Sebastian Velez

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~svelez/

I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and grew up in the neighboring town of Bayamón. After finishing High School I went to study Physics at the University of Puerto Rico, where I suffered of a terrible case of Life Sciences envy. The very next semester I transferred to the Faculty of Agriculture, where I graduated in 1995 with Honors in Agronomy. I worked as an agronomist for landscape contractors until 2001, when I was admitted to the department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. I am now writing my master's thesis, and starting as a PhD student at the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.

My main interests lie with the question Darwin asked almost 150 years ago: the origin of species. I am also interested in documenting the action of natural selection in the wild, a field known as Ecological Genetics. In the course of my academic career I have earned several honors, but the most important one is just being able to speak with other students who have the same questions about how evolution works, receiving advice from great professors, and once in a while being treated as a colleague. Other honors include a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a University of Notre Dame Kaneb Center for Teaching Fellowship, AIBS diversity scholar, and various poster and oral presentation awards.

I do very little besides science and raise my children, but I also enjoy riding my motorcycle, having Spanish wine and collecting books.