Dr. Ramona Rodriguiz: donna del Rinascimento
Today Ramona took time from her incredibly busy schedule filled with coordinating the lab, running experiments, and making sure the move from an old lab to new is carried out perfectly. Even before the interview I gathered an impression of an accomplished and indefatigable woman from Ramona and the interview only cemented the impression.
Ramona's father is a physicist who was involved with the marines and her interest in science began when she was extremely young. As a little girl Ramona went to hear Jane Goodall give a speech during one of her earlier tours of America and was intrigued by it. Later, Ramona continued to take advanced science courses (AP bio, chem, physics) in high school and took care of most of the intro level requirements for college. She obtained a triple major in forensics, anthropology and archaeology while doing independent studies in 6 different classical languages including Greek, Latin, and Hieroglyphics. Isn't that a phenomenal feat? Since she has so many different intests, Ramona said that she did have a hard time choosing a field to pursue but ultimately things fell into place for her.
Ramona did most of her work in her earlier undergrad years in forensics and didn't immerse herself in behavioral until the forensics lab at her college was downsized and she voluntarily chose to introduce herself to another field. One of her favorite projects, looking from the perspective of when she was doing the project, is doing field work to study the behavior of newly hatched ducklings to understand their behavior later in life. However, she no longer does field research, but Ramona says she enjoyed her time as a field biologist. After her undergraduate years, Ramona committed to the same lab for 5 years, even following her mentor/employer to Charleston, which she says is a town with a very distinctive character. Later in graduate school, she studied behavioral pharmacology and obtained her Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill.
Today, Ramona is carrying out research about Circadian rhythm along with a number of projects that include schizophrenia and, in the future, more extensive research on PTSD. With her project about Circadian rhythm, she is combining a passion for physics with behavioral studies. When asked about does she ever regret not going into physics as her chosen field, she candidly said that yes, on very bad days, she does. But she also adds that had she gone into particle physics, she might have the same thoughts about behavioral studies.
In her spare time Ramona reads books about physics (antimatter and time) and discusses it with her father. She doesn't read any nonfiction books and her TV scanning is strictly located within scientific or historic channels. However, her interest in movies is as diverse as the species of organisms in the world, even though she rarely watches movies in the theatre-the last one she saw in a theatre was Braveheart, more than a decade ago! But on Wednesday, while her cute 1/4 (?) Rottweiler is getting groomed, she will possibly be treating herself to a much deserved break at the movies.
