Profile: Eric Heinze

Tell us a bit about yourself, your background and how you ended up at Gallaudet University for your undergraduate studies. 

I am a first-year PhD student (now starting 2nd year!) at the University of Rochester, studying Evolution, Ecology, Genetics, and Genomics.  I’ve been deaf since I was four years old, and it’s impacted my life in so many positive ways and led me down the path I’m on!  I grew up primarily in Blacksburg, Virginia, which happens to be where Virginia Tech is located, so the culture always revolved around college football.  I wasn’t always the best student in school, especially before I learned ASL (American Sign Language), since I couldn’t follow what my teachers or classmates were saying, even with an FM system.  Before I started 4th grade, my teacher of the deaf (TOD) decided to have an interpreter teach me ASL, and the trajectory of my education changed for the better.   

Growing up, I always pictured myself becoming a marine biologist, so for college I decided to go to the University of South Carolina, which had one of the best marine science programs.  Up to that point, I had always gone to mainstream schools, so I figured the transition to college would be relatively easy.  Academically, this turned out to be true.  My classes were challenging, and I embraced them.  What I didn’t realize was how well my TOD had sheltered me from the dark side of being deaf at a hearing school: accommodations.  These involved piles of paperwork and frequent meetings with the disabilities office to determine what accommodations I needed and when.  I realized that there was a “deaf tax” in going to a predominantly hearing institution, and, as the only deaf person on campus, there was no one to relate to. 

This all occurred during the 2019-2020 academic year, which also happens to be the year that COVID started, and an “extended spring break” became “remote learning”.  After finishing the semester at home, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my experiences at USC and realized that I was lacking a sense of identity and the fulfillment that came with it.  I had enjoyed studying marine science, but I would never get the most out of college without finding my purpose.  After one more semester at USC, I decided to transfer to Gallaudet University for Spring 2021.  My professors at Gallaudet opened my eyes to new areas of biology, such as genetics and evolution, that I hadn’t considered before, and I started doing internships to explore these topics more.  I graduated with honors from Gallaudet in May 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and minor in Data Science. 

And now you are in a PhD program at the University of Rochester! How did the decision to pursue a PhD come about? What research areas are you interested in? 

In all honesty, it was a very natural decision.  My academic advisor at Gallaudet, Dr. Caroline Solomon is a very accomplished oceanographer and always encouraged me to go to grad school and become a model for future deaf students in science.  There is a lack of deaf professionals in all STEM disciplines, and I liked the idea of setting an example for others who would otherwise not consider grad school due to academic and accessibility barriers.   

I also did three summer internships during my undergraduate years.  The first was at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2021, where I had the honor of meeting Amie Fornah Sankoh, who was an inspiration to everyone in our cohort.  Her passion for science left an imprint on me and showed that Deaf people can do anything they set out to do.  In the summer of 2022, and again in 2023, I joined the lab of Dr. Ana Caicedo, studying the evolution of weedy rice.  I loved the idea of having the freedom to answer research questions, and it felt like the natural path to take.  I applied to Rochester and a few other schools, and I was accepted in Spring 2023. 

Now that I am nearing the end of my first year at Rochester, I’ve become particularly interested in speciation and phenotypic plasticity.  What I find fascinating about these areas is, even though we celebrate Charles Darwin as the author of The Origin of Species, he got a lot wrong.  Our field is just beginning to answer more complex questions about how species originate and evolve in relation to their environment.  In my rotations, I’ve had the chance to use new computational tools to answer questions that have persisted for decades, and it’s something I want to continue in the next few years. 

The transition from undergrad to graduate student entails a lot of changes. In your case you also transitioned from a deaf institution to a predominantly hearing institution. Tell us a bit about what both of these transitions have been like.

I had the benefit of going the opposite direction, from a hearing institution to a deaf institution already, so that made the transition much easier.  Still, I had communication freedom at Gallaudet that is impossible to find anywhere else, so there was a learning curve when I made the transition back to the hearing world for graduate school.  There were some parallels with my experience in South Carolina as far as accommodations are concerned, and the meetings with the disabilities office and paperwork made another appearance in my life.  But one of the unique things about the University of Rochester is that they have staff interpreters, whereas most other universities will just contract an outside agency.  What’s even more unique is that the administration covers the cost of the interpreters, rather than individual departments, which removes a huge barrier for deaf students in academia.  The culture around the Biology Department is very welcoming and everyone is valuable, regardless of their background.  This was a big reason I chose Rochester, and it’s helped me feel at home here.  The expectations are certainly much higher than undergrad, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by “imposter syndrome” especially when everyone else around you have been in this field for much longer.  Rochester is well known for its academics, and the work our department does is cutting edge. 

Grad student life is so different from undergrad! My first semester was incredibly demanding, but it taught me the essential skills I will need for the rest of my PhD.  Typically, first-years take one elective, which is basically a normal class with both undergrads and grad students in the same class.  We also take two “topics” courses during the first semester, and a total of six over the first two years.  These classes are only for grad students, and one of the faculty typically goes in depth on an area of evolutionary biology that relates to their research.  We also have a departmental journal club and seminars twice per week, where guest speakers or more senior grad students will present their research.  One of the highlights of these seminars was that we hosted Peter and Rosemary Grant, whose groundbreaking work has documented rapid evolutionary change due to selection in nature. On top of these classes and seminars, we do three rotations over the course of the academic year before choosing a home lab. 

What type of accommodations have you been using in your studies and research in graduate school? Have you run into any unanticipated situations or challenges? 

I use a combination of ASL interpreters and CART captioning, depending on the situation.  Figuring out the best accommodation for classes, seminars, and meetings was a long process of trial and error.  Since our field is highly specialized and complex, it’s hard for interpreters to accurately interpret my classes, so in some cases it’s better to see a direct transcription through CART.  Ironically, using different types of accommodations like this is very new for me since I’ve had interpreters for most of my life and I haven’t needed anything else, so it was a bit of a learning curve that took a few months to get through.  One other nice thing about Rochester is that they contract a captioning service that specializes in STEM subjects, which helps so much, considering how much jargon we use daily that the average person wouldn’t be familiar with.  I access these services remotely through zoom and I can save the transcript afterward to help me study. 

Outside of classes and meetings, I have an interpreter on call from 10 am-5 pm each day, which makes it easier for me to network or just interact with people around the lab.  It’s usually 1-2 interpreters each day who are in the lab with me, and they interpret anything that comes up.  Once I finish taking classes after my second year, I will have a designated interpreter that I can work with to develop signs for some of the concepts in my field.  For conferences, I can request a local interpreter that the conference arranges or bring one of my own interpreters from Rochester who will be more familiar with my work and common terminology. 

You are still early in your graduate studies, but have you thought about the possible next steps in your career? Has anything about studying at both Gallaudet and U. of Rochester shaped your thoughts on what you would like the next steps to be? 

I still have a few years, but my goal is to work in the industry or government when I finish my PhD.  Many of the faculty in our department have extensive networks that I plan to take advantage of when I hit the job market.  I don’t consider myself to be good at teaching, so I don’t envision a future where I work in academia.  I would love to stay in the Rochester area since I already feel at home here.  Regardless of where I end up, I want to serve as a role model for other deaf students that may not get into science due to the barriers that exist for deaf people.  I found opportunities outside of Gallaudet that helped me get to where I am today, and I would like to use my position as a deaf PhD to provide a pipeline for future deaf scientists. 

Anything else you want to share?  

There’s a quote by Theodosius Dobzhansky that says, “Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.”  One of my rotation labs had this posted on the door to the lab, and it has become my motto for the first year of my PhD.  While it was originally intended as a critique of creationism, it puts evolutionary biology in a different perspective.  Instead of just being one subset of the expansive landscape of biology, it shows that evolution can be what unifies all these fields.  Much of biological research has led to advancements in medicine, and the advent of personalized medicine will be driven by discoveries in evolutionary biology.  The quote reminds me that I’m in a field that will only become more important as we learn more about the genome and its very complex dynamics.