Hello my name is Nathan Malamud.

I am a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada pursuing a Ph.D. in Botany with the Michaletz Ecophysiology Lab, with a research interest in the response of plant physiology to climate stress and heat waves.

I graduated from the University of Oregon (summa cum laude) with a background in mathematics and computer science, with broad research interests in both forest ecology and plant physiology. For an undergraduate thesis, I helped analyze soil and leaf litter cores from Barro Colorado, Panama, to study the potential role that fungal pathogens have in maintaining tree biodiversity. *

In 2018, I graduated from Pacific High School, which is down south near Port Orford.

When I was preparing to graduate, I was also trying to plan out what kind of career I wanted to pursue. I knew that I was interested in pursuing a degree in a technological field, and I also wanted to get outdoors and help the environment.

I plan to use the skills I learn in these disciplines to help scientific research teams develop elegant data models of different natural phenomena. The more sophisticated our technology becomes, the more we will rely on the analytical and artistic capacities of data visualization.

My experience interning at the OSU Port Orford field station has given me many amazing opportunities to see how these skills can be utilized in this way, and it has also inspired me to apply computer science in a Marine Ecological setting.

Through an internship at GEMM Labs I worked with a team of Marine Scientists from OSU to study the foraging behaviors of gray whales in the Port Orford bay area. After having the honor to present our research with a fellow intern at the 2018 AGU Ocean Science conference, I began to see how strong the intersections of natural science and software engineering has become.

My primary interest for creating these data models is to aid in the efforts of science communication. The Clark Honors College (at the University of Oregon) helped me pursue this interest by getting me to view the work I am doing in a more philosophical vein. In college, along with refining my technical abilities in this technological field, I hope to bring light to concepts that will help us reimagine the ways we use our data, and how that can help reframe the way we approach our understanding of science.

See Also → More Road Trips.

Graduation Day at UofO. I graduated summa cum laude from the Clarks Honors College.
Here I am playing the piano in UofO’s EMU (Erb Memorial Union).