Dr. Alisha Shah

Dr. Alisha Shah is an assistant professor in the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, Department of Integrative Biology, at Michigan State University. She received her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in zoology from Colorado State University. Dr. Shah’s area of specialty is in thermal biology and physiological ecology, specifically in aquatic insects. To learn more, her lab website can be found at https://www.thermbio.org/.

Could you tell me a bit about your background, the work that you do, and why you decided to pursue ecology as a career?

I grew up in the big, bustling city of Mumbai, India. At the age of 16, my family and I emigrated to the United States. Growing up in the urban landscape of Mumbai, I was very fortunate to have parents who cared a lot about being in big, wild, open spaces. They put my brother and me in summer camps, where we could get away from the city and see the beauty of India's nature. We spent our summers in the Western Ghat mountains, which are some of the most biodiverse mountains in the world. That experience planted in my head a love of being out in nature and a desire to preserve it, which motivated what I did moving forward.

My family and I emigrated to Austin, Texas, which was a huge culture shock. I finished high school there and went on to undergrad at the University of Texas at Austin. During my time in undergrad, I ended up working in an animal communication lab on a data analysis project. The project was small, but it opened my world up to what people do in ecology as a researcher; it never struck me that you could do this as a job. So I asked to do an independent project on tadpoles, and developed the study and loved it. I loved coming home after school, sitting down, and drawing diagrams for how I was going to test my questions. The problem-solving just got my heart racing, and I could spend hours doing that. That was certainly the first inkling that I had a passion for this kind of work.

After I finished the tadpole study, my supervisor recommended that I consider going to graduate school for ecology and evolution. I said, “I have no money, I can't do that.” He told me I don’t need money, I can get grants, have an advisor who pays for my work, etcetera. As someone from another country where no one had ever told me about graduate programs, I didn’t know that you could go to school and not have to pay out of pocket for it. That was a huge barrier that was immediately broken, and the idea of graduate school stayed in my head for a while. 

After graduating, I continued some work on the tadpole study and eventually got it published. It was my very first publication, and it was so exciting to see my name printed on it. In the time between finishing up that project and deciding what my next thing was, I took four years to just travel. I knew I wanted to get my feet wet with biological work and figure out what research entailed beyond the scope of my tadpole project. So, I contacted my old TAs from undergrad to ask them how they got their field research jobs. I learned that there are ecology job boards that I could use, and through those, I applied for a job working with bats in Panama. After that, I ended up working with bats in Montana, and then doing salamander mark-recapture work back in Austin, Texas. Then I ended up with guppies in Trinidad and frogs in the Amazon forest of Ecuador. Those were truly some of the best years of my life. I loved asking the questions about ultimately, why life is the way it is, and finding out what tools help researchers understand why life works the way it does.

At the end of those four years, I applied for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and I got it. I was shocked that I got it, and things just fell into place. I had a publication, I'd had all of this research experience, and I had a fairly mature idea of what I wanted to do as a researcher. It was the right time to have applied for the fellowship. I was able to talk to people who asked me to join their lab and I ended up going to Colorado State University for a PhD program. 

At that time, I was very interested in working with fish because I had just come off the guppy project. But when I got hired into the lab, there was another big project waiting for me with aquatic insects. The project was about understanding how climatic variation shapes their physiological traits and affects where they live. My heart sank at the idea of working with insects. I wanted an animal that could look back at and interact with you. I remember the pit in my stomach thinking “Well, I’ve been hired on this really kick-ass project, but I just don't want to be an insect researcher.”

I had to do some mental gymnastics to psych myself into being okay with what the project was, and I'm so glad I did. Six months in, the world of aquatic insects completely opened up to me. I’ve come to understand that aquatic insects are beautiful organisms with an abundance of adaptations for living underwater, many of which we still don’t understand well. They are also a wonderful model system for answering questions in general physiological ecology. Getting into my PhD and discovering the world of aquatic insects was so exciting for me, especially because there were so many questions to ask and so few other researchers asking the questions. I realized that this is a great place to be in ecological research. 

After I finished my PhD, I went on to a postdoc and then ended up at my job at Michigan State University as an assistant professor. My research nowadays is broadly still about how variations in abiotic factors, specifically climate, shape the physiological traits of organisms and their patterns of abundance across a landscape. In the face of climate change, the arenas in which these organisms are growing, feeding, and evolving are changing rapidly. To understand how organisms are going to respond to climate change, we must first understand how they generally respond to variations in climate and extrapolate predictions from there. In my lab, we are studying the impact of temperature on the physiological traits of insects, and investigating the implications of changes in these traits on community interactions, especially under climate change. Additionally, there is still a notable gap in the knowledge regarding the underlying genomic architecture of insect physiologies. With these inquiries, we are hoping to gain a deeper understanding of insects’ responses to our ever-changing world. 

What is the most rewarding part of your job? And the hardest part?

The rewards are many. From a research perspective, it often takes time for those rewards to show up. You can go years doing research and not really see the fruits of your effort, and that final publication, until later on. You've got to be in it long enough to stick it out and see it through.

Some of the most rewarding interactions I've had are with the students I mentor. The bright-eyed and bushy-tailed undergraduates and graduate students that I work with fuel my excitement for what I do. No matter how much you love something, you can get bogged down by it. The moment that my superiors tell me I have to get a grant and do this and that, the work starts to become burdensome and feel a bit more like a chore. But when I have the students coming to me excited about their work, that makes that love and passion come back. Working with people, especially with students, is one of the big highlights of this job.

I'm also a mother now. I have an eight-month-old baby and motherhood is its own beautiful experience. She's at a stage where every day there's something new. She just learned how to clap her hands a few days ago and now she claps all the time. It’s so fun to watch that kind of development, and I’m trying to be a mother who's present for my child and enjoy her development. 

With my focus on my work now, I'm having a hard time splitting motherhood and my job very well. It’s wonderful that we're at a time when women are hired to be in big positions and are still welcome to be mothers. It used to not be this way, especially for someone who's an immigrant and a non-white person. I love that I'm living at this time, but that split is still very hard because science and academia have not really, truly made room for women to be mothers and scientists. At some level, you're still losing out and not doing one of those things very well.

What are some things that you do for fun outside of STEM that keep you passionate and enthusiastic about your career?

I play music by ear, and I’ve always loved playing the piano. In grad school, I picked up a guitar and found that that was a wonderful creative outlet. I learned from YouTube, and I’d spend three or four hours figuring out the strings before I would look up at the clock and realize it was suddenly one in the morning. Having moments of being lost in learning music without worrying about the time was essential for me to do my work well because it rested my mind from the research part of it. Music is a big part of my life, and I want it to be a part of my child's life as well.

I also picked up watercolor painting during the pandemic as another creative outlet. I love birds, so I started trying to get good with bird watercolor painting. That too, has been such a joy. I started making cards out of the paintings and sending them to friends as a way of reconnecting. 

My husband and I love traveling. He's from Australia, I'm from India, so we go back to those places, especially now with our child. We want her to have a strong connection to both places of her heritage. Traveling and especially seeing the natural history and beauty of a new place is always so exciting. I also try to spend some time every day doing a little bit of meditation and contemplation. When I do that, I can remind myself of what it is that makes all this work for me. 

Why do you think it's important to foster diversity and inclusion in ecology? What do you believe the importance of representation is in the sciences?

I don't think any endeavor, no matter what it is, has to be restricted to a certain group of people because of their positionality. Diversity should be inherent in everything, just as it is inherent in the ecosystems around us. The world is as complex, beautiful, and self-sustaining as it is because of the diversity in it. You can apply that principle to human endeavors like research in saying that diversity brings richness to what we do. People who have different ways of identifying themselves bring different perspectives to the work that they're doing.

Some of my favorite collaborations have been those with people with backgrounds and identities that are different from mine. Those experiences have broadened my own perspective. I think part of the value of working with people of different backgrounds and identities is also that you end up finding that things matter to people in much the same way, and you're really not so different. Diversity in research is essential to research being a fulfilling endeavor for people, but also for being the best research that it can be.

I think the importance of the representation of people of different backgrounds and identities in ecology is to ensure the success of science for future generations. If you see people doing something, but they don't look like you and don't identify like you, you may often think that that thing is not for you. If all scientists are old white men in lab coats, a small brown girl in India is not going to say “Oh, I'd like to do that.” Even if she would love it, she just doesn't know that it's an option for her. Representation is really important for the success and the future of this endeavor. I know that what we had in the past is what we've had in the past, but we can change that now. 

What would you say your teaching philosophy is, and how do you try to foster inclusion in your lab and classroom?

Every time I teach a class I learn something new. But to generally put words to a teaching philosophy, the first thing I think about is how to foster a love for and interest in the subject matter. Rather than simply droning on to students about a particular topic, I want them to have some ownership of the information through discovery and peer-teaching. When learning is more hands-on, explorative, and collaborative, connections are made in the brain. Even if physiology doesn’t become their passion, at least they learned something and have something to hold on to. 

But there are some students who just don't feel like they belong in the classroom. Fostering a sense of inclusivity, especially fostering a sense that it's okay to ask a question because there is no such thing as a stupid question, is very important. As a child, and even in undergrad, I was extremely shy and scared to say anything in class because I was certain that if I did say anything, it would come out wrong and people would I was stupid. I think about who I was back then a lot when I’m teaching students who are at that same stage. I tell them I know it's scary to ask a question, and that just standing here in front of all of you, I'm nervous too. Making your voice heard can be uncomfortable. 

But the pursuit of knowledge means that you've got to become a little uncomfortable. You’ve got to ask the question, and take a chance and suggest something. I tell my students that every student, no matter where they're from, how they identify, or what their voice sounds like, deserves to feel that they can raise their hand and ask a question.

What advice would you give to young minority students looking to go into biology and ecology?

If you're interested in it and truly feel like you want to do it, go for it. There are lots of barriers, there's no doubt about that. But the landscape of academia is changing as we speak. There are people who would be completely excluded from academic buildings who are not only here now, but are in higher-up positions. It is a good time to get into the field and do it if that interest is there.

I would also say it's important to remember that the scientific enterprise still requires hard work and rigor. No matter who you are, and no matter how you see yourself, you will be required to be dogged about pursuing your research. That doggedness should apply to everybody, and students must be prepared for that. 

Lastly, I would advise students to find mentors. There are people out there who really want to see you succeed. Find mentors who believe in you and who expect a lot of you, because when you have someone who expects a lot of you, you tend to do very well.

How inclusive do you think the current workplace culture in ecology is and what still needs to change?

It’s still not that inclusive. Suppose you compare it to either ecology in many European countries or compare ecology to other sciences like physics or chemistry. In that case, I do think ecology in the United States is thinking a lot more about inclusivity and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). However, there is often more lip service than there is action. One thing that I've learned over time is diversity without inclusion doesn't mean anything. You can invite all the black and brown scientists that you want to your department, take a nice departmental photo, and put that on the front of your website. But if you don't take their opinions, listen to their voices, amplify their research, and give credence to what they say in faculty meetings, then that diversity doesn't mean anything in your department. I think that is something ecology really needs to work on at a higher level.