Of the many pages in this thesis, this small section is the most difficult to write. This difficulty does not come from thinking of to acknowledge. Rather, it comes from the crushing fear of leaving someone out. The past seven years have been some of the most satisfying of my life, both from an intellectual and emotional standpoint.
Rob Phillips, my Ph.D. adviser, is a man who escapes description. As such, it feels impossible to properly convey my gratitude for his mentorship and, more importantly, his friendship. His unceasing desire and unique ability to pursue the physical reality of any problem has sculpted my scientific process. Among his many scientific qualities, it is his refusal to differentiate between research and teaching that has had the largest impact on me personally. I have been lucky enough to travel widely with him teaching principles of physical biology and learning to be a physical biologist along the way. I will forever be grateful for his willingness to take me as a graduate student and his kindness in treating me as a friend.
Aside from Rob, Justin Bois has perhaps had the strongest influence on my scientific philosophy. Throughout my Ph.D., he has been both a dear friend and statistical shaman. His remarkable ability to teach the complex details of statistical inference, physical biology, and computer programming transformed the way I view the world around me. Like Rob, Justin’s dedication to education is far beyond that of most other scientists. During my years at Caltech, I have TA’d for Justin ≈ 10 times and on every occasion, I left the course with a deeper knowledge of the subject and a greater appreciation for his dedication to his students.
I owe a great deal of my development as a scientist to those with whom I have shared the lab. Heun Jin Lee is a master of all things precise and served as someone I could go to for advice on any topic ranging from the scientific to the deeply personal. His dedication to writing down theory and performing experiments with extreme care has shaped my impression of how science should be performed and, just as importantly, communicated. Alongside Heun Jin, I have had the pleasure to be coauthors with Manuel Razo-Mejia, Soichi Hirokawa, Muir Morrison, Zofii Kaczmarek, Nathan Belliveau, Stephanie Barnes, and Tal Einav. Soichi and Muir have faithfully served as my office-mates for the past six years and have often acted as a sounding board for many of the ideas presented in this thesis. Muir and Soichi’s deep knowledge of physics helped me develop the physical intuition I have today and I will forever owe them for the time they took out of their days to help me understand my science. Manuel and Nathan are those who I have spent the most time with at the bench, the whiteboard, and hunched over the keyboard. Alongside Soichi and Muir, they have helped me figure out what makes a good experiment and what makes a bad theory (and vice-versa). Stephanie and Zofii also served as a reminder of how creative expression is as important as scientific rigor. Tal Einav, a Phillips’ lab alumnus who needs no introduction, has taught me much about the nature of collaboration over the years.
Suzy Beeler, though I never had the pleasure of listing as a coauthor, has always been someone I could turn to when in need of scientific advice or personal support. Her ability to provide an honest opinion, either scientific or personal, has proven to be invaluable over the years. Bill Ireland, Rachel Banks, Rebecca Rousseau, Vahe Galstyan, Niko McCarty, Tom R"{o}schinger, Molly Bassette, Jonathan Gross, Celene Barrera, Matthias Rydenfelt, Kimberly Berry, Gita Mahmoudabadi, and Daniel Jones are others who are currently in (or, at least recently departed) the group to whom I am grateful for their discussions over the years.
Of course, mentorship and camaraderie was not restricted to the lab. I am lucky to consider fellow Caltech Ph.D. students like Belinda Wenke, Emily Blythe, Andy Zhou, Catie Blunt, Shyam Saladi, Sam Ho, Ferdinand Huber, Kyu Hyun Lee, Porfirio Quintero, Renee Arias, Joe Redford, Kelsey Boyle, and many others as some of my closest friends. During a recent Ph.D. defense, one of them remarked that “grad school can feel like an island.” This is half true. Grad school is an island, but your island is part of an archipelago. I was lucky enough to have friends who made my island feel not so lonesome.
Some of my most cherished memories of graduate school stem from my time at the Marine Biological Laboratory. While I never took a course, I had the immense privilege of being a teaching assistant for the Physiology summer course from 2015 to 2018 and for the Physical Biology of the Cell course in 2018. During this time, I met dozens of graduate students, professors, post docs, research technicians, and more who have all helped me develop as a scientist and educator. In no particular order, I would like to thank Celine Alkelmade, George Bell, Ambika Nadkarni, Damien Dudka, Cat Triandafillou, Mason Kamb, Lizzy Mueller, Chandrima Patra, Miranda Hunter, Kyle Naughton, Cayla Jewett, Emily Meltzer, Roya Huang, Charlotte Strandkvist, Simon Alamos, Sean McInally, Karna Gowda, Alina Guna, Nalin Ratinyake, Victoria Yan, Joe Brzostowski, Carolynn Ott, Steven Wilbert, Ana Gayek, Wallace Marshall, and all of those who have passed through the halls of Loeb Lab with me for forging so many great memories. During these courses, I had the pleasure to teach alongside Rob Brewster, Hernan Garcia, James Boedicker, and Franz Weinert who all passed through Rob’s lab in their own right. As I taught alongside them, I learned enough from them to be qualified as yet another one of their students.
While my academics have been focused on the things that are small and alive, I have had a life-long love affair with paleontology where the subjects are often big and always dead. This comes from the opportunities provided to me by my mom and dad, Lorraine and Dan Chure. During my father’s 38 years as the chief paleontologist at Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, he instilled in me a curiosity for the natural world and its long, tumultuous biological history. My childhood and adolescent years are peppered with fond memories of hiking across the rugged Utah deserts, scanning exposed layers of sandstone for the tell-tale signs of a 200 million year old graveyard. On the weekends, I would work alongside my father at active dig sites, chipping away at the rock hoping to uncover some pieces that help fill in the puzzle of the life history of Earth. The weekdays, however, were spent in the public education system of rural Utah where evolution was a hoax and dinosaur bones were buried by either the devil or the government (or sometimes both). Their commitment to giving me a scientific education is why I’m here 20 years later writing a section of my doctoral thesis. Their unwavering support of my interests and passions (from skateboarding and death metal to coffee and bread baking) have helped me pull through tough parts of grad school and have taught me to savor the good.
The final four years of graduate school have been the most satisfying, and not just because my experiments started to work. In July of 2016, I met Barbara de Araujo Soares, a wonderful woman who two years later sliced a wedding cake with me. Barb’s unwavering love and support is why I have made it to where I am today. Without her wit, creativity, cheerfulness, and honesty, I don’t know how I would have survived the long hours of scientific research. While we have had a blast of the past four years, I think I speak for both of us when I say “at'{e} que enfim!”
Stephen Jay Gould, one of my scientific heroes, once wrote “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” This is a quote that has stuck with me since I first read it in middle school. The enormous privilege I have had throughout my life is not lost on me. I write this paragraph as someone with a home with fresh food and running water. As someone with loving family and friends. As someone who is being paid to do what he loves. The physical, emotional, and intellectual security I have been so lucky to have comes, at some level, at the cost of others. This is a debt that can never be repaid, but I hope that I can at least give to the future a fraction of what they gave to me.