This post is part of our series, The Unwritten Curriculum. Check out previous posts: Paths to Ecology Parts I and II, How to Apply for Grad School, The Grad Student Life, How to Submit a Paper, and Demystifying the Qualifying Exams.
Lisa is a third-year PhD student interested in how climate change impacts vector-borne disease transmission. Outside of science, she plays Ultimate frisbee, and is (extremely slowly) trying to learn Japanese.
Alex is a first-year postdoc who studies the population biology of human-to-human infectious diseases. Outside of science, he enjoys wildlife photography, hiking, and working with his puppy.
Nicole is a fifth-year PhD student who studies the ecology and evolution of multispecies infectious diseases (transmitted between vectors and hosts and among different host species). Outside of science she enjoys hiking, swimming, horseback riding, juggling, building stuff, and digital painting.
Q: How important was ecology and nature in your early life?
Lisa: Growing up, if I wasn’t playing Neopets (does that count as ecological training?), I was playing outside in the creek or woods by my house in North Carolina. I wasn’t particularly interested in identifying birds or insects or plants (I don’t think I could have identified a single plant species besides perhaps poison ivy), but I loved being in nature. Because of this I cared deeply about protecting the environment, and I liked to do things such as collect my friend’s banana peels to compost at home. I definitely didn’t know that you could study or have a career in ecology or conservation biology, and I generally viewed school more as a competitive endeavor rather than a place to learn about the world. By middle and high school, I was also more focused on sports and really wanted to be in the WNBA.
Alex: I spent a ton of time outside as a kid in Pennsylvania (actually getting Lyme disease twice!) but I don’t think I really had a concept of “ecology”. I liked watching birds and wildlife, camping, fishing, and trying to whittle things out of sticks I’d find, but never learned to actually identify much beyond poison ivy (learned the hard way). Along the way, I lost some level of interest in being outside until late in college and early in my PhD when I started birding and wildlife photography.
Nicole: I grew up in Sweden next to Tyresta National Park. I spent a lot of time walking around in the woods, observing wild animals and plants with family and friends. Our school would also arrange hiking and camping trips as natural history, appreciation of nature and wilderness survival skills were included in the curriculum from 3rd grade. At the time, I had no idea what ecology meant, but these early childhood experiences certainly cemented my love and curiosity for nature, biology, and eventually ecology. Moreover, I have always loved and been fascinated by animals. As a 3-year old, I was not allowed to have pets of my own, so I would collect snails and keep them on our balcony in a cardboard box that I repurposed into a small house. I spent a lot of time observing them and feeding them with lettuce, but they never stuck around for long. As I grew older I would frequent nearby farms and help care for the animals, and eventually I got pets of my own (a rabbit, cats, and a dog). On occasion, my parents and I would also nurse any wounded wild birds back to health at home. All of these experiences spurred my interest in ecology, and I ended up taking a class in introductory ecology in high school, where I learned more about non-native flora and fauna. For example, as part of an assignment, I wrote a paper on life history traits of various pangolin species, since I thought this scaled mammal was one of the coolest animals I had ever read about.
Q: What did you major in in undergrad, and how did it lay the foundation for grad school in ecology? Did you consider other paths?
Lisa: By undergrad I realized I was not, in fact, going to be in the WNBA, or even play basketball in college. So while I was still pretty heavily focused on sports (now Ultimate frisbee instead of basketball), I didn’t have much of a plan for where I was heading or what I wanted to study. I majored in Environmental Science at UNC, given that I still loved nature and cared about protecting the environment. Because some of my friends were doing it, I applied to spend a semester at the marine science institute where we were required to do independent and group research projects. I quickly realized how much I loved the creativity and flexibility of research and learned that studying the natural world could be a rigorous discipline and career path. But during this semester and the year afterwards in which I worked in various labs on main campus, I never found a research topic that really excited me. Because I was still pretty sports focused, I moved out to California after graduating undergrad because that’s where the good frisbee teams were. I did not have a job lined up, or any semblance of a plan. I started working at a STEM education research non-profit where I spent most of my time playing Pokémon Go and taking naps under my desk. It wasn’t until a couple years of brain atrophy later that I remembered I liked ecology and missed doing independent research and started to think about applying to grad school.
Alex: I majored in math in undergrad. I had considered pre-med for a little bit in high school and early college but, ironically, I never really liked biology in high school and didn’t take my first “real” biology class in college until my senior year. I was very much interested in pure math, but I couldn’t find an undergrad research project that would be accessible to me so I started off working in the Applied Math Lab at NYU looking at how fish school together from a fluid dynamics point of view. I really liked this experience and decided to apply to a few REUs, also in the biological applied math realm. I was able to do two in infectious disease modeling: one looking at tuberculosis dynamics and another on biases in statistical inference. I really enjoyed these projects and felt the field was a great blend of math, scientific computing, and biology, so I switched my plans from applied math to ecology a month or so before grad school applications were due.
Nicole: I knew early on that I wanted to become a scientist and do research, but the path to getting there was unclear to me. As I was applying for university studies in Sweden, I was torn between many interests to pursue a research career in. Should I study math or biology or pursue a medical degree? If I had pursued college studies in the US, I might have tailored an interdisciplinary undergrad education (something that I also was unaware of at the time). In Sweden, I chose to study dental surgery (medical university programs in Sweden combine undergrad with grad studies). At the time, I was interested in pursuing a medical career with the option of becoming a head and neck surgeon and combining clinical work with research to help advancing medicine and public health. I also considered veterinary studies, but at the end of the day I wanted to find a profession that would help both humans and other animals. I did not know exactly what that profession would be yet, but in the meantime dental school provided me with a solid foundation in medicine, surgery, and disease prevention, and allowed me to experience working in a clinical setting early on. I realized that although medical advances to treat and cure disease are valuable, disease prevention at the origin is more effective. As I was working with patients who had cancer or a chronic infectious disease, I became more aware of the consequences of (and interested in learning more about) the evolutionary and ecological processes leading to disease emergence and progression. I later found out about interdisciplinary fields such as disease ecology and evolutionary medicine and I knew then that I wanted to pursue a research career at the intersection of ecology, evolution, and health. I also discovered that the study of complex evolutionary and ecological processes is highly quantitative, so after finishing dental school I completed a year of university-level coursework in math, physics, and computer science. I have always loved math and enjoyed programming, so I was happy to have found a research focus that combined all my previous interests. Finally, by studying disease ecology and evolution, I would be able to make scientific advances helping both humans and other animals.
Q: What or who convinced you to go to grad school to pursue a career in Ecology?
Lisa:
During my post-college brain atrophy period, I had a friend doing a masters in Ecology and Evolution at a nearby university. Her program and research sounded interesting to me, and I still had no life plan, but knew that I didn’t enjoy my job at the time. I started the master’s program and joined a lab studying tick-borne disease ecology. I loved how disease ecology blended human and environmental health and again relished the independence and creativity of research. I realized pretty quickly that a career in ecology research was what I wanted, but I had very little confidence that I could make it into a PhD program and academia in general (the impostor syndrome persists today, but in attenuated form). Fortunately, I’ve had two fantastic mentors – my master’s advisor, Andrea Swei, and now my PhD advisor, Erin Mordecai—who have bolstered my confidence by setting high expectations for me and supporting me in meeting them. I’m also lucky to draw inspiration and confidence from many of my frisbee teammates (sports are still very important to me), who are extraordinarily hard-working, high-achieving, and kind.
Alex: First and foremost, my older brother (who was doing his PhD in ecology when I was in undergrad) – mostly for explaining to me what “ecology” actually was and how the quantitative side really fit in. My undergrad research mentors – Leif Ristroph, Andreas Handel, and Aaron King – contributed a ton and really helped me to identify what a PhD in ecology looked like and what types of things I needed to do to have a successful grad school application.
Nicole: In high school, there were two influential teachers who inspired me to pursue a research career in STEM: Dr. Thomas Schafer and Dr. Tamarra Cadd Elmfors. I would not be where I am today without their encouragement and support in the critical, initial stages of my professional journey. My journey after high school pertaining to this question has been partially answered in the previous answer. Before committing to a grad education in ecology and evolutionary biology, I wanted to gain some first-hand research experience in this field. I was able to secure an internship with Prof. Franziska Michor at the Department of Data Science, Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center in Boston, MA, where I studied evolutionary dynamics of cancer using theory from population genetics. Later, I also gained some research experience working on eco-evolutionary dynamics of infectious diseases with Prof. Katia Koelle in the Department of Biology at Duke University. These mentors provided me with the guidance and support to pursue a research career in disease ecology and evolution.