Unexplored Dimensions of Human Scalp Hair

Penn State undergraduate Hannah Marchok  interviews postdoctoral researcher Dr. Tina Lasisi about her her efforts to fill in gaps in our understanding of human hair morphology, as well as possible explanations for the evolution of different hair types, and the importance of approaching biological anthropology from a more inclusive standpoint. 

HOST:
Hannah Marchock, Penn State undergraduate  student majoring in Biobehavioral Health with a minor in Global Health

GUEST:
Dr. Tina Lasisi, postdoctoral researcher, University of Southern California

Transcript

“Unexplored Dimensions of Human Hair Variation” 

Mark Shriver: 

From Penn State’s Center for Human Evolution and Diversity, this is Tracking Traits

[MUSIC FADES]

Mark Shriver: 

Hello and welcome to the Tracking Traits podcast. My name is Mark Shriver and I’m the co-director of CHED, the Center for Human Evolution and Diversity at Penn State.

 Nina Jablonski: 

And I’m Nina Jablonski, the other co-director of CHED. Welcome to the podcast.

Mark Shriver: 

For this second episode of our second season, we’re focusing on the work of a researcher that you and I know very well, Nina. 

Nina Jablonski: 

Indeed we do, Mark. Tina Lasisi is a postdoctoral researcher who works with you in the Anthropological Genomics Lab and also works with me in the Human Evolution and Diversity Lab. Tina earned her PhD in Anthropology here at Penn State in 2021 and has been doing pioneering research on the genetic architecture and evolutionary function of human scalp hair. 

 Mark Shriver: 

Yes, Tina’s looking at human hair in new ways. In particular, Tina’s work is helping to map and differentiate the incredible variability in different kinds of hair that have all been lumped together for many years, and she’s investigating possible explanations for how these different hair types evolved.

 Nina Jablonski:

And there’s a wide range of implications related to this work. Everything from the functionality of our hair to the re-evaluation of standards of beauty to the challenges of representing different hairstyles in animated works of art.

 Mark Shriver: 

in addition to all of that, Tina shares her perspectives on collaborating with scientists from other disciplines in a positive, constructive way that honors the varied perspectives that different people bring to bear on any given question.

 Nina Jablonski:

She also talks a bit about the tech and methodology side of things, and about her personal journey from student to scientist. 

Mark Shriver:

I love when our researchers share those personal stories on the podcast. It’s always interesting to hear people talk about what drives them and how they discovered their passion for science.

Nina Jablonski:

Agreed! And we would be remiss if we didn’t also give a shout out to our interviewer Hannah Marchok, an undergraduate Biobehavioral Health student who returns to Tracking Traits again this year after taking on interviewer duties for two episodes from our first season. 

Mark Shriver:

Yes, Hannah is just terrific and has a genuine interest in human evolution and diversity that comes out in these discussions.

Nina Jablonski:

Well, should we give this one a listen?

Mark Shriver:

Absolutely. Here’s Hannah Marchok interviewing Tina Lasisi about “Unexplored Dimensions of Human Hair Variation”

 [MUSICAL INTERLUDE]

Hannah Marchok:

So we have with us today, Dr. Tina Lasisi She's a postdoctoral researcher at the Pennsylvania State University in the Biological Anthropology Department. Her research interests include the evolution of human variation and pigmentation and scalp hair, as well as science, communication and education. Tina, thank you for coming on this podcast today.

Tina Lasisi:

Thanks for having me.

Hannah Marchok:

So just to get started here, can you explain to us briefly what your research is all about?

Tina Lasisi:

Yeah, sure. So my research is mainly on the evolution of human scalp hair and I'm particularly interested in scalp hair morphology. So what my research tries to do is to find ways to accurately and objectively measure scalp hair morphology, instead of us using these subjective terms, like curly, wavy, all of that kind of stuff and ultimately, one of the things that I want to do is to understand the genetics that underlie scalp hair morphology, so that we can understand why it's so variable across different human populations, and so that we can understand why it evolved.

Hannah Marchok:

Awesome. So what are the broader impacts of your research on the field of anthropology and possibly on science at large?

Tina Lasisi:

I would say that one of the main impacts of my work has been allowing us to understand that we've been underestimating how much variation exists in hair that's usually lumped together as "Afro" hair. So the terminology that we use to describe scalp hair morphology, it is Eurocentric in the sense that we have different words to describe different kinds of hair that we see across European populations, but we really only have one word that describes the huge range of variation that is in tightly curled hair, which often occurs in various different African populations and non-African populations. So by finding a way to objectively measure it, we're able to really appreciate that range of variation and see that there's all of this diversity that we haven't been appreciating before and that has a lot of implications for combating the lack of representation of certain populations in biological sciences.

Hannah Marchok:

Yeah. So that sort of feeds into my next question about what the potential impact of your research is on the average person, and it sounds like even just expanding the vocabulary surrounding different types of hair could have an impact on people.

Tina Lasisi:

Yeah, definitely. So some of the feedback that I've gotten has been about that and about how people are really impressed to see how much variation there actually is, but another branch of my research is trying to understand the evolutionary function of human scalp hair. And one of the things that I found out through my PhD research when I did some experiments on this, is that scalp hair in general is able to protect us from solar radiation. So it reduces the amount of solar radiation that gets to your scalp and obviously under your scalp is where your brain lives and that is a very sensitive little organ, big organ, let’s be real.

 Hannah Marchok:

Important to protect.

Tina Lasisi:

Important to protect, exactly. So you obviously want to have that protected from overheating, that's very bad for your brain. What I also found is that when you have more tightly curled hair, it seems to be offering a higher degree of protection. So one of the things that we think is happening there is that there's a bigger distance between the top of your hair when it's curly and your scalp. So that bigger distance probably helps in reducing even more radiation from coming down to your scalp.

Tina Lasisi:

So when I tell that to people, a lot of the them think like, "Oh, wow. Yeah, that kind of makes sense. Intuitively I'm surprised that we didn't know anything about that before," and it also gives people a sense of pride around having tightly curled hair because of certain Eurocentric beauty standards, having tightly curled hair has been something that's been, you know disparaged a lot and being able to appreciate this incredible evolutionary function that it might have had, gives people a whole new perspective on this trait.

Hannah Marchok:

Absolutely. It sounds like you're obviously very passionate about your work to begin with. So can you speak to us about what part of your research is most exciting to you and what makes you want to continue this work? Obviously, doing a whole PhD on a subject is a lot of time and energy spent on learning about one thing and discovering every little inch of it. So could you talk to us about that?

Tina Lasisi:

Ooh. Okay. I mean, it's like trying to pick a favorite kid. I don't have any kids at all, but I imagine that it would be really hard. I love all aspects of my research really, but there are some parts of it that are newer than others. So, recently I've started getting into work on computer graphics. So if you think about Pixar and Disney, all of the animations that they do, they try to represent various aspects of human variation, which includes hair obviously, right? But being able to animate tightly curled hair requires you to understand a little bit about the physics of tightly curled hair. So one of the things that these companies have been finding is that they don't actually have the information that they need to animate this huge range of human hair.

Tina Lasisi:

So that's really where my I work can come in and offer some data. So all of the careful measurements that I took on the cross sectional shape of hair, on the curvature of hair, those are things that can be used by animators in informing their models of hair and the huge range of variation that exists there. So I would say that among all of the things that are going on there, that's probably one of the most exciting things because it's so new and it's so different than the discipline that I started out in, which was very much just you know, human evolutionary biology, biological anthropology. 

Hannah Marchok:

Cool! So, given your research and how interdisciplinary it is, what are some of the frustrations or walls that you run into?

Tina Lasisi: 

So I don't know if they're necessarily frustrations, but I do know that when you're working with people who come from a different disciplinary background than yourself, you need to spend some time to learn each other's language, really. We come from different backgrounds, which means that we have a different bank of knowledge that we can draw on, and it also means that we have different approaches to answering the same question. And so what I've noticed is that a lot of times when this interdisciplinary work doesn't go well, it has a lot to do with people not having patience for each other, people expecting that the person they're working with should know all the things that they know or should understand all the things that they know, and that's not always going to happen.

Tina Lasisi:

What I've really appreciated about all of the interdisciplinary collaborations I've done is that we have each taken the time to ask each other questions when we don't understand the things. Like, for example, the physiologists that I've worked with, I could ask questions about, "Hey, so what is it that's going to happen in the body if it's trying to cool itself down under this condition or under that condition? Do you think this is important or that is important?" And then he's taken the time you explain all of that to me. Meanwhile, I can explain things about what I know about human skin color variation, or how it's distributed, or what ways we should or shouldn't categorize human groups.

Tina Lasisi:

And one of the most interesting things that I found to happen is when we look at the same question and have just very different intuition on what we expect to find. Now you might have some people who would just head butt and say, "No, you have to listen to me. I'm definitely right. You have no idea what you're talking about." I've been lucky enough that all the collaborators I've worked with have been kind enough and emotionally intelligent enough to say, "Okay, we're all smart people here, but we have different expectations of what's going to happen. Let's pause. This is actually super interesting," and ask each other, "Okay, why do you think that is going to happen? Or why do you think this is important and that's not important?" And I found that's where we make the most progress because we're able to address questions that neither of us could address on our own, and when we come to a common understanding of why, you know, we each think what we think, and if there's even a way that we can merge those perspectives, then we've really made progress.

Hannah Marchok:

Absolutely. So interpersonal and collaboration issues aside, what do you think makes a really strong foundation for a research project?

Tina Lasisi:

Hmm. So I would say of course you want to start off with a good idea. What makes a good idea? I think that part of what makes a good idea is being able to find something that surprisingly has not been researched. So one of the things that I found pretty interesting, you know, going into research is that there's areas of research that are really, really active and people are like, "Okay, this is the hot new thing. We all need to be asking this question and answering this question," and sometimes it can be really hard and scary to do something that doesn't seem to be what everybody else is running towards. But I think that that can be something that starts you off on a good journey if you're thinking, "Okay, what is a great long term research project?" because it allows you to pioneer that and move that forward, open new avenues of research.

Tina Lasisi:

And I think the second part of what's important there is for you to have a genuine interest in what it is that you are researching and I think that kind of interacts with the first thing that I mentioned, because if you are just researching something because someone else told you that this is important or someone else told you that you should, because you'll be more successful if you do it, that's not a good enough reason. That is not going to sustain you when, you know the going gets tough. You need to find something that peaks your curiosity. You have to find something that you find yourself mulling over when you're just you walking around, when you're reading other things. Like what is it that pops into your mind, because that curiosity is going to drive you to want to answer that question. And you really need to be motivated with research projects because they're not really going to independently move forward unless you're pushing them forward.

Hannah Marchok:

Definitely. It seems like whenever I ask this question on this podcast, the theme of following your innate curiosity is always what continues popping up here. So this podcast is run through the Center for Human Evolution and Diversity here at Penn State, also known as CHED, which promotes the transdisciplinary study of a human condition. Tina, could you explain to us how your work utilizes or is in itself an interdisciplinary study?

Tina Lasisi:

My work is inherently interdisciplinary because of the methods that it uses and the questions that it asks. So let's start with methods. I look at hair and skin pigmentation, but mainly hair. That involves doing microscopy, that involves doing image analysis. So I need to turn to people who have expertise in these areas to really incorporate them into my work properly. And it's also not as simple as people who have expertise in image analysis or microscopy being able to look at hair and do everything that I do because they might not have the biological, Bio/Anth background to understand why I'm looking at certain samples or you know, why I am considering certain methodologies for sample preparation.

Tina Lasisi:

Then there is the aspect of my work that involves genetics, in which case I've worked with a lot of geneticists who are able to help me figure out what I need to do to make statistically valid inferences, to figure out, OK what sample size do you need, what samples would you want to look at if you're trying to find what genes underlie hair morphology? Are there maybe other methods you can use? Are there databases you can use?

Tina Lasisi:

And then lastly, the branch of my research that involves the experimentation. I had the pleasure of working with people in environmental ergonomics, which I didn't know even did existed when I first met these people. And so they themselves are an interdisciplinary group of people where you have thermal engineers, you have physiologists, you have a whole array of people who come together around, OK how do humans interact with their surroundings, which also includes things that affect thermoregulation. And that's where I come in with the hair question, which they found was really interesting because they had thought about clothing, they thought about various scenarios, but they hadn't really dealt a lot with hair because they didn't know where to start and they didn't really know how important it would be to overall, you know  body thermoregulation. So those are just all of the ways in which I do interdisciplinary work, because at the end of the day, there's just a lot of different perspectives that you can take to look at this topic of hair.

Hannah Marchok:

Yeah. It seems like with how much interdisciplinary study there is, you almost have to always have a willingness to learn more and also respect the knowledge that other people have and how those things can come together. So science is obviously a very interesting and seemingly endless field in my opinion and I would love to know how you got interested in science and more specifically in your field.

Tina Lasisi:

Ooh, that's a great question. So I know that some people have these great stories of since the moment they were able to stand on two legs, they were out there asking scientific questions. I wouldn't say I was one of those people. Actually, when I was growing up I thought I was going to be someone who did maybe politics or something, more social and I went into my undergrad thinking I was going to be a cultural anthropologist because I'd always been interested in cultural differences in humans or just human differences in general. I didn't even realize there was an interesting biological aspect.

Tina Lasisi:

So when I was in undergrad, the way that they taught anthropology in England, which is where I studied, is that you had to take cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, and archeology in your first year, and you got to specialize at the end of it and I was so sure that I was going to go do cultural anthropology, but then I had this lecture on human variation as part of my Bio Anth lectures, and I remember being presented with these two maps on human skin color variation. One of them was human skin color variation, the other one was a map of the distribution of UV intensities around the world. And I remember being so impressed by it. My mind was blown. I was like, "What? Okay. I never realized that there was like such a clear pattern." I'd only ever thought of it as "Oh, people in Europe have light skin, people in Africa have dark skin." I didn't even realize it was a gradient.

Tina Lasisi:

And so, it made me start thinking about, "Okay, well, if you have this pattern, like what other patterns could there be? What evolutionary reasons could explain other aspects of human variation?" And that's when I started asking the question about hair and I would say that that's simultaneously when I decided excited that science actually had a lot to offer in terms of, you know, what I was interested in, which was human variation.

Hannah Marchok:

Awesome. And one of your advisors, Dr. Nina Jablonski presented on that, I believe, as well. Correct?

Tina Lasisi:

Correct. In fact, it was her work that was presented it to me when I was in undergrad and I had the incredible luck to be put in touch with her. And it turns out that she also had an interest in hair. So that's how I ended up doing my PhD.

Hannah Marchok:

Look at that, collaboration all across the world for you. (laughter) And so as for how you established your career as I understand it, it's no clear path when you're in science because everyone has their individual interests and the whole point of it is asking new questions and pioneering new fields. So could you talk to us about how you have gone about establishing your career, especially since you've been so good about using science education through the realm of social media.

Tina Lasisi:

So I wish I had something very strategic to say, but it is very much I followed my interests. I am, if I do say so myself, pretty good at meeting other people, and you'll often hear people say a like, "Oh, networking is super important. Networking is super important," and a lot of people feel really put off by that word. I can understand that's the case, but think of it as meeting other people, it will open up doors for you. It will open up your world. And that is how I really set up my career. It's you know, talking to as many people as I can about what I'm passionate about and by doing that, you often find other people who want to work with you, or you find that people really like the story you had to tell, and they want to invite you to tell it elsewhere. So I found that that is just very rewarding for me, and one way of that is by using social media for science education, which is something that I ended up spending a lot of my time doing.

[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]

Hannah Marchok:

So speaking of science education, could you speak to us about any of the mentors that you've had and/or if you've had some sort of big inspirational person?

Tina Lasisi:

Ooh. Yes. So as a baby undergrad, I had a mentor who had started as a postdoc the same year that I started as an undergrad and actually, he is the reason that I am here in more ways than one, and the main reason is he encouraged me to go into biological anthropology. One of the reasons that I shied away from it was that I didn't think was capable of doing science because I didn't have a lot of experience with science. I just told him, "Hey, I thought that skin color evolution stuff was super cool, but I just don't think I can do that stuff. I don't think I can do science," and he really took me under his wing and encouraged me said, "I totally think you can do it. You're asking really interesting questions and you are absolutely smart enough.” Like, you know, “This is not the issue here. You need to believe in yourself."

Hannah Marchok:

It sounds like he had a great impact on you. What was the name of this mentor?

Tina Lasisi:

His name is Colin Shaw and he's actually in Switzerland right now. That's where he is working as an academic. I still talk to him very often.

Hannah Marchok:

Awesome.

Tina Lasisi: 

I had the opportunity to just you know, walk into his office, honestly every day at some point, and tell him, "Okay, this is what I learned. This is what I'm interested in. What do you think I should do next?" And he even helped me with my undergraduate thesis. So that really made such a huge impression on me that I wanted to make sure that I was that kind of mentor when I had the opportunity to, you know,  take on that role because I know what a huge difference it made to me to have someone in this position, who has so many steps ahead of me in their career and who had this bird's eye view, to have them guide me through this process really made all the difference.

Hannah Marchok:

Yes, your undergraduate researchers in your lab definitely appreciate that aspect about you. (laughter) Moving into sort of what's next for you and your research, you have already accomplished so much and are starting to make an international impact with all the places that you're speaking, offers for collaboration that you receive. So what's next in your idealized version of your research?

Tina Lasisi:

So what's next for me is becoming a PI, I guess. There's only so much you can do when you are someone's trainee, and so like the next step is for me to take on the position where I can find students and postdocs of my own so that we can expand the questions that we're asking. And so there's multiple directions I want to expand that in. One of them is I want to work on improving the image analysis software that I have for hair morphology. I want to find ways of us being able to use is mobile cameras, just like being able to take your smartphone and take a picture of your hair and say, "Okay, this is what the curvature is of it." And I also want to expand into doing more work on skin color because, of course, even though we've done so much work on it, we know so much more than we did 10, 20 years ago, there's still a lot of unanswered questions about that, and there are a lot of samples to be collected.

Tina Lasisi:

So there's more hair samples to be collected, more populations to represent in terms of hair and skin pigmentation so that we can understand the genetics of that and I want to start asking more questions about the evolution of both of these traits. So if we have enough samples from enough different populations, we'll have an even better idea of all of the genes and we think that there are many that affect these traits. And we can look at them in their evolutionary history to say, "Okay, this is where natural selection was really acting," or "This is where populations split apart and drifted apart in terms of their traits."

Tina Lasisi:

And lastly, I do want to keep pushing forward the computer graphics work because it's been so exciting to see an application for all of this knowledge, because as biological anthropologists, we tend to work on a very basic science level, we're asking basic science questions of, "How does this work? How did this evolve?" And it's really cool being able to work with the kinds of computer scientists that think in a very applied way of like, "Oh, this is how we can use this for animation or maybe even other purposes." So that is what's next for me. 

Hannah Marchok:

Sounds like you have a lot of exciting possibilities on the horizon. What do you see in the future of the scientific community, but specifically in the realm of biological anthropology, what sort of changes have you seen, even just over the course of your PhD, and where do you see it going in the future?

Tina Lasisi:

So I think there's definitely two big changes that are occurring. One of them is in the composition of biological anthropology in the sense of who gets to do biological anthropology. I have seen a lot more people push for diversity, and that is so important because people from different backgrounds ask different questions. That is one of the reasons that I've been so successful, is just that I happen to come from a very different background than a lot of people who are in biological anthropology and it allowed me to have a different perspective, ask different questions, and that is really important to science and it can push science forward.

Tina Lasisi:

Then the other aspect of how I think biological anthropology is changing is that it's expanding its definition of what counts as biological anthropology. I've seen a lot more bio cultural work, people who are really trying to integrate, you know, questions of culture and social interactions in how that affects our biology.

Tina Lasisi:

And I've also seen more people, such as myself, try to see how we can use some of this knowledge, this basic science knowledge in applied ways. I think that there's a lot of interest now in human biological variation from a lot of other angles. For example, facial recognition, that's something that's becoming increasingly important from the medical field, you know the various devices that we need to use to measure things like blood oxygenation or pulse. You know, we have all of these tools that need to work on a huge range of populations and one thing we can do as biological anthropologists is use that knowledge that we have of human variation to help inform people who are creating these tools so that they can make them more equitable.

Hannah Marchok:

Absolutely. That sounds like there's such an exciting realm of possibilities within the field of biological anthropology. So just focusing back on your research specifically, in an idealized world where there's no limitations... I know, it's weird to think about that, but what kind of impact would you like your research to have, if you could totally have your way?

Tina Lasisi:

So I think ideally the dream would be that my work really helps destroy any last shred of this negative racist idea that tightly curled hair is somehow lesser than or not human. It would definitely get rid of all of that and show that this is a really incredible and a uniquely human trait. We don't see tightly curled hair in other mammals and that's something that we haven't really appreciated.

Tina Lasisi:

I would love for that to be one of the outcomes of my work and in general, for it to be something that contributes to people realizing that human variation is not a negative thing. Human variation is so beautiful, so interesting to look at and there are so many ways that we can be positive about it and appreciate all this variation and be curious about it, in a way that uplifts human diversity rather than says one thing is better than another.

Hannah Marchok:

What sort of personal investments do you think have driven you into this field and how much of an impact do you think that they've had on your work?

Tina Lasisi:

So I think that my identity as a black woman probably has a lot to do you with the questions that I have and also how I interact with people when I talk about my work. I know that when I was learning about skin color and I saw that map, I immediately thought, "Well, oh yeah, that makes sense. My mom is from Europe and her skin is very light and my dad is from very close to the Equator in Africa, so it makes sense that his skin is dark, but what about their hair?" That was the next question that I had, just thinking about myself, thinking about other references that I have in my life, thinking about, "Well, what could possibly explain all of these people that I see on a daily basis? What could explain what I see in the mirror?" And I saw that wasn't really represented in the literature that was out there.

Tina Lasisi:

The second part of that is when you have to go out and ask people to participate in your science, it puts them at ease when the person who is asking them to participate looks like them. And so I found that I was afforded a level of trust because there was a sense of familiarity and a sense of, "Well, I trust that you are going to talk about our hair in a respectful way because you also have the same kind of hair," and that opens, you know  certain doors to both creating certain kinds of science, but also communicating certain kinds of science where people will look at you and say, "Hey, I want to, I want to hear what you have to say."

Hannah Marchok:

Interesting. So this leads me well into our next question here, which is the topic of human variation, whether it's skin or hair, has historically been either a sensitive subject or has been taken and misconstrued, all of this sort of complicated history with it. So when you're approaching it now in the 21st century, doing the work that you do with the identities that you have, how do you approach this topic in both an academic realm as well in a public realm?

Tina Lasisi:

So what's really interesting about hair and skin is that their so called racialized traits. So they're traits that are associated with concepts of race that people have and it means that a lot of times, a lot of people are really uncomfortable talking about them because they feel like, "Well, how can we talk about these traits without talking about race?" And so a lot of what I do is to try and demonstrate that we can absolutely talk about hair and skin without involving race, because the dimensions in which they vary have nothing to do with race.

Tina Lasisi:

And another aspect of my work in this area is trying to deal with the apprehension that people have when it comes to talking about human variation, because there's been this history of using human variation and "science" quote/unquote, on human variation to do horrible things. People unfortunately have this residual fear that inevitably, if we talk about human variation, if we acknowledge it, then bad things are going to happen. And not only is that untrue, it has the tragic consequence that no science that is objective and responsible is then done on these traits and all that we're left with is this terrible historical, outdated work that is really bigoted and really not science.

Tina Lasisi:

So what I really want to do is to tell people we don't need to be scared of human variation. We don't need to think that what has happened historically is going to mark what happens in the future. We need to know that we need to take into consideration what has happened before and make sure that we don't have any trace of that in our future work, but we absolutely have to acknowledge and appreciate and study human diversity for so many different reasons.

Hannah Marchok:

Yeah. And that, to me brings up two quick things here. Number one is that, you know I've always been taught that you have to know where you've come from in order to know where you're going. So using the knowledge of the past to inform your decisions as you go forward, but I also appreciate your recognition that just because this is what has happened in the past does not mean that you should fear it will happen in the future if you're going about it in a much more conscious way.

Hannah Marchok:

The other thing that I wanted to mention is how, frankly, before learning about your work and starting to work with you, I would've possibly fallen into that category that was, “this is something difficult to talk about, so we should avoid it.” However, I'm learning more now and I'm taking a health ethics class at the moment as well, about how it would almost be considered unethical to avoid breaching this field or this topic because of the fact that it is then intentionally leaving out minorities and leaving out potentially ethical and well-rounded research for the future.

Tina Lasisi:

Absolutely and, you know what I would add to that is I think that what part of my job is, and what our job as biological anthropologists is, is to give people language. We need to create and communicate what the terms are that we should be using that can describe the variation that it is that people see. And when we give people language, for example, "Hey, skin pigmentation, it's not different skin colors, categorically, it's that different levels of pigmentation, melanin."

Tina Lasisi:

I remember when I was younger, nobody was using the word melanin and now all over the internet, you see young kids talking about melanin, how much they love it and that is so powerful because it's allowed people to talk about this thing that felt uncomfortable and taboo before with such different language that it's opened like a realm of possibility in terms of not only science, but also just the way that we socially interact with each other about this topic.

Hannah Marchok:

Yes. So my final question for you here today is what is one piece of advice that you would give to the next generation of scientists?

Tina Lasisi:

One piece of advice that I would give is, talk to people. I know that sometimes it can be really, really scary, but if you are able to reach out to, whether it's your professors or your peers, and talk about what your interests are, you're going to make such interesting connections. That is really where a lot of my success in life has come from and what I advise other people to do. It's like, talk to as many people as you can and you will make such great serendipitous connections that it will move your life forward in ways that you couldn't have possibly imagined.

Hannah Marchok:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for talking with us today and I look forward to seeing where the future of your research goes.

Tina Lasisi:

Thanks Hannah.

[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]

 Mark Shriver:

Tracking Traits is a production of Penn State’s Center for Human Evolution and Diversity. Our producer, audio engineer and musical theme composer is Cole Hons, and our logo was designed by Michael Tribone of mtribone design. 

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