Anything Can Happen: One UBRPer’s Journey to Becoming a Regents Professor

Participating in the Undergraduate Biology Research Program (UBRP) was undoubtedly one of the most important experiences of my life. As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, I was pursuing a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, but I had no idea what being a professional biologist was really all about. Fortunately, I applied and was accepted into UBRP in 1990, which gave me the opportunity to tour many labs offering research assistant positions for the upcoming summer. The lab that intrigued me most was led by Dr. Elizabeth (Liz) Bernays, then head of the Department of Entomology—and notably the first female Entomology Department Head in the U.S.! Liz and her husband, Dr. Reg Chapman, were studying grasshopper-plant interactions.

I wasn't the type of kid who carried around a bug net and collected insects. If anything, I saw myself as maybe becoming a herpetologist since I grew up in southeastern Arizona catching lizards and snakes. Nonetheless, I viewed working with Liz and Reg as an opportunity to learn about insects and plants, and the broader field of ecology. Little did I know that I had stumbled into the lab of two exceptionally well-known and respected entomologists. Working with them through UBRP completely set the course for my future. The knowledge and experience I gained during my three years in their labs has benefited me at every stage of my career and continues to do so.

Today, I am fortunate to hold the title of Regents Professor and Charles R. Parencia Chair of Cotton Entomology in the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University. However, if you had told me in the early ’90s as a UBRPer that I would go on to become a university professor with such a fancy title, I wouldn’t have believed you. After graduating from the University of Arizona, I attended graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin. Liz and Reg both advised me to choose a different focus for my Ph.D. rather than continuing with grasshoppers, but, of course, I didn’t heed their advice and ended up doing exactly that. My dissertation research on grasshoppers in Texas turned out to be directly relevant to the biology of swarming locusts in Africa. That connection opened doors for me to live and work around the world, including a postdoc at Oxford University, conducting locust fieldwork in West Africa, taking a job with the USDA-ARS as a Research Ecologist for five years, and eventually moving my family to Australia for a faculty position at the University of Sydney.

Though I had been studying grasshoppers and locusts for nearly 20 years, in 2010 I was offered the opportunity to return to the U.S. to take on my current role, which focuses on cotton insect pests. At the time, the only thing I knew about cotton was that my underwear was made of it, but the chance to reset my career and work on something entirely new was incredibly rewarding. It turned out that transitioning from grasshoppers to cotton pests wasn’t as daunting as I had feared; after all, both groups move around and eat plants. Working in cotton has opened up a whole new world of research, places to explore, and people to meet. Interestingly, I’ve even found myself returning to grasshopper and locust research lately—just like in my UBRP days!

One of my favorite things about being a biologist is the potential to follow wherever the data leads. I’ve been very lucky to work with wonderful people and learn new things while pursuing interdisciplinary projects, from molecular biology and microbiology to genomics and chasing mass migrations of insects around the world.

If I could offer UBRPers any advice for a fulfilling professional and personal life, I wish I could say the key is being highly organized, efficient, and detail-oriented—but that would be a lie! I’ve never been very good at any of those things. What I have benefited from is seizing interesting opportunities when they arise and not being afraid to try new things, even when there's some risk involved. Sometimes things don’t work out—in fact, in science, you’ll find that things often don’t work out. Experiments fail, grants don’t get funded, and papers get rejected. But each of these setbacks can be a learning experience. They’re only endpoints if you allow them to be.

Thanks, UBRP! You made me what I am today.