priorities in the Arctic. This experience was so enriching and such a good fit for my skill set that NOAA offered me a position as a program manager working on Arctic research and data management when my fellowship concluded.

What are you most excited about in your current position at NOAA?

As a program manager, I work on funding initiatives that address scientific priorities in the Arctic through our program portfolio. I also have a strong focus on data management, particularly in making the data we produce through research projects more accessible and usable. I advocate for open and accessible data, empowering not only scientists but also the broader public to utilize the information that has been funded by taxpayers. Having gone through the challenges of interpreting signals from space and navigating various languages and tools, I understand the importance of making data user-friendly and easily understandable.

I am really excited about connecting marine science to real-world impacts and working towards building coastal resilience, particularly in vulnerable communities. We need to recognize that what happens in the Arctic has far-reaching implications, even for countries like the Philippines, which is heavily affected by major typhoons and other extreme weather events.

What are your plans for the future?

I’ve experienced the entire spectrum of science from asking questions to collecting data in the field- I went to the Arctic on an icebreaker to gather data- to looking at data from satellites and analyzing this data using lines of codes. For me what makes for a well-rounded scientist is to be able to connect data products and services to societal benefit. I am passionate about building a career that combines data science with policy and ensuring that there’s equitable distribution of data and information to communities that need them the most. Over the next decade, I would like to develop myself as a leader in this field both within NOAA and by fostering inter-agency collaboration.

I am Co-chair of the Advocacy Committee at the Association of Filipino American Scientists (AFSA). I’d like to continue helping minoritized students through AFSA’s programs. I also really enjoy working with GradMAP, which is a volunteer driven group aimed at helping Filipino undergrads apply at grad schools outside the Philippines. Eventually, I want to start a nonprofit for environmental engineers that’s focused on building climate resilience in the Philippines.

Let’s talk about your experiences as a woman of color in STEM. Pursuing a career in academia comes with its unique set of challenges. Do you feel you have equal opportunities compared to your male counterparts? How has being a woman in science impacted your scientific career?

I grew up in the Philippines, in what has historically been a patriarchal society. When I first started working at NASA, it was really challenging to find my voice while entering a room filled with men. But the more I immersed myself in these situations, the easier it got to see where I fit in and to speak my mind. It took introspection and knowing my strengths and weaknesses. Recognizing where I should improve myself and honing in on what I’m really strong at helped me both as a person and a worker.

The biggest lesson I’ve learnt is that you shouldn’t force yourself to be like other people. You are a mosaic of your culture, your history, your upbringing and your experiences. I embrace that and don’t pretend to be anyone else. I tell people who I am and what I’m passionate about. I’ve found that people respect this and are eager to support you because you’re genuine and honest about what you want to pursue. There are definitely situations that will sap your energy. For instance, when everyone thought I was an intern at Goddard. But eventually, I was presenting at meetings and talking about my science. When you work on presenting your authentic self to the world, you don’t have to work hard to be seen.

Is there anything that you wish that you could change in your field to make it more inclusive for women of color?

Coming from a patriarchal society, I’ve always understood the need to empower, connect, and help minoritized groups in STEM, be that other Filipinos or women in science.

I’m a big believer in “You can’t be what you can’t see”. Having the right role models and really great mentors supporting me made a huge impact on my career. My undergraduate mentor, the late Dr. Marline Parungao-Balolong was instrumental in my development as a Filipino scientist.

As a mentor myself, I’ve realized that sharing my own experience as a woman of color in my field plays a huge role in making other women like me feel less alone. I cherish peer mentorship. Developing peer networks and learning from each other is essential. I’m really fortunate to be part of a fantastic peer network. NOAA is really striving to make the work environment more inclusive- not just for women of color- but for everyone, regardless of race, gender or religion. Our team is composed of nearly 80% women. Really amazing, empowered women. We hold regular ‘Women in Science Leadership’ workshops where we get together to share stories and talk about any challenges we’re facing. For example, negotiating a salary is something that’s typically harder for women. At the workshops, women share tips for how to do this or even letters they had drafted while negotiating a raise. So I believe that having platforms available where you learn to advocate for yourself are key to long-term change.

Academic careers can be very demanding. How do you take care of yourself on the daily?

I think that having some sort of hobby or sport that relaxes you is important. For me that’s rock climbing. It suits my personality, as more of an introvert, because it’s a one person thing, and it’s very zen. My partner is amazing in terms of just sitting on the couch and relaxing or traveling together and making memories. We also have a dog who is a great break after work. And then there’s yoga. Yoga is great for releasing endorphins. I would say exercise, having a dog and a caring partner keep me going.

When you’re not working, where can we find you?

You can find me walking my dog in the park.

Rapid Fire Round

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I say ‘space’?

Opportunities

If you were a plant or an animal what would you be and why?

I would be a dog because they’re very loyal, smart and loving.

What two non-essential items would you want with you if you were shipwrecked on a deserted island?

I would say a picture of my family and a fun board or card game for one.

Photos courtesy of Cynthia Garcia-Eidell.

The post Filipinas in STEM: Cynthia Garcia-Eidell appeared first on Science Corps.

Hyacinth Suarez is a Boholana* Marine Biologist. Growing up along the coast of Bohol, she has always been fascinated by the biodiversity of the marine environment. At present, she is a faculty member of the College of Arts and Sciences of Holy Name University (HNU) and manager of HNU-Center for Marine Science Studies. Hya obtained her Masters in Coastal Resource Management at Silliman University in Dumaguete City and PhD degree in Biology (Marine Biology track) at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, Central Philippines. Her primary research interest is mesophotic corals, specifically the black corals. She is part of a research project on Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems in selected areas of the Philippines. Funded by the Department of Science and Technology, this project is a collaborative effort between three Filipino universities: University of the Philippines – Diliman (through the Marine Science Institute), Mariano Marcos State University, and Holy Name University.

*Boholanos hail from Bohol Island in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines. The island province is known for its coral reefs and fascinating geological formations such as the Chocolate Hills.

Let’s go back in time, could you paint a picture of your childhood for us?

I’ve had a very interesting childhood. I was born in the Municipality of Makilala, North Cotabato in 1979. Cotabato is a province on the island of Mindanao*. My mom was from Bohol and it was common for Boholanos at the time to seek greener pastures outside of the island. She found work in Mindanao and got married there. She had me around the time that martial law was coming to an end and there were many local wars all over Mindanao, not exactly the safest place to bring up a child. So when I was about three years old, we returned home to Bohol. I have no siblings, I grew up with a mom and a grandma. We were called Tres Marias: three generations, one house.

We lived on the mountains away from the sea in Mindanao but our house in Bohol was barely 10 meters from the beach. I don’t remember much from this time but my mother often tells the story of when I saw the ocean for the first time, I was awestruck. I ran all the way to the beach and sat staring at the waves. We use the word ‘dagat’ in our local dialect for the beach. So I would ask to go the ‘dagat’ all the time. One day my mom couldn’t find me anywhere and was worried sick. Our neighbor came up to her and said “Do you know that your daughter is at the beach?”

Growing up, we couldn’t afford a lot of toys so the beach became my playground. My toys were all the rocks and shells. The crabs and molluscs were my playmates. When it was low tide, I’d walk around the rocks and carefully observe all the marine animals and seaweeds. I’d imagine what it would be like to live in the ocean. I had no idea then that this time would have such a big impact on the career that I chose later on in life.

I had a fun childhood full of sun, sand and music.

*Mindanao is the second-largest island of the Philippine Archipelago. It is a mountainous island surrounded by four seas: the Philippine Sea to the east, the Sulu Sea to the west, the Celebes Sea to the south, and the Mindanao Sea to the north.

Tell us about your time as a student. Were there any subjects you particularly loved or hated?

I went to Valencia Central Elementary School. It was a government school where the focus on academics wasn’t too rigorous but we got to learn so many things. Things you cannot learn from books. It molded me into who I am today.

What I remember most fondly from elementary school is a yard full of mahogany trees and a kitchen garden. We kids competed for the best harvest of bok choy in the garden. We couldn’t afford fertilizers so we had to give our plants all our time and commitment. And to think of clever ways to keep garden slugs and snails away from them.

I studied music at an informal school near home. At 5, I started learning the piano. My teacher was a pianist who offered classes to kids interested in music at a nominal fee. She was deeply passionate about her job. After piano practice I’d always find my way to the beach.

When I was about 10 years old, I taught myself the ukulele and competed all the way to the district level. Me and my cousins had even formed a band together to practice all our instruments. For the longest time, I was convinced I’d become a musician.

I did my high school years at a private school and experienced academic pressure for the first time. I didn’t love or hate any subjects in particular but my interest in mathematics and physics has been an unrequited love.

Is there a person who you feel has been influential in you choosing your career path?

Coming up to high school I’d thought about pursuing music for my undergraduate studies. However, this would’ve required me to move all the way to Manila and live there. It was not something we could afford at the time. My cousins who had played the piano with me also migrated with their family to the US. By my fourth and final year of high school my resolve began to waiver. One day I came home from school and told my mother “I don’t really know what I want in life”.

My mom has always been a big reader and, thanks to her, my time in high school revolved around reading lots of pocket books on many different subjects. She handed me a book and said “I read a pocket book recently- you might be interested in the kind of profession this guy has”. She lent me a book about a marine biologist. In that moment all the pieces of the puzzle fell in place and I enrolled in a marine biology course for my undergraduate studies. We had plenty of advanced math and physics which I struggled with but my interest in the subject drove me to finish my studies.

The person who really pushed everyone in our family to finish school, regardless of our chosen career, has been my grandmother. She herself had only studied up to the seventh grade. My grandfather died early of tuberculosis. At the time TB was an epidemic in the Philippines. My mom, who was one of eight siblings, had just finished college. My youngest aunt was only two years old. And according to my grandmother, at his deathbed grandpa told her to do everything she could to get all their kids to finish school because a good education was the only way to push the family out of poverty.

My grandma kept her word and encouraged all her kids and grandkids to finish high school and pursue higher education. She would say “No matter what, even if people laugh at you because of your uniform, you have to finish school because that will save you later in life.” There were days when I had to eat a tiny pack of ramen and dried fish for a meal but we all finished school because of her.

What came after you finished college?

After college, when my mother was about to retire from her job as a budget officer at the municipal hall, she told me “The mayor wants me to continue working for the town for another four years. I’m not supporting anyone. Would you like to go back to school?”

I’d been toying with the idea of doing a PhD and decided to pursue a Master in Marine Sciences at Silliman University in Dumaguete city in preparation for a career in research. I enrolled in the first semester of the marine biology course and felt that it was very similar to what I had already studied in my undergrad. So I sought academic advice and was offered a different degree that did not affect my initial enrollment. It meant that I would still be credited whatever I had studied in my first semester. I then pursued a masters in Coastal Resource Management. As part of my training I interacted with coastal communities whose livelihood depended on fishing. I continued working with an NGO on community-based projects for a short time afterwards.

What about teaching and research- how did you get involved in the academic aspect of marine biology?

As a young student I was very idealistic about marine resource conservation. I remember doing workshops with groups of fishermen about protected areas, overfishing and coral reefs. The idea was to encourage them to conserve resources for future generations. One such day a quite old fisherman raised his and asked me “How are we going to look forward to a better tomorrow, if we cannot even survive until tomorrow? When we have nothing to eat?” He asked if I’d ever experienced hunger in my life. And even though I came from simple means, we never had to skip a meal. The fisherman talked about times when the weather was bad and they couldn’t go fishing, their entire family would wind up eating broken rice and salt once a day. It was an eye-opener for me. There was a huge gap between policy makers and the people whose lives were being affected by such policies. I found myself becoming rather disillusioned by the conservation practices we were trying to implement. I began to realize then that this was a difficult profession for me because I became very emotionally involved with the communities.

It was around this time that a friend of mine who was working at Holy Name University in Tagbilaran suggested I give teaching a shot. I began teaching undergraduate level natural sciences at the University and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It was a lot of work though- becoming a teacher, completely changed how I viewed teachers. There were days when I stayed up the whole night preparing lessons for the next day because I was teaching eight different subjects at the same time. The job allowed me a lot of freedom in designing the coursework. I got a chance to talk to young people about my own experiences in working with communities and the need for a balance between conservation policy and practice.

I had expressed my interest in academic research to my colleagues. One fine day our University president called me over to meet a physicist, Mel, who had recently finished his PhD in the Netherlands so I could learn more about how research worked. The president wanted us to explore potential collaborations with our natural sciences program at the University. I was really hesitant at first because our fields were so different. During our interaction Mel suggested the idea of my pursuing a PhD while I continued teaching at the University to the president. This is what propelled my first steps into fundamental research. Mel and I continued talking more about life as an academic. Soon our discussions over coffee turned into lunch and dinner. And we have now been together for over 10 years!

Did you have a project or study organism in mind when you began your research?

A chance discussion with a Peace Corps volunteer in 2012 led me to work on black corals. He was a diving instructor at Jagna, Bohol and suggested exploring the region where the corals are found.

Black corals belong to the Class Hexacorallia, meaning they have six tentacles, just like the reef-forming Scleractinian or stony corals (and unlike soft corals, which have eight tentacles). Black corals, however, differ from Scleractinian corals in that they possess an organic skeleton composed of chitin which is jet black or brown. While the skeleton is dark in color the actual organism itself ranges from white to orange to red. Interestingly, the skeleton of a black coral can be bent and molded at high temperatures without breaking. This makes it an important material for the jewelry industry. These corals were used as canes in the past. Because of their useful properties as a material, illegal harvesting of black corals has been rampant. It has led to very strict protection of the corals by law, because of which, it took me almost a year to get the fieldwork permits for my dissertation.

How did you study these animals?

I had been diving since 1997, while studying marine biology as an undergrad. I took advanced certification and training for my fieldwork on black corals during my PhD because they tend to grow at low-light depths.

The skeleton of these corals grows in several patterns that are unique to black corals, such as fans, trees, or coils. Skeletons are also lined with tiny spikes. The tiny details of these spikes need to be observed under a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) to accurately determine and distinguish between different coral species. There have been significant revisions in the classification of black coral species even at the family level after the advent of microscopic analysis techniques. DNA sequencing is heralding another wave of revisions.

All this time I had been juggling my teaching and research responsibilities as well as traveling between Tagbilaran and Cebu. The University allowed me some time off to finish my PhD.

Did you return to teaching at HNU immediately after your PhD?

After completing my dissertation, I went back to teaching for a bit but felt rather burnt out. So my husband and I took a vacation to travel but even that did not change much. It was relaxing to take a break but I realized on my return that I would still be traveling back and forth between cities to keep up with my teaching workload. This is when I contemplated resigning from my post at HNU. However, resigning would mean having to pay the University back for all their financial support during my PhD. Their generous support came with the understanding that I would be working in a full-time capacity at HNU after my degree. I felt unable to give myself fully to my job and I didn’t want to make a half-hearted effort because it felt like I was robbing my students of an enriching educational experience. This is yet another time where seeking advice from my colleagues and the administration at the University proved to be a life-saver.

In 2019, the University had been contemplating the development of a marine science laboratory on a piece of land at Anda, which is a municipality of the province of Bohol. They suggested that as my return service I could be involved in the management and development of this research site. I would be receiving an honorarium for my services. This seemed like a wonderful way for me to give back to the University. Even though I wanted a break from my full-time job, I had been afraid of sitting idle at home with nothing to occupy me. My new position allowed me to monitor the progress of the laboratory from my home in Cebu, with occasional travel to Anda.

What’s the most exciting thing for you in your current position at HNU?

This position gave me the space to think carefully about what I’d like to do next. With the pandemic in 2020, I gradually included teaching online into my schedule and found myself being excited about finding ways of making online learning engaging for my students at HNU. As the development of the research site progressed, I began looking for new research opportunities.

What’s next for you once the research site is fully developed?

I was approached by the Marine Sciences Institute at the University of the Philippines for a collaborative project on mesophotic corals. Black corals are a part of the low-light mesophotic coral ecosystem*. Scleractinian or stony corals, on the other hand, are found in shallower regions of the ocean.

The idea behind the project was to study the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of the under-explored mesophotic zone. I became a part of this team in late 2020 and had a lot of fun working on developing the research proposal for funding. Our project- which is a collaboration between University of the Philippines, Mariano Marcos State University, and Holy Name University – was approved earlier this year** and in November 2022 we began assessing the biodiversity of mesophytic corals in the mesophytic zone. I now plan to devote myself to this project as collaborator and manager of HNU’s Marine Science Centre at Anda. My love for science education also compels me to continue teaching a couple of subjects at the University every semester.

In the long term, the idea is to develop the Centre as a leader in fundamental marine science research and work with the College of Law at HNU to expand its scope into marine and climate policy.

*The mesophotic coral ecosystems are unique habitats that exist in the ‘twilight zone’ between 30 and 40 meters and up to 150 meters in tropical and subtropical water. These ecosystems are characterized by low light conditions and are home to several species of corals, sponges and algae.

**This interview was conducted in December 2022

Now let’s talk about what it’s like to be a woman of color in STEM. Pursuing a career in academia comes with its unique set of challenges. Do you feel you have equal opportunities compared to your male counterparts? How has being a woman in science impacted your scientific career?

Due to the amount of physical work that is required to do our research, many people think that marine biology is a field for boys. However, from my undergrad to my PhD journey to this date I’ve never really experienced any gender-based discrimination at work. Even at male-dominated fora — such as when I was working with communities of fishermen — I have been fortunate enough to be treated with equal respect and have enjoyed the same benefits as my male colleagues.

Does this perception of marine biology being more suited for men affect gender ratios in the workplace? If so, is there anything that you wish would change in your field to make it more inclusive for women of color?

Interestingly, I’ve found that there are more women involved in marine biology research than men. At the undergrad level, we started with more males in my course but more females finally graduated. In my Master’s program, it was nearly 50-50. During my PhD and at my workplace, the ratio is definitely biased towards women by as much as 4:1. I think this is a result of policy level changes in research funding within the Philippines- gender and development are now a core aspect of any grant application.

In many conservative households, women are still expected to stay at home and take care of their families but I’m hopeful that this will change because care is being taken at the institutional level to ensure gender equality in the workforce.

Your own experience has demonstrated that academic careers can be very demanding. How do you take care of yourself on the daily?

I take care of myself by having a routine that makes me happy.

I wouldn’t call myself an introvert but I’m just not someone who spends a lot of time with many people. Perhaps because I was raised by my mother who is nearly 40 years older than me. I grew up in a household composed of three women, each from a different generation so I’m not used to crowded places. We always had lots of pets though. Dogs when I was younger and during the pandemic I became a cat lady by adopting a bunch of cats that had been abandoned by their owners. I have six indoor cats. We even converted our spare bedroom into a cat room. As long as everything is clean- they have water and food and a clean litter box, they’re good. We give them toys to keep them busy. I also have a few outdoor cats that I feed. Playing with my cats and taking care of them keeps me active. This is my form of self-care.

When you’re not working, where can we find you?

I don’t dive as much as I used to because of my eyesight and a few serious diving accidents. So when I’m not working, I’m mostly at home with my cats. Before the pandemic, my husband Mel and I would travel long distances a lot. He is my constant human companion. Nowadays, we try to drive to nearby places and try out new restaurants. I also really enjoy doing pasta bakes at home.

Rapid Fire Round

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I say ‘ocean’?

Magical

If you were a plant or an animal what would you be and why?

A cat because I’m not clingy. I like my independence and can scratch when provoked!

What two non-essential items would you want with you if you were shipwrecked on a deserted island?

A deserted island with no people around sounds like a dream come true. The first would be a long and engaging book. I’d also carry a pillow with me so I can read in comfort.

Photos courtesy of Hyacinth Suarez (unless specified otherwise).

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