I met with Alma Trujillo Miranda, a PhD student at the School of Environment this week and was very keen to learn about her stories.
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Alma grew up in Texmelucan, Puebla, Mexico, and was always curious about the forests around her. She wanted to be an explorer of nature. After reflecting on what she enjoyed doing the most in her childhood, she went to Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla for undergraduate studies on biology. Alma evaluated the diversity of beetles of different guilds along an altitudinal gradient, which deepened her research interest. After undergrad, she redirected her research to provide information that could be used for forest management and conservation. She did her master’s in Ecology at Instituto de Ecologia A. C., and her thesis focused on evaluating active versus passive restoration strategies for tropical montane cloud forest in Mexico using diversity, structure, and tree regeneration as indicators of success. Since completing her master’s program, Alma has continued working on the evaluation of forest plantations and restored sites. As a result of her interest in solving socio-environmental problems, she joined an interdisciplinary group of researchers to develop a project to analyze environmental conflicts.
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After her long journey surrounding environmental studies, Alma was honored with a Fulbright-Garcia Robles scholarship to pursue her PhD and improve her English in the US. She really appreciates her PI’s mindset to think about what lies fundamentally within science and try to fill in the gaps within science that have not been well studied. For her future research, Alma wants to understand the effects of forest loss and fragmentation in community assembly, evaluating how the local landscape factors drive natural regeneration.
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Alma mentioned to me how the female figures in her life greatly influenced her career. She is very grateful to her mother and all the women scientists who have supported her through her path. All of them are great inspirations for her. She would love to be able to tutor students in the future and continue doing fundamental and applied ecology.
#humansofoiss
