Edwin Carbajal ’14

My love for biology stems from both my curiosity to understand the world around me and my belief that truth and goodnesscan be found through the various disciplines that academia offers. Joining the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at Princeton has further deepened my appreciation for the interactions and complex functions that we observe at any biological scale, which can help to explain the emergent properties and diversity that make up life. The department is a home for discovering passions in many of the sub-fields of macro-biology, for learning how to be interdisciplinary thinkers, and for venturing into the practical considerations of management and sustainability at the societal level. For me, it is also a place to wonder about why the evolutionary changes have occurred in the manner in which they have and what they can explain about our particular species.

As someone who has grown attracted to virology and immunology while conducting independent field and laboratory research in EEB, I am interested in dedicating my life to using the good that can come from theoretical knowledge by means of bridging the medical research and the global health and health policy sector. I am convinced that this requires not only the ecological and evolutionary understanding of the arms race between parasites and the immune system but also the knowledge of the incidence, distribution, and control of diseases as well as the environmental, social, political, and economic patterns and variations in health across societies. With a holistic approach, I look forward to emerging myself in the interdisciplinary function of academia that can help make a difference in the world through research while, at the same time, educate future leaders to appreciate life, or living matter, in all its forms and phenomena.