Dr. Lydia Jennings Starting a Post-Doc Position at UArizona!
Jan. 10, 2021
Lydia Jennings successfully defended her PhD on November 23, 2020. Dr. Jennings graduated from the Department of Environmental Science where she was mentored by Dr. Raina Maier and Dr. Julia Neilson.
In December 2020, Dr. Jennings was interviewed by Nature for the article “2020: the year of hard-won lessons” where she said that, above all, she has learned resilience in 2020. Jennings had expected to graduate in May 2020 and defend her doctoral dissertation in August. But the pandemic upended those plans and brought other disruptions.
Lockdowns prevented Jennings from re-running about 40 samples that she needed to analyze her data fully. She is thankful that her advisers were able to cobble together funding support for her to complete her PhD. But her relief was tempered when her apartment was robbed in late November, a few days before her rescheduled dissertation defense.
She also sees the cancellation of the UArizona graduation ceremony due to COVID-19 as depriving her of the opportunity to graduate with 12 other Indigenous women receiving PhDs — a notable achievement when less than 1% of U.S. PhD holders are Indigenous. “It was going to be such a special moment for us — being able to amplify our communities,” Jennings says.
As of January 2021, Dr. Lydia Jennings has accepted a position as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the UArizona College of Public Health. Jennings says that her new-found resilience will help as she turns to studying the severe impacts of climate change.
Congratulations Dr. Jennings and much success on your new endeavors!