Get to Know a (Former) Grad Student: Dr. Ana Jimenez

With this post, I'm continuing the "Get to Know a Grad Student" series, an effort to showcase the lives of real scientists. After interviewing a few graduate students, I thought it would be nice to hear from someone who has crossed the PhD boundary into the wild blue yonder. 

Dr. Ana Jimenez is a post-doctoral researcher in Dr. Joe Williams' lab here in the Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology Department at Ohio State. Ana has been my teacher and biggest supporter in the impossible task of getting salamander cells to grow in the lab. She is also my designated dog babysitter, and my dog told me she would rather live with Ana.

She was nice enough to answer the questions below. Enjoy!

"Take me to Ana's"

What kind of research do you do? Please give the scientific version and the non-scientist version.

Scientific-version: My research involves finding linkages between whole animal metabolic rate and cellular metabolic rate. 

For my Ph. D, I looked at the whole animal metabolic cost of hypetrophically growing muscle fibers, and found that larger muscle fibers are metabolically cheaper to maintain for animals, thus, there is a positive selection for animals to grow their muscle fibers as large as they can, until diffusion of important molecules such as oxygen or ATP becomes limiting. 

Figure taken from:
Wiersma et al 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science

For my post-doc work, I have been researching how life-history trade-offs in tropical and temperate birds translate down to the cellular level. Tropical birds are said to occupy the “slow pace” of the life-history spectrum, with fewer young and reproduction occurring later in their lives, while temperate birds occupy the “fast pace” of the life-history spectrum, having more offspring and devoting more resources to reproduction early on in their lives. Additionally, we know that, on average, tropical birds have significantly lower whole-animal basal and peak metabolic rate compared with temperate birds. 

So, I have been isolating dermal fibroblasts from phylogenetically-paired tropical and temperate bird species and measuring the cellular metabolic rate of these cells using an XF24 Seahorse analyzer (machine that measures oxygen consumption in a monolayer of cells). I have found that, (lo and behold!), the cellular metabolic rate of the cells isolated from tropical birds have significantly lower basal and peak metabolic rate as well, with differences closely matching those of the whole-animal metabolic measurements. So, cellular metabolic rate does, indeed, retain the whole-animal metabolic signature of the animals the cells were isolated from.


Non-Scientific version: For my doctoral work, I researched why bigger muscle fibers are cheaper to maintain in fish and crustaceans, and for my post-doctoral work, I am researching whether whole animal metabolic rate is retained down to the cellular level in tropical and temperate bird sister species. 

Why is what you study important?

Besides the fact that it is what I love and what I have fun with? Nothing, not important at all…

Just kidding, results from our work with isolated dermal fibroblasts from tropical and temperate birds has let us (with the help of a diabetes researcher at the University of Cincinnati) to propose that cells may have a fixed “metabolic clock” that carefully regulates the whole-animal metabolic rate set-point, a finding that may have important implications in the body weight field. 

Lean and obese people metabolically defend their body weight incredibly precisely, down to the cellular and molecular level. An advantage of our proposed work is that our bird model does not include body weight, and insulin resistance parameters, which, in lean vs. obese studies, is a limitation that confounds the metabolic set-points of obesity. The answer to the question of how an animal decides its metabolic set-point is certain to be the same for bird cells and obesity models. Additionally, this work also has implications for theories of allometric scaling…touchy ground on this one though, so that’s all I’ll say about it.

What was your path to graduate school like?

I was accepted into the master’s program at The University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW) to work under Dr. Steve Kinsey on muscle physiology and biochemistry of fish and crustaceans. After two years in his lab, I had the choice of defending my master’s thesis and moving on to another lab to do a Ph. D or continuing in his lab for a Ph. D. I really loved my master’s project and I was really, really excited about continuing to answer the questions that it had lead me to, so I chose to stay in the Kinsey lab for my doctorate, a decision I have never regretted.


What do you enjoy doing in your free time? How do you feel about your work-life balance?

I’m told that it is very important to have a work-life balance, but I’m really crappy at keeping said balance. In all of science, there are ebbs and flows of work, so there are times that I barely ever leave the lab, just like there are times I have to find stuff to keep me busy. 

I take advantage of the times that science is slow to spend time volunteering at the humane society or spend time hiking or swimming with my dog. Really, most of my life revolves around animals of one kind or another, and I have fun with all aspects of my life, so it’s sometimes hard to find the fine line between “work” and “life”. My post-doc advisor, Dr. Joe Williams, says “the day I stop having fun will be the day I leave science for good.” I couldn't agree more!

Describe a normal day in your life.

One of the Williams' lab field sites happens to be my house.

I wake up, walk/feed/play with my dog, go for a run (if it’s warm), get ready for work.

Two things can happen for “work:” either we are going out to collect birds, in which case we spend the whole day outdoors, or I’m doing lab work, in which case I spend an incredible amount of time counting cells, plating cells, growing cells, measuring cells’ metabolic rate or cursing at cells for not doing what I wanted them to do…

I also spend an incredible amount of time looking for funding, writing grants, and gathering preliminary data. This part of my life I don’t really like at all, but it is a necessary evil. 

What are your career plans for the future?

I’m highly undecided on my future. I think I will go back to what Joe tells us: The day I stop having fun will be the day I leave science. Right now, I really love what I do and the questions I’m answering, but academia is changing very rapidly, and I’m not sure that I support the changes that are happening.

What has surprised you about graduate school?

I think most of my graduate school experience was as expected. I have to say that the transition between student to post-doctoral researcher was a real eye-opening experience for me. For most of the Ph. D students in my department, no one really spent time discussing with us what happens after you defend you dissertation and you move on. No one told us that there are several different types of post-doctoral positions that you can apply for and that you can shape your future depending on which type of path you pick. No one told us that looking and applying for a post-doc is a full time job and that it should be happening 1.5 years BEFORE you defend. So, I had a hard time with all of that, mainly because I lacked information. Once I successfully landed a post-doc, life went back to meeting my expectations, however.

Student-life and post-doc life hasn't really changed much for me (minus the fact that I went for working with marine critters to working with birds): I work hard a lot of the time, and I have fun with it.

Ana pictured here pipetting without gloves like some sort of rebel.

What do you struggle with the most in graduate school?

I think in graduate school, I struggled the most with independent thinking. It was really tough to think about my own project outside of my advisor’s expectations and frame of mind. 

Now as a post-doc, I have been “left” to independently think since the moment I stepped foot in this lab, and my advisor helps guide my thinking, which has been tremendously helpful. My new struggle is balancing grant-writing time with actually gathering data and writing papers-time. I’m told this struggle does not cease, even after becoming faculty (great news! NOT!)


What has been the best moment of your career so far?

The day I defended my doctorate. By far, most exciting, emotional, and triumphant day of my life.


How do you feel about the dynamic of research, teaching, and outreach in your career and in the future?

In nature, we talk about a balance of resource allocation: if you are investing 60% of your time feeding, you can’t spend 70% of your time mating. 

I feel like the dynamic of research, teaching and outreach follows this model very closely. And I would say that you have to go with your strength: If you are a good, effective communicator and like teaching, spend your resources on that. If teaching the same concepts over and over again bores you and you like the dynamic of research and can be productive at it, then do that. Play to your strengths at all times. If you are good at both, then do 50-50 and find a place that allows you to do that.


Who are your academic role models?

To any animal physiologist, Dr. Knut Schidmt-Nielsen is a God! But more close to home, if I hadn't had the undergraduate research experience I had, I would have never made it to where I am today. So, I’m eternally grateful to Dr. Wayne Bennett from The University of West Florida.


What advice do you have for other aspiring grad students in your field?

Unfortunately, what I would have to say is think twice before coming into academia. But if you love it and your heart is 100% into it, then close your eyes and jump with both feet. Things always work themselves out in the end. Make sure you are having fun, and learning lots.


Thanks Ana!

If you are enjoying this "Get to Know a (Scientist/Grad Student)" series, let me know! 

Feel free to send me some suggestions for what types of scientists you want to learn more about and I promise to track them down and ask nicely. 

Get to Know a Grad Student: Chris Thawley

Our last PhD student for "Get to Know a Grad Student" is Chris Thawley from Penn State University. Chris is currently a member of Dr. Tracy Langkilde's lab at PSU, but I met him while he was a Masters student at the University of Alabama with Dr. Leslie Rissler.   

Chris Thawley in a shirt that was surely made by AND1.

Here is what Chris thinks about his grad school experience:

What kind of research do you do? Please give the scientific version and the non-scientist version.
Less-scientific version: Broadly, I study how species adapt when their environment (habitat, other species, climate) changes around them. Specifically, I investigate how a common lizard, the Eastern Fence Lizard, has adapted to the presence of an invasive species, the red imported fire ant. We already know that lizards in areas that have been invaded by fire ants for up to 70 years have changed both their behaviors and morphology. I am currently studying how fire ants affect lizards, whether directly by killing/eating them, or indirectly, by changing their behaviors, diet, stress levels, etc. I hope to be able to construct mathematical models describing how the lizards change and to look at how these changes may be passed on to future lizard generations.

More-scientific version: My research is focused on evolutionary ecology and invasion ecology. I study how anthropogenic environmental change, including introductions of non-native species, imposes novel selective pressures on native species. A population’s ability to persist under these threats can depend on its capacity to adapt accordingly. However, responses to an altered fitness landscape may not be optimal across all environments or life stages. My work is a part of a broad research program to examine how fire ant presence can cause rapid adaptation in fence lizard populations. Specifically, I am examining how direct pressures, such as predation, and indirect pressures, including alterations in diet, behavior, stress, and immune function, may affect lizard populations differently based on historical association with fire ants and across ontogeny. Hopefully, studying the downstream effects of pressures imposed by invasive species can provide broader insights into the longer-term consequences of environmental change on community interactions and the persistence of biodiversity.

Why is what you study important?
Whew, well, my answer to this falls into three parts. 1) I think that capital-E ecology is important because we need to have an understanding of how our planet works. I believe that one of the main challenges of humanity in the next century is going to be figuring out how to support a growing human population with a reasonable standard of living while protecting the ways in which the Earth functions and preserving the natural heritage of the planet. To do this, we need to study ecology.

2) My specific fields of study, evolutionary ecology and invasion biology, are important pieces of what I described above. Because many natural environments are changing very rapidly, whether because of human development, climate change, invasive species, etc, species, communities, and whole ecosystems are being forced to adapt to this change on unprecedented scales. Learning how and even if these species can respond is a critical question that can shed light on past biology (how current biology developed) and future systems. Research in these fields can also help us answer some of the questions we'll need to solve the big questions (above) like how to effectively conserve nature in the face of increasing development.

3) I think my research is important because it's a pretty visible, charismatic, and fairly easily understandable example of how rapid change can result in rapid evolution. It's a great tool in education and outreach to have a system that uses cool animals (lizards), a species people love to hate (fire ants, even though they're cool too), and rapid evolution together; people ask really great questions about the research, and it opens a doorway to talking with them about many other scientific topics (I've had people with beers in hand ignore football games to talk to me about lizards/ants...pretty awesome). 

Capital-E ecology on Tatooine

What was your path to graduate school like?
My path to graduate school was the proverbial long-and-winding-road. After graduating from undergrad, I moved to California (with an aching in my heart) and worked as a postal clerk, busboy, and handyman. I later took up residence in Madrid, working illegally as an English teacher, taught middle school science at a small Quaker school outside of DC for a year, and did a year of service with AmeriCorps. At this point, I returned to the Ecology fold as a research tech in the herpetology lab at the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center. From there, I went on to a Masters program in Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama, and then directly to my current doctoral program in Ecology at Penn State.

While this "career progression" was certainly the long way around, I feel that my years spent outside academia have been very valuable. I learned to be self-reliant (a trait I did not have during my undergraduate years). I gained a great deal of experience teaching a diversity of people, from small children to the elderly, and those with no background in the subject matter to relatively expert students. This has given me a passion for teaching, a desire and ability to reach a diverse audience, and an appreciation of the impact that good teaching can have. I also experienced several different modes in which conservation actually happens: as a volunteer, I often did the grunt work of conservation projects (removing invasive species with chainsaws, carrying stranded marine mammals, etc.) and helped coordinate conservation projects at the local government scale. As a research tech on a private ecological center, I participated in research outside of the typical academic framework. These experiences have given me a much broader view of what effective teaching and research can be.  

What do you enjoy doing in your free time? How do you feel about your work-life balance?
I feel like I am an incredibly stereotypical ecology grad student in how I spend my free time. I love reading, cooking, sampling great beers, being outside (hiking, taking pictures, herping), and complaining about being a grad student, all while wearing zip-off field pants, Columbia button-down shirts, and Vasque trailrunning shoes. I also nap when I can. 

Re-creation of Chris and other grad students just "hanging out"

I generally like my work-life balance. Of course there are times (right now) when the workload is very heavy, and 14 hr days become standard. However, I love the freedom I have as a grad student to set my own hours and do things as I see best (as long as the work gets done well). I also love having field work and a balance between being hot/cold, parched/soaked/muddy, and stuck in an office behind a computer. The freedom of schedule and the variety in the balance between my work and my life are one of the major attractions to working in my field.  

Describe a normal day in your life.
A normal day in my life depends greatly on whether I'm at school or in the field. If at school the day's start involves my alarm clock going off at 7:30, 15 minutes fumbling with the coffee grinder and boiling water, and a 10 min bike ride to my office. I spend my day answering (or deleting) the ludicrous numbers of emails I get, reading articles, doing homework (yes I still have classes...), and analyzing/writing/preparing to present the previous summer's research. I try to intersperse the day with fun and random tasks, like taking care of my lizards in the basement animal room, attending a friend's defense, or heading to a lunch seminar. In the evening, I chill, cook dinner, relax for a bit and then often head back to the lab to read or watch soccer while processing data or something. Some nights, I go to trivia with fellow grad students.

What are your career plans for the future?
I hope to be a professor at a smaller liberal arts school where both teaching and research are valued. 

What has surprised you about graduate school?
Hmmm, not much has surprised me. I guess I am sometimes surprised by how much my advisors trust me to operate independently and as an adult (I still don't feel like a grown-up all the time).  

What do you struggle with the most in graduate school?
When I started grad school, I struggled most with two things: The first was budgeting my time effectively. It was intimidating and a bit confusing to have a well-defined end goal (getting a degree and successful research) and very few definite waypoints. I think struggling through the whole research process for the first time was very valuable though; I learned how to educate myself, choose an area of research, define a project, get it funded, and see it through to completion. The second area of difficulty was adjusting my expectations about the breadth and depth of knowledge needed. In undergrad it was relatively easy to learn everything in a class and the edge of the necessary knowledge was neatly delineated by the bounds of textbooks, syllabi, and lab manuals. As a grad student feeling my way through my chosen field, there are so many different directions to go and rabbit holes to head down. I could spend my entire lifetime reading and still find just one more interesting paper to get excited about and read. Learning to make choices about what to learn and curate my own knowledge has been a challenge (and one I'm not entirely successful in), but the realization that I can't try to learn about everything interesting has been a hard fought one. 

This is the stock photo result when you search "excited scientist"

What has been the best moment of your career so far?
Nothing really pops out. I have vague recollections of late nights spent with R and seeing a p-value of 0.025 and running around the lab with my arms over my head.

How do you feel about the dynamic of research, teaching, and outreach in your career and in the future?
I really like the combination of research, teaching, and outreach as a grad student and in the future (as an aspiring professor). I see all three of these as complementary and intertwined. I don't know of another job in which a) you have the opportunity to do all three of these on a regular basis and b) in which they support each other so well. I see the combination of these three arenas as a key part of the push towards more integrative science and as critical to fostering scientific literacy and education in the United States (and heck, the rest of the world too).

Who are your academic role models?
I don't have a very interesting answer for this. I guess my previous advisors. And Mike Dorcas (whose lab I worked in as an undergrad). I'd arm-wrestle a Wookiee for his job. 

Dr. Mike Dorcas (pictured here) actually had to wrestle a burmese python for his current job, so the wookiee are-wrestling has precedent.

What advice do you have for other aspiring grad students in your field?
Don't go to grad school just because you don't have anything better to do.

Do go to grad school because a) you know what you want out of it, and you're going to get it no matter what or b) because you can't imagine there being anything else you want to do with the rest of your life. 

Thanks so much to Chris for giving some great answers to my questions. 

'til next time 

Get to Know a Grad Student: Juli Goldenberg

Next up for Get to Know a Grad Student: Juli Goldenberg, Masters student at San Diego State University

Juli in her native environment. She is demonstrating the extremely difficult "No-look pipette transfer".

What kind of research do you do? Please give the scientific version and the non-scientist version.

(science-y version)

The broad goal of my research is to improve coalescent-based methods of multilocus species tree inference and species delimitation. Specifically, my project focuses on elucidating the species limits and phylogenetic relationships within the Western Rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) species complex - a wide-ranging group of rattlesnakes that currently contains three recognized species and nine subspecies.

(non-science-y version)

My research focuses on elucidating the evolutionary history of the widest-ranging group of venomous reptile in North America, the members of the Western Rattlesnake species complex. Using genetic data, I am trying to determine where the species limits lie within this group, and I will be using these new species groupings to reconstruct the species tree of the complex.

A western rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) found while night driving in Arizona this summer.

Why is what you study important?

Evolutionary biology lies at the root of every biological science. I love observing the genetics and population genetics that underlie speciation because it is here that we observe the union of micro- and macro-evolutionary processes. I never lose my sense of amazement while working at this fundamental intersection!

Also, rattlesnakes are definitely the coolest study taxon.

Looks rough.

What was your path to graduate school like?

I first found that I wanted to attend graduate school through an education abroad program through UC Berkeley. During the first semester of my junior year of college, I had the opportunity to attend a field-based marine biology and terrestrial ecology program in Queensland,Australia. After exploring Queensland from the outback to the Great Barrier Reef, I was hooked on pursuing biology as a career. Upon my return to Berkeley, I spent the remainder of my undergraduate tenure assisting in a herpetology and evolutionary genetics lab, which cemented my desire to study evolutionary biology.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time? How do you feel about your work-life balance?

My number one hobby is brewing beer. You can follow all of my homebrewing adventures at brewbunny.wordpress.com (yep, shameless plug for my blog). Aside from that, I love exploring the outdoors - especially the beautiful Southern California deserts.

I am lucky enough to be studying what I love, so striking a balance between work and free time is effortless. I never feel like my work is a chore.

If you touch your chin, you may contaminate DNA samples

Describe a normal day in your life.

A normal day for me usually consists of balancing lab work, reading, writing, various journal and lab meetings, seminars, helping out my fellow students as much as I can, and constant data analysis. In addition, twice a week I teach the night class for human anatomy. After work I usually have some sort of social activity set up, be it craft night, game night, or just grabbing a beer with some buddies.

What are your career plans for the future?

I’m currently in the last year of my masters at San DiegoState University. After I complete my degree, I plan to continue on to a PhD and eventually devote my career to evolutionary biology research, hopefully remaining in academia.

What has surprised you about graduate school?

I have been most surprised by how much I have learned that is not related directly to my research. I anticipated that my thesis would be central to my educational experiences during graduate school. Rather, I have learned more from coursework, teaching, seminars, and my fellow students than from anything else. This eye-opening and integrative perspective has dramatically changed my outlook on biology.

What do you struggle with the most in graduate school?

It was very difficult to find a balance among all of the seemingly disparate tasks required by graduate school. The first semester was definitely the most difficult for me because of this. Once I got settled in to graduate school, though, the work became a lot more fun.

 

What has been the best moment of your career so far?

The best moment of my career so far has definitely been giving my first oral presentation at a major international meeting. This past summer, I had the opportunity to present my research at the World Congress of Herpetology in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Although I was absolutely terrified at first, I ended up feeling so proud of my research, and the collaborative networking that resulted from the presentation was invaluable to my project.

How do you feel about the dynamic of research, teaching, and outreach in your career and in the future?

Integration of research, teaching, and outreach is essential to furthering any scientific field. Because of this, I have consistently maintained a volunteer relationship with natural history museums throughout my academic career, having volunteered at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley during my undergraduate education, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco during my “year off”, and now the San Diego Natural History Museum. Research cannot persist without maintained public education and community outreach.

 Who are your academic role models?

Stephen J. Gould, Richard Dawkins, Theodosius Dobzhansky, LaurenceM. Klauber

Dr. Stephen J. Gould with his pet stegosaurus (credit: famousscientists.org)

What advice do you have for other aspiring grad students in your field?

If you are interested in pursuing a career in evolutionary biology, I think that the two most important steps you can take are talking to researchers currently involved in evolutionary research, and chronologically reading the “classics” of evolutionary thought (which is an incredibly fun pursuit!).



Thanks Juli! Next time we will have Chris Thawley, PhD student at Penn State University.

Get to Know a Grad Student: Kyle Weichert

Kyle contemplating science with field assistant

The second installation of the Get to Know a Grad Student series is Kyle Weichert. Kyle is a Master of Science student at California Polytechnic State University in Dr. Emily Taylor's lab. I've never met Kyle in person, but have talked to several reliable sources that say he's a swell guy. Good enough for me, and lucky you for getting to hear his point of view.


Here is what Kyle thinks about being a grad student:


What research do you do? Scientific and non-scientist versions, please. 
I am studying the physiological factors that affect the Western fence lizards’ (Sceloporus occidentalis) ability to kill the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. This bacterium is responsible for causing Lyme disease in humans. By combining the blood plasma of fence lizards with a culture of B. burgdorferi and counting the bacterial cells that die in response, I can quantify the lizards’ innate immune abilities. I am comparing this response across males and females, coastal and inland lizards, and fall vs spring samples.

Obtaining blood from a fence lizard

For non-scientists, I am researching what makes some individual lizards better at killing bacterial infections than others. The bacterial infection I am studying causes Lyme disease in humans. Learning more about this can give us a better understanding of the vectors and potential risks of contracting the disease.

Why is what you study important? 
My research incorporates techniques across multiple disciplines of biology, containing elements of herpetology, physiology, immunology, and bacteriology. The results of this experiment will be of interest herpetologists, immunologists, and disease ecologists alike.

My specific line of inquiry will elucidate the physiological factors that affect the western fence lizard’s ability to effectively kill the bacterium responsible for Lyme disease. This research will contribute to the overall body of knowledge regarding the spread of this vector-born disease. My research will also identify specific factors that lead to a reduced immune function in lizards.

What was your path to graduate school like? 
I worked with Dr. Emily Taylor for the last year of my Bachelors degree, studying the natural history of rattlesnakes by radio-tracking them. I enjoyed that experience very much and when graduation time came, Emily suggested I stay at Cal Poly and work with in her lab on a Master’s degree. At the time, I was ready to spend some time away from school and get some work experience, but I always intended to come back. I worked at a few different biology jobs over several years. I decided to go back to school when it became apparent that the job I had worked for the last 3 years had no room for upward growth. At that point I contacted Emily again, and emailed a handful of other Master’s advisors. Emily had some great ideas for new projects. So, I bought her a few drinks and asked if she had room in her lab for me. (Rob: for most potential advisors, buying drinks may not be the best strategy, but your mileage may vary)

Photo by Walter Siegmund

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?How do you feel about your work-life balance? 
I’m lucky that I have found a field that I do both for work and fun. I enjoy nature and the outdoors very much. In my free time, I enjoy bird watching, herping, hiking, insect collecting, and gardening. Also, I’ve played the guitar for many years, and still enjoy doing that when I have the time.
As far as the work-life balance goes, it’s tough. I have much less free time than I did when I was out of school. But, the time I spend on school feels worth the effort. I’m lucky because my wife is very understanding of the time and effort I am investing in my education! 

Describe a normal day in your life. 
I usually wake up around 7am, get up take the dog out to use the yard. While he does that, I make coffee and my lunch for the day. My wife and I live about 30 minutes from campus, so I usually don’t get there until about 9 am, but that depends on when I have class, or teaching, or research. On a typical day I have anywhere from zero to 4 hours of class. After that, I work in my office and hold office hours for about four or five hours per day. I teach about 9 hours per week, and that takes 2-3 hours of grading and prep time per week. Some days I work in the lab to try to get some thesis work done. About 6pm to 8pm I return home and work from there for another 3-4 hours after dinner. Most days I spend about 12-15 hours working on teaching, classes, and research. 

What are your career plans for the future? 
After completing my Master’s Degree, I plan to go on and pursue a PhD. The overarching goal is to become a professor of biology. My favorite part of academia is teaching, so I would definitely like to end up at a school that is teaching oriented. 

What has surprised you about graduate school? 
I have been most surprised by the amount I learned in such a short time. When I first started graduate school I was amazed by the amount the professors knew about their subject. The information stored in their brains seemed inexhaustible. But now I understand how it is possible. I have learned more in just one year of graduate school than I learned in the whole of my undergraduate career. I was also not prepared for the crazy hours I have to keep.

Kyle and his wife, Audrey, often work as a research team.

What do you struggle with the most in graduate school? 
The thing I struggle with most in graduate school is keeping everything balanced. The life of a graduate student can be quite a juggling act. I have to balance teaching, research, classes (and grades!), as well as my personal life. Of those, the one I struggle most with is the research. I find that I often don’t know what I’m doing in the lab. But, from that, I end up learning more.



What has been the best moment of your career so far? 
Well, I have not necessarily had a prestigious or particularly impressive career so far, but I would have to say that earning some research money from a grant proposal to the Chicago Herpetological Society was a high point so far. Another moment that sticks out is presenting my undergrad research in a poster at the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists conference in St. Louis. 

How do you feel about the dynamic of research, teaching, and outreach in your career and in the future? 
So far, I absolutely love teaching and outreach opportunities. They are my favorite part of the whole graduate school experience. The research, for me, has been laborious, especially to fit into the schedule. I am starting to understand, however, that the research is a fundamental part of the science. It is through the research that I learn the most, and can do my best teaching. For example, I have four undergrads working with me on my research, and it’s been fantastic being able to teach them skills, etiquette, and scientific responsibility.

Kyle and others out in the field. Looks pretty rough.

Who are your academic role models? 
Without a doubt, one of my biggest role models is my advisor, Dr. Emily Taylor. She seems to be able to balance all of the facets of higher education extremely well. Not only is she a fantastic teacher, she is also involved in other programs and aspects of the department. Another role model of mine is my former lab mate, Tony Frazier. He has an amazing knack for asking the best scientific questions about anything. And lastly, a coworker of mine: Jason Dart. Jason is one of the best naturalists I have ever met. He has incredible knowledge of virtually every group of organisms one could observe in California. 

What advice do you have for other aspiring grad students in your field? 
My advice for aspiring grad students is to keep saying “yes” to all opportunities and inquiries that come their way, even when they are busy. It is through all those extra tasks that one learns the most and builds important relationships with their colleagues. Find ways to get more involved with others’ research and help them with tough questions. This helps make one well-rounded.


I'd like to thank Kyle for taking the time to answer my questions. Next week: Juli Goldenberg from San Diego State University. Til' then.