About Jamil's Research

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During my time in college, I became an active member of several academic groups including an organization known as The McNair Scholar’s program. It was the McNair program through which I was initially able to conduct scientific research. In 2017, I investigated freshwater mussels in the  Ohio Rocky River with an emphasis on the Lepidis fradgulis genus and looked at how populations have changed over 15 years. 

      The next year, I was awarded an NSF-funded REU(Research for Undergraduates) at the University of Puerto Rico. While in Puerto Rico, I was able to build a successful experiment detailing the effects of severe hurricanes on the abundance of freshwater meiofauna communities. Enthused by my findings, I subsequently began working further with specific meiofauna and wrote a research proposal outlining the limitations involved in the biochemical elasticity of tardigrades. Later I was awarded the opportunity to present and expand upon my previous research at multiple university conferences, including places such as the University of Chicago and Cornell. I was also named as one of Princeton’s 2018 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Scholar Finalists.

       Later on, I was accepted into the Peace Corps, worked with the Smithsonian Marine Station , and became the first African American to be awarded the Rolex Scholarship  as the 2021 North American Rolex Scholar of the Our World Underwater Scholarship Society. This allowed me to travel to different parts of the world and participate in a wide range of aquatic research.  Subsequently,  I completed my master's degree in Science Education from the Univeristy of Baldwin Wallace, Just recently I was accepted as a Fulbright and a National Geographic grant scholar to  conduct a study on marine science education in Papua New Guinea. In the future, I hope to share my research interest with other students who might one day be interested in biological sciences.