Media

Here are appearances I have made on social media in relation to my science!

I got to give my dream talk on how Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien compares with real life parasitoids at the Museum of the Moving Image in July 2025! This was part of a MoMI Open Worlds: Science event called Creature Feature: The Science of Monster Movies & Community Filmmaking . The lineup, besides me, included RGGS alum Dr. Aki Watanabe discussing feathered dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park franchise, AMNH Assistant Director Erin Chapman convincing us that Slugs (1988) should have won an Oscar, and science filmmaker Tom McNamara showcasing the brutality of humanity in the context of Jaws (1975). A community animation project component of the event also featured Strepsiptera!

In March 2025 at the ESA Eastern Branch Meeting, some of my labmates and I participated in the ESA Entomology Games, aka "the EntoGames". We didn't take home a trophy, but we had an excellent time together and scored pretty well in our debut as Team LarvaeMNH! Our participation in the meeting was documented here as a post on the EntoPOC Instagram account, since many of us on the team are involved in the organization.
Writer Kathy Keatley Garvey published a feature on my work in the online blog "Bug Squad: Happenings in the Insect World". This article is about how my publication, "Collection Methods and Distribution Modeling for Strepsiptera in the United States", was the cover story in the August 2024 issue of the academic journal Environmental Entomology. The feature also later ran as an article in the UC Davis Department of Entomology & Nematology Newsletter.
This video is a thank you to sponsors and donors who help fund the AMNH, posted on the AMNH Vimeo account and shown at certain events! The clip was filmed right before we went to collect ~600 wasps and their nests from a river otter rehabilitation building at the Karanambu Field Station, in the Rupununi of Guyana.
For one week, the official Instagram account of the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity @unbiodiversity hosted a takeover by the AMNH social media team! One of the posts by our team featured myself and Anna Eichert, my labmate/friend who works on the evolution of Plecoptera (stoneflies). We spoke about the importance of insect biodiversity conservation, our experiences in Guyana, and what our work entails.
    Pinoy Scientists is an online platform that showcases scientific work done worldwide by Filipinos. I participated in a week-long takeover of their Instagram and Facebook accounts starting on May 5th, 2024 in order to feature the work I do as a PhD student at the American Museum of Natural History! You can follow this link to my bio on their website, or check out their Facebook or Instagram page @pinoyscientists to see more content besides these posts that I put up on their stories.
    Story Collider is an organization that strives to humanize science by showcasing science-involved people as storytellers. They air personal stories about people's experiences with science on live shows and podcast episodes that are heard around the globe. I was a storyteller for a New York City Story Collider live show at the Caveat in October 2023, and talked about my relationship with my sister and my science. The recording of this show was aired as a podcast episode in March 2024, and is available on Spotify or on the Story Collider Website as the episode "Taking You With Me: Stories About Precious Memories".
    The AMNH Instagram account often posts features on the scientists who work in the halls of the museum, and this is mine! You can check out @amnh for other videos of fellow students in my program to see what a typical day doing research here might look like for us, or what kind of field work we get up to. The account also posts content about the museum exhibits, public programming, and tidbits that make for great science communication to an open-minded and curious public.
    In 2021, the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) ran this feature (filmed and edited by one of my best friends Molli Fagan) on the importance of bees to Sacramento, California's capital city. My role in the feature was to educate the public about why bees as insect pollinators are vital to native plant systems, especially in California, and suggest actionable plans that the public can take part in for their conservation. The CNPS aims to promote the protection and proliferation of native plants and ecosystems in California.
    This post by the organization Entomologists of Color (EntoPOC) commemorated the start of my membership with the Entomological Society of America, funded by the EntoPOC Instar Award! The mission of EntoPOC is to increase diversity and accessibility in entomological societies. There are currently twelve societies listed on their website as eligible for EntoPOC-funded membership applications.
    This was a departmental feature on my acceptance to the AMNH doctoral program, written while I was still an undergraduate at UC Davis. The original article was written by Kathy Keatley Garvey for University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) Entomology & Nematology News, the online blog/newspaper for the department. It was later also featured in the UC Davis Graduate Studies blog and The Davis Enterprise, the local newspaper, and received the gold award (first place) in an international writing competition sponsored by the Association for Communication Excellence (ACE).