Leah Mupas Segui |
I am a Filipina-American aquatic ecologist and PhD candidate in Integrative Biology. Coming from Southern California, moving to Oregon for graduate school was a culture shock. I was one out of five minorities in my department in a state that is almost 80% white. I felt isolated in the beginning, not knowing who else was experiencing “otherness” which impacted my work. Alex Davis, Javier Tabima, and I started having "brown people lunch" together as a way to share our stories. Alex and I thought that there must be other people in different departments feeling the same way too, so we co-founded EMUS as a way to build a community because being a POC in science is so much more than just doing science. As for my science: My perfect road-to-science story would involve a lot of time outdoors and a transformative experience in my childhood that sparked a deep appreciation for nature that set my path for research. But to tell you the truth, my passion for science started in the kitchen. I’m a second generation Filipina-American (my parents immigrated to the US from Luzon). I learned from an early age that food was the bond that brought my family together and served as my connection to our culture. Family gatherings revolved around food and we came up with any excuse to be together. Major life events, new karaoke system, pay-per-view boxing matches - every gathering always included a feast. My family's reverence for food fostered my inquisitive mind, which led me to the field of ecology. I watched a lot of science programming as a child. I clearly remember a tv special on the deep sea and seeing an angler fish for the first time. I asked myself, "how does something that lives so far deep in the ocean, without any light, looking like that, find any food?" This is my earliest memory of thinking like an ecologist, with special interest in the relationships between predators and their prey. What excites me most about studying food webs is that every living thing needs energy to survive, and such a simplistic need can create highly complex interactions. I study species interactions one bite at a time. |