 What is your current job and what does it entail?
My official title is professor of aquatic medicine at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine (http://www.cvm.ncsu.edu). My job mostly involves research. I also do some classroom teaching to veterinary students, undergraduate students, veterinarians and scientists at NCSU and elsewhere, although most of my teaching involves one-on-one training of graduate students, post-docs and visiting scientists in my lab. I also occasionally see clinical cases submitted by farmers and fisheries agencies. While my lab pursues a number of different projects, it is mainly focused on understanding how aquatic animals protect themselves from disease and how environmental stress makes them more susceptible to disease. A significant part of this work involves discovering the chemicals that protect aquatic animals against disease. In the process, we sometimes discover compounds in aquatic animals, such as naturally occurring antibiotics, that might be useful for treating diseases in other animals and in people.
What was the key factor in your career decision?
Growing up along the southeast coast of Florida, I was fascinated from any early age about the sea and its creatures. I used to collect my own marine fish and invertebrates off the near shore reefs and keep them in my home aquaria. This experience convinced me that I wanted to pursue a career in marine biology.
What do like most about your career?
Working in a university provides a tremendous amount of freedom to pursue your specific interests. This is probably the single greatest advantage to academia. Many people look to the university for answers to their problems and you get a sense of accomplishment when your work or advice has helped others in some way.
What do you like least about your career?
One interesting irony about being a faculty member and running a lab is that you might not have much opportunity to personally do research because your time is often heavily devoted to counseling members of your lab (graduate students, postdocs, technicians), writing grants, writing reports and papers and doing other administrative duties. Thus, you might have to be satisfied with mostly doing research vicariously.
What do you do to relax?
Some sports, such as racquetball. I also like to skin dive when the opportunity arises.
Who are your heroes/heroines?
Our men and women in the armed services who have sacrificed so much to keep our country free.
What advice would you give a high school student who expressed an interest in pursuing a career in your field?
In any field that you might be interested in pursuing, it is very important to gain first-hand experience because no amount of reading about a profession or speaking to someone about it can substitute. For example, I was always interested in becoming a traditional marine biologist since when I was in high school up until I got an opportunity to work with fish diseases in graduate school. That experience caused me to emphasize the study of aquatic medicine rather than a more traditional career in marine biology. However, I should also mention that I greatly value my experience and training in traditional marine sciences (e.g., invertebrate zoology, ecology, etc.) that I gained in undergraduate and graduate school and use it as much as I use my medical training from veterinary school.
Are career opportunities in your field increasing or decreasing and why?
Aquatic medicine is still a relatively small field, especially compared to more traditional areas of aquatic sciences or veterinary medicine. However, it has grown significantly in the last 20 years and is now well recognized as a specialty. It will continue to be in demand for two main reasons: Aquaculture is the fastest growing segment of agriculture and one of the most serious problems facing aquaculture farmers is disease. Second, there are increasing concerns about the health of our aquatic environments and how pollution and other human activities might be affecting them. Related to this are concerns about human health (e.g., seafood safety). There are also some opportunities for veterinarians in aquatic medicine in private practice, as well as in zoological parks and aquariums. Many scientists with Ph.D.s are also experts in aquatic medicine; they are mainly involved in research.
What will you be doing 10 years from today?
Probably not much different from what I am doing today. I hope that the research that my lab does is increasingly applied to solving problems in the real world.
Salary:$100,000 - $125,000
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