People of Science with Jon Choy

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Synopsis: In today’s episode, we chat with Nathalie Alomar, a fourth-year PhD student in Yale’s Ecology and Evolutionarily Biology (EEB) PhD program. She shares how her undergraduate research and the mentorship she received through the MARC program ignited her passion for ecological research. We also dive into her fascinating work studying salamander physiology in the Appalachian Mountains and its role in predicting climate change impacts. Along the way, Nathalie elaborates on the challenges of graduate school, the power of collaboration, and the joy she’s found in mentoring the next generation of researchers. Her story underscores the importance of persistence, self-belief, and balancing work with life outside the lab.

MARC(ed): Nathalie credits much of her research successes leading up to graduate school to the Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) program. As an undergraduate, this program connected her with mentors and other students from minoritized backgrounds, facilitating her exploration of research while also addressing her insecurities in pursuing a career in science. Working in a lab alongside MARC’s supportive community, developed her confidence and became the “biggest encouragement” for pursuing a PhD. Her journey, marked by amazing mentors and a supportive group of students from similar backgrounds, highlights the transformative power of inclusivity and community in empowering students toward scientific careers.

More questions: Nathalie’s first research experience involved investigating how environmental factors affect the skin microbiome of frogs. She particularly enjoyed the process of taking the questions she formed while observing biological phenomena in nature to the lab and interrogating them from multiple angles. To her surprise, addressing these hypotheses and research questions led to a plethora of new questions and research directions. This never-ending question and answer aspect of science inspired Nathalie to pursue a PhD. Overall, I believe her realization illustrates the iterative and dynamic nature of scientific discovery, emphasizing how science is less about definitive answers, but more about embracing curiosity and uncovering new avenues of inquiry.

Stronger together: Research from undergrad to graduate school was a learning curve for Nathalie. She found herself carrying over old insecurities from her undergraduate research experience into graduate school , often feeling the need to complete everything perfectly on her own. The demands of research and classes soon became too overwhelming, so she began asking for help and leaning into the support of others— gradually realizing that seeking support from mentors and peers was not a weakness but a strength. Nathalie’s graduate experience underscores how success does not blossom in isolation, but rather in community and collaboration.

Full circle: Inspired by her formative experiences as a mentee in the MARC program, Nathalie has dedicated herself to mentoring students over the past three summers. She has helped students from around the world get involved in ecology research and help them demystify what it means to pursue a career in research. For Nathalie, mentoring aspiring students has been deeply fulfilling and represents a full-circle moment—stepping into a role similar to the mentors at the MARC program who once guided her.

Salamanders: Nathalie’s thesis (PhD) research aims to uncover the ecological factors driving the species diversity in lungless salamanders located in the Appalachian Mountains. She has discovered that microhabitats with varying climates (warmer/cooler/drier/moister) drive evolution resulting in salamanders species with physiological differences (e.g. metabolism & thermophysiology). Furthermore, Nathalie has partnered with biophysicists to develop biophysical models that predict how climate change may affect salamander species evolution. Importantly, her work emphasizes the collaborative nature of research—with her research lying at interface of molecular physiology and ecology—emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to tackle ecological biological phenomena.

Reaching out: For those considering a PhD, Nathalie emphasizes the importance of getting involved in research. She encourages reaching out to faculty at different universities and institutions to find research you may be interested in. Although this process may feel daunting at first, she urges students to stay persistent in reaching out to faculty as they often have demanding schedules. In some ways, this persistence in finding a research home is the same persistence required to navigate and conquer the challenges in academic research  . . . so stay strong!

Hey, Nathalie! Things will work out! If Nathalie were to give advice to her younger self she would tell her to believe in herself more, to trust that things will work out and maintain healthy work-life balance. She admits that while science is an important and defining aspect of her life, it’s not everything—and that prioritizing self-care while nurturing relationships with friends and family is equally important to feel fulfilled. I believe Nathalie’s reflections highlight the importance of finding balance and perspective in pursuit of our academia and professional goals, emphasizing how personal well-being is crucial for long-term success and happiness.

To get in touch with Nathalie you can connect with her on linkedin or visit her lab’s website

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jon: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining me for another episode of the People of Science podcast. I’m your host, Jon Choy, and my goal is to highlight the experiences of people in science because I believe that the experiences of other people can inspire deep reflection and be a powerful tool for clarifying our own convictions and aspirations.

Whether you are considering if a PhD is right for you or currently a graduate student, I hope that these conversations can be a helpful resource for you.

 For transcripts and summaries of this episode, I encourage you to check out my website@peopleofscience.blog.

And today’s episode, we chat with Nathalie Alomar fourth year PhD student in Yale’s ecology and evolutionary biology program. She shares how her undergraduate research and the mentorship she received through the MARC program ignited her passion for ecological research and steered her towards pursuing a PhD. We also dive into her fascinating thesis work, studying the environmental factors, affecting the evolution of salamander species in the Appalachian mountains. Along the way, Natalie also elaborates on the challenges of graduate school, the power of collaboration, and the joy she’s found in mentoring, aspiring scientists.

Yeah, thank you for being with me here today. Would you mind giving us your name and sort of a short introduction about yourself?

[00:01:21] Nathalie: Sure. My name is Nathalie Alomar. I’m a fourth year PhD student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and I’m studying the evolution of salamander physiology.

[00:01:32] Jon: That’s so awesome. And, you know, being in this EcoEvo program, you know, several years in, would you mind sort of giving us a short rundown on how you got here? You know, what has been the formative experiences leading up to this point? Did you even know that you wanted to do research?

[00:01:47] Nathalie: Yeah, good question. So I started getting engaged in research when I was in undergrad. I didn’t know anything about academia or getting a PhD until I was accepted into the MARC program, which is a program that’s geared towards helping minoritized groups get into biomedical sciences. So I applied to the program and they really helped me through everything.

It was really about having really excellent mentors that talked to me what academia is, the fact that you could even do. research as a job that you could do a PhD. What is a PhD? I didn’t know that even you could go straight from undergrad to graduate school. I didn’t know that it was a paid program you didn’t have to get loans out for.

So there was a lot of insecurities that I had before I entered the program that I didn’t think I was ready enough to go into grad school. I didn’t think I could be a scientist. That this program really helped in part because they had a lot of workshops that they had a lot of Ways that they helped you kind of realize these things But also because we had a cohort of students that were kind of in the same boat And we were really able to bond with each other and kind of form this community as we were going through this journey of graduate school So I definitely think one of the biggest formative moments for me was Where it’s getting engaged in research as an undergrad and having like a really good lab that I was able to bond with.

And that really helped me develop my skills as a researcher, develop my confidence. And that’s kind of been my biggest encouragement and what really led me to continue to pursue science.

[00:03:09] Jon: So that’s so interesting, but what about research really stood out to you compared to sort of other fields? What, what was that sort of thing that really just Made you be like, okay, I’m going to be doing research. I want to be doing research for the next five years, next six years.

[00:03:23] Nathalie: Yeah, so for me, I started out working looking at the skin microbiome of different frogs and being able to see an animal in the environment and see how it is acting at nature and seeing all these different variables that could possibly be Influencing it then taking that back to the lab and actually like think about what might be impacting them, what might be important to them, what environmental factors, what about the species itself, what about the ecology of the species, and actually be able to answer those questions in like a step by way form was something that was super exciting for me, and I thought that it would be like a finished picture.

Like, okay, sweet. I answered my question. This is how science was, but it wasn’t. It just led to like way more questions that I then learned that I can like figure out as well too. So I think the fact that I could sit and think about problems and then actually test them out with something that I didn’t know was a possibility and didn’t know that I could have the skills to do instead of just running through my head all day.

And that’s really what the fact that I could continue doing that into grad school was something that made me think that I want to continue doing this longer.

[00:04:25] Jon: Yeah, and now that you’re in your fourth year of your PhD I guess three years into your research, right? First year being, you know, where you’re primarily taking classes.

How has that research experience been sitting and thinking about those problems? Perhaps you can give us, you know, a challenge that you’ve faced these past three years.

[00:04:45] Nathalie: Yeah, of course. I mean, I’ll say the transition from undergrad to graduate school is really big. And I think one of the hardest things was learning how to ask for help.

So coming into graduate school, I think I still had that insecurity as an undergrad, and I felt like I had to do everything right. Which doesn’t make sense because the whole point of going to PhD is to learn how to do these, learn how to be a scientist. But for the first few months, I really struggled with just trying to do everything myself, trying to like do all of, all of the work without relying on my mentor, without relying on say office hours for classes, without relying on other graduate students that could help me.

And it took, I think, up until my second semester of my first year, where I was able to swallow my pride and just ask for help and it completely changed, like, the work is so hard, it definitely is, but I feel more supported and I feel like it’s more of a collaborative effort. And I think at the beginning, I thought of it more of like just me and myself doing it, but now I can easily see science as a collaborative effort, everyone coming together to do something.

And I think being able to realize that really changed my, and really broadened the research I was able to do by bringing in different people.

[00:05:52] Jon: Yeah, no, that’s amazing. Great research happens in collaboration, right? And we don’t want to just focus on sort of these challenges, but, Perhaps you can give us a success, you know, something that has, has been awesome these past three years.

[00:06:06] Nathalie: Of course, the first thing that comes to my mind is I mentor students for summer internship programs. So over the last three summers, I’ve had students from different universities across the nation and also internationally come and work with me over the summer. And it’s been the best feeling to give back in the same way that I Have been able that I like didn’t know anything about research anything about academia and someone mentored me I’m able to take these students some of them who have never seen a salamander before And take them into like the appalachian forest in north carolina have their experience with field work have their experience of being able to be out in nature and

Seeing throughout like the summer them being able to get engaged with a project to actually think about questions to then ask how did you get into grad school? What is grad school? Can I do this? Can I do this in different ways waiting them engaged about science has been like the highlight of my whole grad school career

[00:06:59] Jon: And and for those sort of listening and interested in your research, you know ecology and evolution and the environment How would you describe your research to a layman perhaps?

[00:07:08] Nathalie: Yeah, of course. So my research is really about these lungless terrestrial salamanders and we have the hot spot of them is in the Appalachian Mountains. So these salamanders have this beautiful radiation. There are a bunch of species just as much as you would see in like a Caribbean hot spot, but we don’t really understand why they have these many species.

So my work is really uncovering their physiology and trying to understand how they have evolved through their different physiological traits like their metabolism, their thermophysiology, and their hydric physiology. And why this is important is we’re able to understand deeper that these salamanders don’t have the same physiology, they actually differ based on their microhabitat preferences.

So if they like somewhere warmer or drier, then they’re more warm adapted, cooler and moist, they’re more cool adapted. And this is important because then we put those physiological traits with our collaborators that I mentioned earlier, and they’re able to make biophysical models to predict how those species ranges might change due to climate change.

[00:08:04] Jon: And for those interested in getting into research, doing the line of work that you’d be doing. What advice would you give them?

[00:08:11] Nathalie: I would definitely recommend to reach out to any advisor, any faculty member you have at your university. If you don’t have any that are aligned with your research interests, don’t feel afraid to reach out to different people at different universities as well, too.

I reached out, and I have been reaching out to different people in a bunch of different universities, but be very insistent. Faculty can be very busy, graduate students can be very busy, but that does not, don’t let that deter you, just keep on getting interested, keep on reaching out and put yourself out there because there’s no way to do science right.

You just gotta keep on keep on trying until it ends up working out.

[00:08:45] Jon: And finally, advice to your younger self.?

[00:08:48] Nathalie: I think for my younger self, I would definitely tell her to just believe in herself a little bit more, trust in herself, and that everything’s gonna be okay. To just not be as stressed out, make sure that you have a good work life balance.

Science is really, I love science, it’s been really important to my life, but it’s not everything. To make sure that you give care to yourself and your family and friends as well.