A step back in time

Many an academic has had a project derailed by factors outside their control, but few have watched their hard work quite literally go up in smoke.

“In the middle of my PhD thesis, my whole lab burnt in a fire,” Dr Suarez recalls.

“There was an instrument that exploded in the middle of the night.

There were no casualties, but we lost a lot of the samples and the data.

“I had to redraft the experiments and change the topic of my thesis.”

Dr Suarez’s PhD was the beginning of a career dedicated to studying the brain through the lens of the natural world and vice versa.

I was drawn to neuroscience through a desire to understand nature and animal diversity,” he explains.

“Through my work, I use neuroscience as a discipline to better understand evolutionary processes.

“One of my guiding lessons comes from Clemente Estable, one of the fathers of neuroscience, who remarked that for whatever question we may have about human function, there will be one species in nature that is best suited to study its mechanisms.

“For example, if you want to study hearing you should look at species that are specialised in hearing, such as bats.

“Or if you want to focus on vision, then highly visual species might be better than nocturnal rodents.

“To understand human biology we can’t just focus on a handful of laboratory species.

“It’s better to embrace animal diversity, to explore what new things we can discover by taking advantage of what’s out there.”

In his relationships and leisure time, Dr Suarez’s passion for understanding the world around him is ever-present.

His partner, Dr Laura Fenlon, also studies brain development at SBMS.

Where some might find the crossover overwhelming, Dr Suarez sees only positives.

“We talk about brain evolution as well as silly things such as memes,” he explains.

“It’s rare to have a partner who understands not only your job, but also the stressors and timings.

“We both have times when we’re busy marking exams or applying for grants, it’s cool to have each other.

“Because we work in a very similar field, we are constantly throwing ideas to each other.

It’s a really stimulating environment and I appreciate that.”

Dr Suarez is also a keen diver, obtaining his scuba qualification as a young man in anticipation of moving to Australia.

“This winter, on the east of Moreton Island, I saw humpback whales underwater for the first time, it was a mother and calf,” he recalls.

Continuing to be inspired by and learn from the natural world, Dr Suarez has great ambition for the future of his research.

“One of the things I feel most excited about has to do with theoretical biology,” Dr Suarez explains.

“That is an understanding of what living systems do that non-living systems can’t.

“It’s the definitions of life and life systems in biology, as well as the nature of conservation and change throughout time from individuals to lineages.

“I think that questions about subjective experience and consciousness lie at the centre of what makes us human.

“That’s what draws a lot of people into neuroscience; we’re trying to understand ourselves.”