When I first invited Dr Roenick P Olmo—Green College’s first Visiting Scientist from France—to speak about his time researching and connecting with the community here at Green College and the University of British Columbia, I proposed that we meet in the college’s dining hall. We settled into one of the long wooden tables; an hour before the residents' dinner-time, the room was warm and quiet. I, like many of the other residents, have had the pleasure of speaking to Roenick over these very tables at mealtimes. And while I came to this interview with a handful of prepared questions, we quickly dissolved into comfortable conversation, as though it were just another Thursday evening.
M: "What drew you to apply for the French Scientist in Residence at Green College program?"
R: “I saw the call first, and someone who forwarded it to me said ‘it looks like you,’ the call and the idea... The first image I had of the college was cultural, more multidisciplinary; this was something I was looking for in my career... I was looking for something [where] I could become more knowledgeable in different fields [because] the more multidisciplinary you are, the better you can understand events that don’t make sense."
When I asked whether Roenick’s expectations for the college and program were confirmed, he readily agreed, listing the Resident Members' Series and academic programming as rich sites of interdisciplinary thinking located at the heart of the community. Roenick recalled how talks in disciplines like philosophy “got [him] thinking for days in a row.” Yet, throughout our conversation, Roenick returned to the dinner-table as a unique site of learning.
M: “I imagine that you’ve gotten some interesting questions about your own work, because it is so specific, yet you encounter people who enter the conversation knowing nothing about it. What is that like?”
R: “It’s fun because usually the questions I get are not the common questions I get from other scientists. It makes you think about the global overview of the research subject. And I [was asked] many questions about the general biology of mosquitos, [which led to] a comparison of the common knowledge of everyone at the table. Everyone had a different question about mosquitos and viruses and biology, [and shared] experiences they had throughout their lives. Most of those were first-time questions. This was so good [because] I had to think outside the box to answer most of them.”
For Roenick, there was extraordinary value in the experience of translating knowledge, not only into layman’s terms, but in learning to reorient one’s own perspective to one’s field through the defamiliarized perspective of non-specialists. Throughout our conversation, Roenick returned to the conversations he'd had across these dining hall tables. He recalled how, first thing in the morning, over breakfast, his position as ‘expert’ would be unexpectedly subverted, as other half-asleep residents from different fields, countries, and life experiences would drop various comments and ideas on the subject “like a bomb on the table.” For Roenick, these ideas would become “food for thought for the whole day.” He warmly mused: “any time I see someone talking about something, I don’t only bring [it] to my research, I bring it to my life. I think about it, digest it, learn from it.” For Roenick, this diversity of the resident and scholarly body is the “brightness of Green College”.
R: "We live in bubbles; the more we get into our niches of research and work we live in bubbles. So, breaking the bubble is where breakthrough comes in... Every time you bring interdisciplinarity to the table, it leads to breakthroughs."
At the same time, as a visiting scholar in the University of British Columbia’s research labs, Roenick also experienced new ways of incorporating intra-disciplinarity into his research.
M: "How as your experience collaborating with Dr Benjamin Matthew’s lab at the University of British Columbia been?"
R: "I have known Ben for a while now, and we worked together before... But the way Ben thinks is also outside the box in science. He created his own lab culture; I came here and in one week I was completely embraced in the group— everyone was so nice, [the] lab was well structured... and the way ideas flowed inside was very dynamic. I felt so welcome. The structure we had in France was very hierarchical. For science in France, you have a director of research in the group; I am under the director as a scientist, then, there are post-docs and PhDs. When I came here, the way Ben organized the lab was way more horizontal than what we have, so I have opinions that are valued."
M: "Have you learned anything new or surprising while completing your research there?"
R: "Oh yeah!... Ben is a neuroscientist, a neurobiologist, and even the way of analyzing the data is different, because neurons don’t connect in a logical way... Biology is very ‘A turns into B, B to C, then D happens.’ Its linear, or you can make it linear. Neurobiology is very ‘A to C that will sometimes turn into B’... You have to be flexible. I was coming from an immunology lab, looking for linearity, and then I came here and its ‘well this neuron connects there, and maybe it’s the trigger for that thing happening’, and... I was shocked in the beginning, but then it started making sense. It was eye-opening for me, to see different ways of doing science, even though we were looking at the same model, the same mosquitoes, [the same] genetic tools we use for anything we do— but then we come to analyze completely different aspects of mosquito behaviour."
Enthusiasm for this experience, evidenced by his radiant smile, Roenick expressed an eager desire to find the next interdisciplinary learning opportunity, to explore how the various structures for ideas in different disciplines might change his way of seeing his own discipline. After hearing about Roenick’s plans for the future, I was curious about how he entered into his discipline in the first place, and how his passion for studying the mosquito had been ignited.
M: "Would you tell me more about your research journey? You have travelled from Brazil to France, and now to Canada— how has your personal embodiment of space influenced your research?
R: "I grew up in Brazil, and it’s a tropical country. If you go North to South, you have all of the climates you have in the world... This also [leads to] a range of diseases, [where] the things that can happen to people [is different] from North to South... [Because of this] Brazil is a laboratory or incubator for weird stuff. And I grew up in a family that was very medically-oriented; we were low-middle class, but we had a lot of doctors in the family, and I was always interacting with people who were studying [medical] science in general... I went to pharmacy school, and later I started in the lab studying some parasites local in Brazil, and then later to viruses, [which] gave me an awareness of how diseases can cause a burden to the people. This is what always triggered me the most: to see people suffering from a disease that could have a treatment, but because science is not advanced enough, we don’t have one. This is my personal view, my personal drive, I would say... My own family has suffered a lot because of Dengue fever, and the viral disease Chikungunya, I have friends that have also suffered from parasites... But I can also see a general effect on the population, and the numbers are worse... All the countries I have lived in, all the places I have connections in... they are suffering from this... I study these kinds of mosquitoes because you find them everywhere.
…What I do is fundamental research. Sometimes I go under, and I look at one protein that lives in one cell of a mosquito. Because curiosity is also a major part of science... I always try to connect things: what am I doing today, and how it can become something 10-20 years from now. Even though it’s just one line in a textbook that one student will read in the future, this will lead to a major discovery. I try to connect things in this way [so] that my science will be somehow useful in the future."
Roenick’s research focus on mosquitoes is necessarily intertwined with his awareness of global politics, and his desire to do what he can within biology to stimulate social change. Recalling how his views on science have shifted since the beginning of his career, Roenick now perceives science “in a humanistic way.”
M: "In your research, you trace the links between the historical, social, and economic factors on viral spread, in addition to its biological, ecological, and environmental dimensions. This attention to interdisciplinarity seems very central to your research goals. With this in mind, have you had any notable interdisciplinary conversations while staying at Green College? How have they influenced your research?"
R: "Before I was really focused on ‘let’s fix the problem’— I wouldn’t say ‘solutions driven,’ but what I have to study now has to become something later that can have a direct impact on things... We can also change the way people perceive [the research I do now]... After all of the conversations I have had at Green College, I think of the human factor and the environment factor more than I used to; how people perceive things, how the environment matters for the changes we are trying to make. One of the questions I was asked many times is why we don’t eliminate mosquitoes once and done. But no, we cannot do that because of the environment. There are good examples of mosquitos as pollinators, or animals that avoid mosquitoes, so they choose migration patterns based on where mosquitos are. If you eliminate mosquitoes, you change the migration patterns, and you don’t know what will happen to the environment there. Even smaller changes can have bigger impacts. This [change in thinking] came mostly from conversations. The day I arrived [at Green College] we were talking about Yellow Fever, and were discussing history and epidemiology of diseases, and lots of things were brought to my attention that I didn’t know before, because most were [connected to] North American history and health... Our histories are directly connected to how mosquitoes are present in the world and how diseases spread."
Roenick’s passion for mosquitoes was palpable during our conversation. I felt compelled to ask him what inspired his drive for this particular research subject.
R: “Why I love mosquitoes is that they are very driven, no matter what is happening. It looks like they are always winning in the sense that their biology is so well adjusted that everything is made for a purpose. A mosquito will bite you no matter what you do; if it wants to bite you, it will bite you. This biological force is what intrigues me the most. They may have bitten dinosaurs; they [have been] here for 150 million years... Species come and go, but mosquitoes are there. They adjusted their biology to thrive in environments... They will adapt no matter what happens. Mosquitoes are changing; they are altering us—in a very anthropocentric view.
At the same time as Roenick expressed that he felt changed by the exchange of ideas that occurred across the Green College dining table and in the Coach House, we, as residents and scholars were equally shaped by his knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject. Roenick extended his thanks to all those who helped him enter this community— to Anna Tam and Heather Muckart for their kindness, and the French Embassy for the resources and opportunity. He thanked all the people living at the college who helped him feel at home, and by engaging him in conversation across the dining table, and helping take him “out of the bubble” and into a new manner of thinking.
As our conversation came to a close, and the final sounds of dinner-preparation echoed from behind the servery doors, Roenick paused before saying “I will leave Vancouver when I am still in love with Vancouver.” And while we were speaking in the context of leaving before the height of the city’s rainy winter season, as a resident reaching the end of her own time at the college, his words resonated with me. Seated across the dining hall table, trading perspectives with Roenick was the epitome of ideas and friendship—a relationship that was only possible through the college’s exciting new visiting scientist initiative.
Roenick was in residence as the Visiting Scientist from France at Green College from September to December, 2025. His residency was co-sponsored with the Cultural and Scientific Office of the French Embassy in Vancouver, Canada.
Post by: Mackenzie Ashcroft, Green College content writer and resident member.