"As the first full-time Science and Technology Adviser to the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development in 20 years, Alex Dehgan looks for opportunities to deploy U.S. scientific and technological can-do types to help solve address persistent issues of global concern. He discusses why he’s drawn to chaotic environments, why studying primates is good practice for working in Washington, and why there should be more field biologists in corner offices.
Alex Dehgan:
Tropical field biologists are some of the most adaptable people you will meet. In the rainforests of Madagascar, we were frequently an entire day’s walk from the nearest road, and two days from the capital. We had at our peak, a group of 22 people with 50 porters, tracking 12 species of lemurs, in addition to surveying aerial and terrestrial predators, measuring botanical diversity through tree transects, and understanding predation from human hunters. There was no electricity, and no running water. Although there’s a whole bunch of advanced planning, and backup systems if you can’t figure out how to adapt one thing to use it for something else that has broken, you can’t survive in the field. Things break all the time because of the extreme conditions of the environment. We worked through the cyclone season, which could be highly disruptive--I lost a motorcycle in quicksand once. There are challenges with the governments and understanding the culture, and people get sick. I managed to get cerebral malaria, regular malaria, schistosomiasis, giardia--you name it. How do you set up a system that’s resilient to those kind of disruptions? That’s something field biologists have to do really well--particularly those working in tropical environments – in order to succeed. I’m always surprised there aren’t more field biologists starting up companies."
- More Here
Alex Dehgan:
Tropical field biologists are some of the most adaptable people you will meet. In the rainforests of Madagascar, we were frequently an entire day’s walk from the nearest road, and two days from the capital. We had at our peak, a group of 22 people with 50 porters, tracking 12 species of lemurs, in addition to surveying aerial and terrestrial predators, measuring botanical diversity through tree transects, and understanding predation from human hunters. There was no electricity, and no running water. Although there’s a whole bunch of advanced planning, and backup systems if you can’t figure out how to adapt one thing to use it for something else that has broken, you can’t survive in the field. Things break all the time because of the extreme conditions of the environment. We worked through the cyclone season, which could be highly disruptive--I lost a motorcycle in quicksand once. There are challenges with the governments and understanding the culture, and people get sick. I managed to get cerebral malaria, regular malaria, schistosomiasis, giardia--you name it. How do you set up a system that’s resilient to those kind of disruptions? That’s something field biologists have to do really well--particularly those working in tropical environments – in order to succeed. I’m always surprised there aren’t more field biologists starting up companies."
- More Here
No comments:
Post a Comment