The National Science Foundation selected Boise State University graduate student Leticia MariSol Camachoa for the prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program in 2022.
Leticia Camacho, a master’s student in biological sciences, will use her fellowship to further support her current research looking at optimizing survey protocols for estimating the abundance and distribution of the small mammal family of Leporids, including black-tailed jackrabbits in the Sagebrush Steppe.
Camacho’s research is supported by the Quantitative Conservation Lab, her mentor Jen Cruz, assistant professor in population ecology, and by the National Science Foundation’s Genes by Environment research program to understand how genetic diversity and plasticity shape population response and adaptive capacity in response to environmental change in integral ecosystems in the American West.
“I aspire to be a proud Latina scientist that fosters diversity inclusion in STEM career paths, but I also want to actively promote inclusion of other underrepresented groups,” Camacho said. “Although my path has been studded with constraints, the lessons that I have learned, the unending love and support from my mom, and my research experiences, have shaped me into a diligent, passionate, and capable ecologist.”
Camacho is currently a first year graduate student. Camacho’s career interest is to understand how the anthropogenic impacts that humans impose on the natural world influences the stability and resiliency of ecosystems. Her career goal is to contribute to wildlife conservation, by understanding how species become resilient, and survive adversity.
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