Splash Biography



MARCEL VAZ, PhD student working on the Amazon Rainforest



Major: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

College/Employer: UCLA

Year of Graduation: 2020

Picture of Marcel Vaz

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Since I was very young I was fascinated about nature. During high school, I decided I wanted to study tropical trees and started learning as much as I could about them. However, I would only have Naturalist mentors after I had committed to do an undergraduate Biology course. Although I do not regret a bit my decision, I believe that having had some sort of first contact to Nature in a more scientific context could have prepared me better for subsequent challenges. That is the opportunity I want to provide giving this course.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

S161: The Ecology of the Tropics in Splash Winter 2020 (Feb. 01, 2020)
In this crash course, students will learn what it means to do Science in tropical forests and other ecosystems. We will go over the most relevant factors affecting the lives of plants and animals living there and how ecologists find out about it. Next, we will put it in practice, by paying the botanical garden a visit. There, each student will sit and observe, draw and describe as objectively as possible an organism of their choice. To wrap up, we will share with each other our findings and try to make a sense out of our observations.