What is your favorite part about being a scientist and how did you get interested in science in general? When a child starts to grow up he or she explores the world around him or her and finds interest among those things that they love. When I was a child I was so much obsessed with dinosaurs and fossils. I always wanted to know if there’s any dinosaur found in my country , to find the answer of this question I started to dig into science and found geology and paleontology are the main focus of my career.
In laymen’s terms, what do you do? Currently I am a student completing a course on Disaster Management and environmental science at University of Dhaka and I am inquest of an international scholarship in geology to start my undergraduate studies. I am working on a project (Bangladesh Academy of Geological Sciences) to establish an organisation in my country Bangladesh for geology enthusiasts and to make the subject much familiar to all ages. Presently I teach young students about the basics of geology and paleontology.
How does your research/goals/outreach contribute to the understanding of climate change, evolution, paleontology, or to the betterment of society in general? Geology is a subject which works with several fields of natural sciences. On my project my goal is to make people aware about natural resources and to show how natural objects interplays in our life and society. From my aspect I believe these notions will make people to think differently and will change the prospective to see natural world.
If you are writing about your research: What are your data and how do you obtain your data? In other words, is there a certain proxy you work with, a specific fossil group, preexisting datasets, etc.? Besides my project I am doing a research on Quaternary period fauna that may lived on the northern plains of Bangladesh. As I am always in search of rocks and fossils which tells a significant story. I usually collect data aka materials from the Holocene alluvium formation which are carried by the river during the flood. My focus is to pinpoint from where the fossil materials are originally originated and the geologic history because most geologists baffle to answer this question. Recently I am collecting mud of a subsurface hoping to study the palynology of the strata at the Department of Geology at the University of Dhaka soon.
What advice would you give to aspiring scientists? My only advise for the aspirants is to follow their own dreams and use the slim chances to uphold what they are capable of doing in their own field. Because if a dream is destroyed many discoveries and inventions got buried. The joy of discovering something is delicious and its worth to risk.
Md. Ibrahimul Bari is a Disaster Management Course student at the University of Dhaka. Connect with Md. Ibrahimul Bari on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or his organizational Facebook Page.