Claudia Vega

After I finished my PhD and having this study of Mercury in the Amazon, I was kind of getting to a point that I wanted to divorce science because I felt like writing papers or publishing papers, it wasn't changing anything.

So I was kind of like question myself, like, what is science for?

And when I was at that moment, I met the executive director of the center I'm working on.

I met him in a Mercury conference.

And then he told me about the idea that they wanted to produce science information for decision makers to actually change things.

And they told me like they were starting the center and they needed a mercury program coordinator.

So that's how I moved to Rio Madre de Dios in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon.

Well, I was supposed to study a disease in primates at the master, but then I just found mercury.

Just, I mean, like it just happened like spontaneously.

And like, you know, penguins at the beach.

Well, it was like, I don't know, more interesting, I will say.

Well, first, before we implemented that lab, anything that you needed to analyze, you have to send it first to Lima or send it to another country.

It was that hard.

And just sending the sample outside Peru, that is not that easy.

And to take the samples, it already takes time.

And then you have to ship it to another place.

That complicates everything.

So we thought having the capacity in the site that we needed to study...

I mean, it's better.

Like, you can have the answer faster.