By Sarah Ellis, Volunteer Writer
Sierra Club member Thomas Wiegand always knew he'd end up working in the sciences. He grew up in Knoxville and spent his childhood weekends in a small town in the Smoky Mountains, soaking up every chance he got to spend time in nature. "My parents humored my obsession with plants and animals from a really young age," he says, helping to propel his interests into an eventual career in plant ecology.
Wiegand, now 22, is a graduating senior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He has spent the last three years working with Dr. Jennifer Boyd on the "Reasons for Rarity" plant research project, which pairs up rare plants from the Southeast with common plants that are closely related, in an effort to better understand the ideal environment these plants need to thrive.
"Reasons for Rarity" is a collaborative project with the University of Georgia, Oxford University, and others. The goal — to learn how to better protect rare plant species — could have major impacts on the local ecosystems that rely on these plants (some of which are limited to a single county or to a location along the Ocoee River).
"It all comes back to conservation and making sure we protect what is oftentimes an integral part of the ecosystem," Wiegand explained.
Wiegand specializes in using network analysis (a computer science model often used to power social media algorithms) to understand trends in the data across decades of rare plant species research. This technology can be used to link research concepts together in a way that's never been studied before, and it's already proven helpful to the UTC team in furthering their work. "It's really cool to see that something like this can be applicable not only to rarity, but really to any field," he says. But if you'd told him ten years ago that he'd be using computer science models to study plants in a lab, you probably would have surprised him.
His childhood dream was to be a pediatrician, but things changed when his high school biology teacher introduced the class to ecology. "I was really fascinated by this idea of how human activity can change the environment — climate change induced by humans, or just the day-by-day processes that we as humans contribute to," Wiegand recalls. He saw research as a way to study science on a broader scope, without focusing solely on human health.
Now, Wiegand aims to contribute to conservation efforts through his academic work. His undergraduate thesis has been accepted for publication in the journal Ecology & Evolution, and Wiegand hopes it will open up new avenues of research in his field. He'll spend the next two years pursuing a Master's in Environmental Science at UTC, continuing his work on the rare plant species project. Eventually, his goal is to get a PhD and to research and teach at the university level.
Wiegand credits his persistence with helping him learn as much as he has, and he hopes other young people will show a similar tenacity in fighting to make a difference. "I think the biggest and most important thing I can say would be to tell students in my position to stick with it," he says. Where he once found academic research overwhelming, he now feels confident in himself and his ability to do important work — in large part thanks to the mentors who guided him.
"I want to spend my career doing impactful research so that I know I've done my part when it comes to the preservation and protection of natural spaces," Wiegand said — in the Southeast and beyond.
Contact Sarah at SarahAbbottEllis@gmail.com