#6 Jarome Russell Ali

This weeks PhDetails is with Jarome Russell Ali, who I met and lived with during my masters at Silwood Park. Jarome is from Trinidad but moved to the UK to study at UCL and stayed to study at Imperial, despite the British weather. Jarome has recently started his PhD at Princeton and I hope as our newest, as well as our first US, PhD his PhDetails will be interesting to many people!

Well let’s start off talking about completely unscientific stuff. Favourite band/musical artist pre 1980?

That’s pretty tough and in a strange way picking just one feels like I’m cheating on all my other favourites. I’ll go with two: U2 and Fleetwood Mac

Favourite band/musical artist post 1980?

Again, I’ll be stubborn and choose two: Green Day and The National

Favourite movie?

Seeing as I’ve started a trend of not sticking to the rules, I’ll go with Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki films are amazing and this one has cool environmental themes that stuck with me since I first saw it as a child) and any of the Lord of the Rings films (because, Gandalf).

Where do you study and who is/are your supervisor(s)?

I’m at Princeton University, and my supervisor is the fantastic Cassie Stoddard.

At the top of Table Mountain, Cape Town. 

What year of your PhD are you in?

First year, nervous times.

Who’s giving you the money – and for how long?

My PhD tuition and stipend are funded by the department and the university, partly through fellowships and Teaching Assistantships. Hopefully I’ll also be bringing in external funding for my research!

Do you have any publications – if so where?

My undergrad thesis was part of a paper in the Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society , I looked at how variation in morphology could help uncover possible ongoing speciation.

Just this month I had my second paper published, in Animal Behaviour. We looked at how guppies, everyone’s favourite invasive species, shoal with a similar species.  (Here’s short blog post I wrote about this work: http://amydeacon.weebly.com/news/shoaling-with-strangers-social-behaviour-of-invasive-guppies )

Did you do a masters - was it about?

I did my MSc in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation at Imperial’s Silwood Park Campus. I used a dataset of bird anatomical traits to estimate how much functional diversity would be lost with impending extinctions. (I really should be rerunning some analyses and preparing that for publication as we speak.)

How many PhDs did you apply for – what were you looking for?

I applied for five. I started with a geographic filter -NE USA- for personal reasons and then reached out to professors whose research program excited me. Ultimately, the PhDs I applied to were those where I got on well with the advisor and felt that they cared about giving me an opportunity to think freely and explore what specific questions I wanted to pursue.

What is the best fieldwork you have ever done and what made it great?

The Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at Princeton sends all first year PhD students on an ecology trip together. So, I spent three weeks South Africa in January this year working on small projects but mostly having really fun discussions about the way ecological communities work. The savannah of Kruger National Park is an absolutely gorgeous place, you never know when you might spot a Jurassic-looking ground hornbill or get stuck in hundred-elephant-traffic.

"I like this photo because the blur and overexposure kind of convey what it feels like when you run into this marvellously strange bird"

What is the most bodged piece of equipment you have had to use during fieldwork – did it work?

I’ve been fairly lucky when it comes to field equipment, let’s see how long that’ll last.

What one piece of advice would you give to a masters student applying to PhDs now?

Reach out to the Professors you’re interested in working with early in the process. The best of them want to hear your ideas and want to get to know you. Discussing what you might work on with a potential advisor is a great opportunity to get a feel for what your relationship might be in the future, but it also makes you an applicant that a professor will be willing to lobby for.

What supervisor traits are important to you?

I guess I already mentioned it, but a supervisor who allows you think freely is hugely desirable.

What do you think are the worst supervisor traits?

Not offering guidance or being too dismissive of others’ ideas.

In one sentence what is your PhD about?

I’m interested in how colour signals, studied from the perspective of the viewer, can help us understand broad ecological and evolutionary processes such as character displacement, using bird plumage colouration as my system.

What has been your academic highlight of the last year?

Well I haven’t been at Princeton for more than a year yet, so being accepted and starting here has certainly been the highlight!

Which academic idol/scientist have you met?

Rosemary and Peter Grant, the scientists who pioneered research on Darwin’s finches and who most famously showed that evolution can occur rapidly, are emeritus professors in my department and I’m extremely lucky to be able see/chat to them fairly regularly.

Which academic idol/scientist would you most like to meet?

Tough one, I’ll pass. Though it would’ve been great to meet Robert MacArthur or Bill Hamilton.

Do you have a favourite paper?

Robert Macarthur’s warbler paper, which has the hilariously understated title “Population Ecology of Some Warblers ofNortheastern Coniferous Forests” is a pretty fantastic piece of work.

What has been your favourite conference so far – why?

Haven’t been to one yet! That being said, I just signed up for the Behavioural Ecology conference (ISBE2018) in Minneapolis, pretty excited about it.

What hours do you typically work?

I try to do 9-5, though that often doesn’t work out. I tend to be pretty flexible with my hours and won’t force myself to stare at a book or screen if I’m not being productive.

"While we do fieldwork in Kruger National Park, the guards keep a watchful eye, as do the elephants."

What do you do when you’re not working – how do you balance it with your phd?

I enjoy the odd night out clubbing in New York, or a beer at a friend’s place and mix that in with some reading, some Netflix, walks on nearby nature trails and, of late, some birding.

If a genie could grant you one wish to help with your phd what would you wish for?

Aside from the Dr Doolittle wish that anyone whose research involves animals has, I would love to see UV light and process colour like birds can, it would make my job a whole lot easier.

What would be your dream job?

Any research position where I have intellectual liberty to follow my interests, it seems like academia might be a good option.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Probably looking for postdocs and thinking strategically about what part of the world I want to end up in (being from Trinidad and having studied in the UK and now the US makes life confusing!)

One word to sum up your future in academia:

Likely.

What do you want to achieve outside of academia in the coming year?

Spend some more time getting back in shape, reading and learning to draw.