Zarin Machanda: How did a want-to-be astronaut veterinarian become a chimpanzee researcher and professor?

Zarin Machanda is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology. She has worked with chimpanzees for the past 2 decades studying social interactions and development patterns. She is also the Director of Long-term Research at the Kibale Chimpanzee Project, a long-term study of wild chimpanzees in Uganda.

As a child growing up, Dr. Machanda would’ve told you that she wanted to be an astronaut veterinarian. While the job prospects of that career became a little more evident as she got older, Dr. Machanda was able to find her passion in studying chimpanzees and their behavior.

Hannah Uebele: How did you get started in this particular field?

Zarin Machanda: I always wanted to work with animals, so there was a part of me that just always wanted to work with wildlife. I remember looking up “primatologist” when I was really little and I thought, ‘Oh that sounds pretty cool.’ So I think a lot of students throughout my childhood and even into high school (thought) the only job you did if you wanted to work with animals was a veterinarian. It just wasn’t very obvious that there were other things, especially if you were a good student who really liked science, it just seemed like instead of going to med school, you go to vet school. And so at 18 that’s just what I assumed I was going to do. So I went to McGill and I majored in biology, and to get this kind of animal experience that you need to apply to vet school, I started volunteering at this sanctuary that had these chimps and that was kind of it. Even when I was applying for PhD programs, I still applied to vet schools because it was still, so it was still a tough choice, I still had to make that decision between the two. There was a part of it that was the opportunity to do a PhD (in Human Evolutionary Biology) studying wild chimps was such a rarity, such a unique experience, that it was hard to turn down. It was also sometime in college when I realized that there’s so much more than just this straight kind of fields that we think about, that actually there’s so many departments or programs that are actually at the intersection of multiple things. So college was the first time I even realized there was a field called biological anthropology. McGill did not have biological anthropology so I actually ended up doing degrees in biology and in anthropology. Then when I applied for grad school, we were a department of anthropology at Harvard, and then halfway through my time there we became our own department of human evolutionary biology. There aren’t that many departments that just focus on biological anthropology or human evolutionary biology so it was this kind of interesting program where I could really just immerse myself in that.

Uebele: Is there something special that a person needs to have to be successful in this field?

Machanda: There’s a lot of luck to it as well. I can’t pinpoint why, ‘Why did I get to do this and other people didn’t?’ There are lots of people who love animals and who want to help them. I think people who do what I do are a little bit different. I love animals  but I love studying chimps. I don’t just love chimps, I love studying chimps and I think that’s the difference. I think if I just loved chimps and was very passionate about their survival then I would be a better conservationist. But I love studying them, so I think that’s partly what makes me a good researcher, because you can kind of remove yourself from that emotional tie to them. So I love the chimps that I study, but more importantly I love figuring out why they’re doing what they’re doing. I love going out and collecting data, I see something new every time I’m out there. It’s so much more than just having a passion for that animal, it’s about really wanting to understand.

Dr. Machanda explained how students need to be aware of this difference when figuring out which direction to go in their careers.

So you need to think about as a student, what is really driving your interest, and is it: do you love the study of it, do you love the academic side, or do you love the aspect of saving the species? I think that would give you a hint – one is maybe more conservation the other is more academic. There is a part of it that you have to be a pretty good student – I mean you have to like school, right? All of us are like these perpetual students who love learning, love being in this kind of atmosphere, don’t mind writing, so most people have some sort of fondness for school. I think you’d have a hard time being an academic without that kind of fondness. It’s not just an ability to do well school it’s about really liking what you’re learning. It’s about whether or not you can look at a body of information that’s maybe in a textbook and say, ‘Oh here’s what’s missing.’ So there’s kind of a way of thinking about the world that makes an academic successful.

Dr. Machanda then explained helpful steps students can take to help them get a better idea of where their interests lie. 

And then just practically what you can do – you want to invest in your education certainly. For what I do in particular, it helps to have experience and so getting some sort of hands on either fieldwork or work with the animal is really important. If you want to be a fieldworker, animal fieldwork or ecological fieldwork, something important you want to do is before you commit to that PhD, go get some field experience, go do something. The other thing that I would say, most students who I’ve seen be successful grad students and have had an easier time in graduate school, have done senior theses. If you don’t know whether you like research, it’s hard to know whether you’re going to like doing a PhD or being an academic. So having some sort of experience with your own independent research project is a good metric not just for someone else to see how good you are, but for you to know how much you like this, which is more important actually. I wouldn’t make the commitment to go to graduate school if you didn’t really like this.

Uebele: Looking back, is there anything you would do differently that you would want students now to be aware of?

Machanda: I think it’s all part of the journey, I mean I certainly don’t regret working hard in college. Universities are such dynamic intellectually stimulating places and I think it’s easy for us to get very much overwhelmed by all of the things that are potentially available to us. But I think that there is a lot of value to taking advantage of the resources at your university. You can not only learn a lot about a particular interest, but you get exposed to different people doing work in different departments, and I think that’s an incredibly useful thing. I feel like when I was an undergrad, you felt like you didn’t have time, you were like stuck in your department, rather than expanding your knowledge. So I would definitely think about what’s happening at the university and you only have four years, so think about ‘What can I take advantage of?’

Uebele: Any final advice for students wanting to pursue a similar career?

Machanda: I would say I don’t think a career in academia is for everybody. If it’s for you, it’s a wonderful wonderful flexible option, but there’s a lot of hardship and struggle with that kind of career that we don’t often hear about. I would definitely keep my eyes and options open. I think it’s a wonderful thing to get a PhD if you love a subject, but to kind of realize that what it is, is a qualification for all sorts of opportunities after that, that are not just limited to academia. You have to be realistic about the fact that, ‘Yes I’m going to get a PhD because I absolutely love this topic, and I love this field, but the reality of it is that I might not end up being a professor.’ And that’s okay because if you’ve loved doing your PhD, hopefully that will take you into all sorts of different arenas. You can’t necessarily think of this PhD as this linear path to academia. You have to think about it like, ‘Okay my next 7 years are going to be this’ and then hopefully keep a very open mind about what that degree can do for you, which is a lot of things. It’s a lot of things, I mean it can take you all sorts of really cool directions if you’re willing to see that, and to see those opportunities.