Exploring Ecological Artistry: A Science Comic

I have an exciting update!  Last winter, an art gallery on campus (Third Space Gallery) kindly hosted a science outreach event and art show for my graduate program and it was a huge success! I loved seeing all of the different media and having a chance to interact with the Davis community alongside other Ecology students to share our research interests, passions, and future plans. My husband and friends have inspired me to learn how to digitize and color my drawings and sketches using my iPad. The video below is a quick timelapse showing how I created a Chinook Salmon comic drawing from start to finish in the program Procreate! Depicted in the comic is a scene of young Chinook Salmon highlighting a few key factors that they face during their first year of life, while developing in freshwater environments of northern California (i.e., Sacramento and Klamath Rivers), just before they begin to prepare for outmigration to the ocean.

Lifelong Learner - I got into a PhD Program!!!

If you know me, you probably know that I have always wanted to teach. I used to stand in front of my stuffed animals and pretend I was in front of a classroom of students.

D.W. (below) from Arthur, my grandma saved her from the 90's... Also, me and Pippy Longstalking (right)

Whenever I was learning about science, I felt I was in the right place. In high school, I was introduced to scientific research by my teacher, Mrs. Rampy, when we went to watch a student research competition at UC Davis. It wasn't until my undergrad years, when I took classes with the many great professors at Sacramento State, that I became excited about biological research, especially in understanding the natural world and how human activities affect it. Thanks to Dr. Coleman and my Science Educational Equity Program (SEE) family at Sac State, I got to learn how to conduct biological research on campus and at biological research stations in Colorado and Costa Rica. I learned skills working with marine intertidal invertebrates and freshwater stream invertebrates, before graduating and moving on to work in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. I spent my days driving boats all around to do water quality monitoring (and sometimes fish surveys) with the Department of Water Resources (DWR).

My story is not full of wins though. I went through a tough time in my 20's where I was dealing with multiple difficult life events at once. Within a short span of time, my grandma was diagnosed with lung cancer (which has since gone into remission), my dog Rooty passed, and I had been feeling very lonely and isolated as I was living alone. I became depressed and lost a lot of weight due to the stress. It was really hard to dig myself out of the dark place I was in, and I was ashamed of how I felt so didn't share it with anyone. After some time healing, and much support from everyone around me, I was able to fight the depression, move back with my partner, and start feeling like myself again.

Flash forward to the global pandemic. Even though I enjoyed the work I was doing for DWR, after a few years, I felt a calling to return back to school. In the Fall of 2019, I was accepted into the Master's Program at CSU, Northridge, leaving my job with the State and moving to Southern California. Surprise surprise, 2 months later the country was completely shut down at the start of the Covid pandemic. All the classes I was looking forward to attending were fully online, all the grad school friends I was looked forward to making were faces on a screen, and it was difficult to conduct research during such a hectic time. As a graduate teaching associate, I struggled with the reality of teaching an online class, often working with students who were either caring for or had lost loved ones due to Covid. And then later losing my grandpa (Spongebob) and not being able to say goodbye in person due to Covid restrictions.

Things began to improve substantially during my second year when cases started to go down and campus was able to start opening back up. Soon after I made an amazing friend, Jessica, and things got so much better from there because we were supporting each other and cheering each other on. Halfway through the program I got to marry my partner and bestfriend, Louie, on July 3rd, 2021 (the best day EVER!). I also got closer with some great friends I had met during zoom times from my classes and/or BEER club, like Gloria, Melissa, Shanelle, and Rob. Incoming students from the newer cohorts, like the lovely Kristen, have also recently become my very good friends. We all balanced heavy schedules of teaching, GA-ing, and progressing with our thesis research. Despite the hurdles of Covid, I love CSUN, and highly recommend it for anyone who is thinking about applying to graduate school. The faculty made it worth it and they are my heroes for responding and leading the way that they did during such uncertain times (Dr.'s terHorst, Espinoza, Silbiger, Edmunds, Flores, Mackelprang, and Courtney-Hogue). Not to mention, I got to work with two amazing mentors, a parasitologist, Dr. Courtney-Hogue, and microbiologist, Dr. Flores, studying fish and their symbionts (parasites and gut microbes) in an area exposed to treated wastewater effluent, and legacy polluants.

And guess what?!?!?!?!? I recenlty I found out that...

I will be pursuing my PhD for the next several years at UC Davis as part of the Graduate Group in Ecology! Yessssssss, I am so excited to work with the wonderful Anne Todgham, a professor that studies fish physiology along the California coast and the Antarctic, particulary in the context of anthropogenic-related stressors like warming temperatures. Next week, I will be meeting with her and my future lab group to talk about the research facilities as UC Davis and what to expect when I start this Fall.

I have many mentors, the NIH Bridges to the PhD program (Dr.'s Zavala and Hong), as well as my husband, family and friends to thank for constantly encouraging me and supporting me along my academic journey. Now I have a chance to give back to my community and many STEM students to come as I work towards becoming a biology professor!

Nature Photography & Field Work

For my first blog post, here are some photos I've taken over the years. I will get better at this blog thing ;P

This photo was taken in the northern region of the California Delta (right by the Hogback Island boat launch to be specific). The Great Blue Heron was a common sighting when I used to service water quality stations throughout the Delta.

This sassy California Sea Lion was waiting by the dock near Marina del Rey, California. I snapped this photo while tagging along for an otter trawl in the Santa Monica Bay with the Hyperion Environmental Monitoring Division.

This trail was right at the edge of a neighborhood (would love for this to be my backyard!) near Carmel, California.