Alexander Eden

I am a graduating senior in Biology and have recently been accepted into the Masters program in Biology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. I have a strong passion for science and love to learn about the complexity of all animals, from small invertebrates to large mammals. I believe that learning about all animals is important for understanding the planet's biodiversity and sharing the world responsibly with all creatures.

My passion for Biology extends to my teaching where I act as a substitute teacher at Greater Lawrence Technical School in Andover, MA. I am pursuing my Masters because I like the idea of learning how to do research and then using that experience to generates enthusiasm for science among my students. I love to share my passion for biodiversity and hope to continue doing so by becoming a teacher at the high school or college level after I earn my Masters. My current research is focused on scorpions, where I am examining a range of different species and trying to understand if scorpions from different environments with different lifestyles and different morphologies (size and structure of the pedipalps) have different metal profiles in their cuticles. While my current focus is on three species, Pandinus imperator, Hoffmanis spinigerus, and Liochelis australisae, I hope to add more species in the next few months. The tentative title to my MS thesis is "Metal composition in the exoskeleton of ecologically diverse scorpions."

November 2017