Episode 12 - Drea Darby

My guest today is Drea Darby, a doctoral student in entomology at Cornell University working on host-microbe-environment interactions, as well as a recipient of a 2020 Ford Foundation predoctoral Fellowship. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We chat about vinegar flies (and I get a bit of a crash course in transgenic fruit flies), the moment she realized she wants to do research, as well as her advocacy for including the history of science in the scientific curriculum. A “trailblazer for her family” (in her words), Drea talks about her experience being a first generation college graduate, her transition from planning to attend nursing school to becoming a bio major (and later on planning to pursue a PhD), and her goal to “be the thing she didn’t have in her life” as a Black and Filipino woman interested in science.