The Untold Story of... Amy Savage, Ph.D.

1. I am a parasitologist. I described new species of parasites and later identified transmission blocking vaccine targets with the goal to prevent a fatal neurological disease. During my PhD I was invited to Japan to present my research, and I made sure to stop in Meguro at the world's only parasitological museum. I spent hours there, it was a blast!
2. I always found science to require a great deal of creativity, and perhaps correspondingly, art and the creative impulse have always been of personal interest. In addition to developing and teaching a biology course on the biological underpinnings of creativity, I have also given public lectures on scientific topics using museum artifacts and fine art. Even today I often turn to creative outlets to unwind, since the "itch" is no longer being scratched by working at the lab bench.
3. I was the first person in my family to earn a Ph.D., but I won't be the last. My nieces both applied to Ph.D. programs for the coming fall.
4. I traced my family's genealogy and discovered that a many times great grandmother in one branch of my paternal lineage was actually the god mother to my several times great grandfather from another branch. Despite many generations and dispersive international moves, these two families from a small village in Ireland continued to come into each other's lives, possibly without realizing the connection. I find that fascinating.
5. I raced in an Olympic Stadium. Ok, that sounds more impressive than it is. I ran regularly for years, completing more than a dozen half marathons and many shorter races. I ran a 10K that finished in the Montreal Olympic Stadium, built for the 1976 summer games.
6. I have always had an active volunteer life, supporting many different causes. In grad school I co-founded a Day of Service that became an annual event. I was very active as an alumni leader and sat on two national alumni boards. In 2020 I volunteered as an election worker. I was a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for children involved in the foster care system. And now I help run a cat rescue out of NYC.
7. I love international travel. This wasn't really the norm in my family, nevertheless the day after my last final exam of undergrad I was on a plane to South America and didn't come back until it was time to start my Master's. My favorite country to have visited (so far) is Cambodia. It is incredibly interesting biologically, ecologically, historically, and politically. It remains one of the most heavily (land) mined countries in the world to this day, with several million unexploded ordinances still buried. I visited one of the NGO's working to clear rural areas of landmines, and met some of the mine-detecting rats used in that work.
8. I am a scuba diver. What I like most about diving is that you must be fully present, you can't think about anything but your equipment and your environment. One of my most memorable dives was in Fiji. We were finishing a fantastic dive in a school of hammerheads when a juvenile (25 ft) whale shark showed up to investigate us. It was curious and stayed with us for a very long time, swimming directly up to us over and over again.
9. I lived in a national park on an actively erupting volcano. My roommates and I got to live in a beautiful, wild place. Every day we ran and hiked trails that most visitors only saw once, if at all. We had innumerable moments with wildlife or the landscape that visitors only dream of experiencing. We knew how lucky we were to call it home.
10. If it isn't already apparent by this point, I'm usually up for an adventure. Flying thousands of feet in the air in a very small machine is just one. (Bonus fact: I'm not afraid of heights.)

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