The Strand: What year are you and what are your majors?
Samuel Dumas: I’m in my third year, and my major is mathematics.
What is your research?
My research focuses primarily on invertebrate biodiversity. It’s a project in urban ecology and I’m working with the stormwater ponds in Brampton. What’s really cool about them is that they’re important water structures that also happen to sustain a lot of biodiversity. Because the water sits out in the sun all day and there’s not a whole lot of movement, [the stormwater ponds] tend to get very stratified, which is when the water density shifts to create different levels. The conditions end up being very different as you go deeper in the layers into the ponds, so you tend to get unique levels of biodiversity at each level. What I’m looking at is how much of these water chemistry conditions can be used to predict what that biodiversity looks like and then looking at what the actual biodiversity that we collected from there is and seeing how well we can make that prediction.
Why is this an important thing to research and how can this information be used in the future?
Urban ecology in general is a very important field of study because it’s the ecosystems that we have self-manufactured that we don’t usually take the time to address or look after. I think when people think of ecosystems, they imagine a nice little woodland somewhere else isolated from human contact, which is not often the case. These are the ecosystems that are being directly impacted by our own actions. I think understanding how we’re impacting them is arguably very important. As far as invertebrates, they are the ones that are filtering and cleaning all these ponds. If [invertebrates] are abundant, usually that’s a sign that there’s good health in the water. If there aren’t lot of invertebrates, that’s indicative of water conditions getting worse and maybe our ponds are not working in the way that they’re supposed to.
How did you get this position?
Getting research as an undergrad is a difficult thing in general, but at the time when I was trying to get this position, I did not know a lot of people in the Ecology department. A lot of it was just emailing professors that I thought were interesting. I had [Professor] Don [Jackson] suggested to me because he does some more statistics stuff and so people were like, if you like math, you might like this person as well. So really, it was a series of emailing various professors, but he was the only prof who got back to me. We met and talked and after that, I applied for NSERC [URSA], and through that, I was able to work with him over the summer and then continue the project as a research course through EEB397.
What advice do you have for students looking to do research?
There’s going to be a lot of people who are interested. Even if you know you’re a great student, it’s sometimes very difficult to make professors realise that. I think the biggest thing is talking to professors that you have had. Although I didn’t know a lot of people in the department, I would participate a lot in class and speak to my professors. Even if I wouldn’t be able to work with them directly, they were able to recommend me to people who they thought might be interested in working together, and most of the time that panned out well. A big part of it too is taking the time to build that resume up. It’s hard to get more academic experience without necessarily having your feet in the water for research. Even talking about projects that you’ve done in class and that kind of stuff, really marketing yourself as an individual [is important].
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
