de Gouvenain's mentorship featured in student profile

Biology major Bruno Ramos ’15 discovered the field of research by focusing on an area of biology he disliked most – the study of plants.

“My intention is to go into the medical field,” Ramos said. “So, whenever the study of plants came up in my intro to biology courses, I couldn’t understand how it was relevant to me.”

But when the future doctor became a recipient of a STEM scholarship in the spring of 2012, he decided to challenge his own bias and find out if he could possibly be wrong about plants.

The STEM scholarship required Ramos to conduct research in the lab of a faculty member. So, while stationed in Afghanistan for a semester as a member of Air National Guard’s engineer squadron, Ramos emailed RIC Associate Professor of Biology Roland de Gouvenain whose research involves field studies in plant evolutionary ecology.

de Gouvenain accepted Ramos’ request to study in his lab, and upon Ramos’ return to RIC, de Gouvenain had him spend the first semester reading up on literature about plant ecology. “He wanted me to read as much as possible so I’d be well informed and to develop questions from the literature that I could potentially pursue for my own research,” Ramos said.

Integrating reading and fieldwork in de Gouvenain’s Forest Ecology Lab at Yale sparked an interest in plants that Ramos hadn’t had previously. He would soon formulate a question that would lead to his honors thesis.