Anahi Gamboa

Field Technician

“A lot of our plans have changed this summer. For our project, we look at how prescribed fire burns affect tick-borne pathogens, and how birds affect the prevalence of tick-borne pathogens that can be transmitted to humans. So we got all prepared for prescribed fire burns, and everything just kind of stopped in its tracks. We were not able to collect any of that data.

It's much harder when you're not there in person to see these species, but everyone's putting their best foot forward. We’re trying out a birding software and encouraging the fellows to go outside in their backyards and identify at least one bird a day, to get more familiar with nature surrounding them.

Last week, we celebrated Black Birders Week. Our lab attended a virtual birding event with a panel of black birders. There was an aviary cam with the Monterey Bay Aquarium showing seabirds and shorebirds, and watching the panelists identify the birds and talk about them was a real bonding experience for our group.

I think that's kind of what cemented the first week for us. It's really hard to bond through an online experience and with the screen it's really hard to get that human interaction, but we were able to start a little commentary for our group. We were just going back and forth like, ‘Oh, what's that bird?’ and ‘Why is that bird doing that?’ and ‘Why does it look so funny?’

I'm really glad that we were able to do #ShutDownSTEM #ShutDownAcademia yesterday. As a group, we were able to come together and share different learning materials. Everybody is on their own journey in learning about anti-racism and systemic racism and racism in academia. At the end of the day, we all came together and talked about our reflections—seeing what we can do better as researchers and colleagues and students as we go into our fields. And I think everybody wanted to continue, as a lab, to reflect on all these topics. So it's not just one day; it’s a continual self-educating on anti-racism and racism in academia.

I think it is our responsibility in academia to have more diverse, open groups and get other perspectives. As a student, if you're going into this field and you don't feel represented or accounted for, you don't feel welcome. Representation really matters. Our ability to recognize that is very important for our future researchers.”

Anahi started as an undergraduate fellow with Solny Adalsteinsson's Tick & Wildlife Ecology team during summer 2019 and was hired on as a technician immediately after. Learn more about their prescribed fire and tick-borne disease ecology research here.