Host: Prof. Berry Pinshow
Current Position: Associate Professor, Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University, USA
My name is Agus Muñoz-Garcia, and my field of study is Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology, or how organisms adjust their physiological phenotype in a given environmental context. After I got my B.Sc. in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, I moved to Columbus, Ohio, where I earned my Ph.D. at The Ohio State University (OSU). Then, I was awarded the prestigious Jacob Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellowship and the VATAT Postdoctoral Fellowship. In Israel, I studied adaptations of desert bats and resource allocation in migratory birds. Currently, I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at OSU, where I am working on a multidisciplinary research project that links environmental conditions to the molecular determinants of cellular metabolism in different organs, which, in turn, produce different patterns of energy and resource allocation.
In the two and a half years that I spent in Israel, I learned, among other things, many methodological skills and how to mentor and coordinate graduate students, abilities that certainly helped me to get a position at OSU. I had a great supervisor, Prof. Berry Pinshow, and a great colleague, Dr. Carmi Korine; ten years later, our friendship remains intact, and we still do work together! Overall, my experience in the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research was invaluable and extremely satisfactory both at the professional and the personal level.
