John Katial (C’25)

Human Health and Climate Science

Completing the IDST Major was among my most formative experiences while at Georgetown. As a Biology major up until my sophomore year, I once felt a great tension between wanting to study human health as an aspiring physician and climate/environmental science as a nature lover with a deep passion for ecology. My work in classes during my first two years at Georgetown exposed me to a dynamic interdisciplinary area at the nexus of human biology and environmental science: an exploration of how human health is influenced by climate change and the health of ecosystems which surround us. IDST afforded me the freedom to study in this intersection, and my major in Human Health and Climate Science was born.
  

In the IDST Major, I learned how to ask nuanced research questions then narrow those questions down to a maneuverable size that I could rigorously research. I learned what it means to manage a long-form, multi-semester research project and how to incorporate faculty and reviewer insight to strengthen my project. The major helped sharpen my public speaking abilities through numerous presentations in our iterative thesis design and showed me the importance of peer collaboration in the research process. I would recommend IDST to anyone with a creative spirit, love of the unknown, and desire to weave their passions together.