Our surroundings shape who we are – even down to the level of our DNA. University of Oregon (UO) ARCS scholar Jordan Rodriguez uses machine learning algorithms to study how environmental changes can affect a population’s genetics over multiple generations. 

Rodriguez is a graduate student in the Kern Ralph co-lab at UO. Previously, Rodriguez was an undergraduate student at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, where her love for the study of evolution began.  

“I quickly became fascinated by the paradox of life’s remarkable similarities, and its amazing diversity,” says Rodriguez. 

Following this passion, Rodriguez earned opportunities to travel for field work and conferences, ranging from presenting her work in South Africa and Italy to living in the Philippines while conducting research. While in the Philippines, she was investigating the genetics of different populations of marine fish, which allowed her team to work closely with fishermen of the community. Through this experience, she realized the impact of local community involvement in the sciences.  

“[Science] means something for the communities that it takes place in,” Rodriguez noted. Interestingly, community involvement can sometimes skew data in a way that is not always obvious, such as when observational records are entered into databases. 

In a recent Nature publication from 2023, Rodriguez, along with Dr. Barnabas Daru, an Assistant professor who is now at Stanford University, comments on the disparities between two types of biodiversity occurrence data: voucher specimens, which are tangible records often transferred into natural history collections, and observations, which are sightings that are not linked to physical material and, instead, are recorded via pictures, videos, or sounds. While vouchered records reflected the expected richness in biodiversity across different taxonomies - groups that have shared characteristics - observational records were biased in space, time, and function. For example, observational records included areas that were more accessible, days where the weather was more favorable, and specimens like showy flowers versus the nearby grass. 

“If we are to truly understand the impact of climate change on biodiversity on Earth,” Rodriguez comments, “then we must have a strong understanding of what biodiversity looks like in the first place.” Without the possibility of sampling every single occurrence of each species, it is important to recognize that biases can influence the way that biodiversity is recorded and how these data are interpreted.  

In Rodriguez’s current work as a graduate student, she is applying machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence (AI), to decipher the connection between environmental variables and changes in population genetics across space and time. Small sample sizes and high-dimensional data introduce both computational and biological hurdles, often leading to misleading conclusions. These hurdles can cause greater fear among those who are unfamiliar with AI, understandably so. However, Rodriguez notes that increased education and hands-on experience can help reduce these concerns. Although there is still progress to be made—particularly regarding AI’s environmental footprint in terms of energy and computational resources—Rodriguez underscores its enormous potential: “AI is one of our most powerful tools in understanding and combating climate change, from modeling ecological shifts to optimizing conservation strategies.” With support from ARCS, she can concentrate on leveraging AI to achieve these long-term goals. 

The ARCS award provides unrestricted funds to scholars in their first three years of graduate school. As an ARCS scholar, Rodriguez has benefited directly from these funds by getting settled in Eugene more easily when first moving to the city and paying for emergency expenses. By easing financial burdens, the ARCS award mentally frees Rodriguez to focus all of her attention on research. But the ARCS award provides more than just financial ease: “The unrestricted nature of the ARCS award truly made me feel like the ARCS Foundation saw the value in me…” Rodriguez emphasizes, “not only as a researcher but as a person.”  

Through her work and beyond, Rodriguez hopes to serve and honor communities through her research by considering the impact that her work has on local residents. She has a strong interest in working with large datasets and developing bioinformatic methods and data analysis tools. Someday, she hopes to be an educator in these areas.