My name is Giovanni Alberto Crestani. I am a PhD student at Burke’s Lab, Oregon State University, and my work focuses on Evolutionary Biology. Currently, my major project is on the genomics of Drosophila melanogaster populations experimentally evolved for postponed reproduction. I am also deeply passionate about Complexity Sciences, Systems Biology, and Nonlinear Dynamics.

My hobbies involve playing games and reading random blogs. I love hiking, grilling, and generally spending time outside. I also enjoy staying home to play games, watch movies, and read random interesting texts. I’ve been reading Isaac Asimov’s books, following the internal story chronological order.

My story #

I was born and raised in Videira, Brazil. I had a fantastic childhood at my family’s farm, which taught me to respect and admire Nature. I got in touch with computers early in life, which helped me develop a curiosity and passion that will last a lifetime. These two would be the foundation that supports my world passions today.

My family ran a business cultivating and selling reforestation trees. I helped with small tasks, like producing spices and miniature roses that my dad would later deliver to florists in my town. That showed me the role of business and taught me to value effort and money, which later would be critical in my choice of starting Engineering and Business degrees, aiming for the startup bloom that was happening at the time.

I quickly realized that I liked theoretical knowledge and science in general. I was more interested in learning than doing. After reading The Web of Life and On Complexity, I switched my major to Biological Sciences, aiming to study the evolution of complex systems and pursue an academic career.

I received my Biological Sciences (Licentiate) degree at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, in 2022. There, I worked in several different environments, spending time on the bench, the field, and the computer. I participated in distinct projects collecting and preparing water and soil samples for analysis, conducting molecular biology experiments, and building and running bioinformatics workflows. This aggregation of different areas led me to think about science in an interdisciplinary and systemic way.

Now, I am pursuing my Ph.D. at Oregon State University. My plans involve returning to Brazil and starting my lab at my Alma Mater. I would love to write a book. I am also open to possibilities and may change that in the future.