From traveling to distant places around the world like Madagascar to diving with great white sharks, National Geographic Explorer Mireya Mayor is living up to her ‘Female Indiana Jones’ nickname. A Miami native and former NFL Dolphins cheerleader, Mayor returns to her roots after more than 20 years of global expeditions and has joined FIU as director of the Exploration and Science Communications Initiative.
Throughout her thrilling explorations, she has discovered a new species of mouse lemur in Madagascar, published a book on her journey and starred in the new Travel Channel series Expedition Bigfoot to name a few.
Mayor recently talked to WLRN about her missions, new position at FIU and how to make an impact in science research.
“My goal is to empower scientists, whether that’s faculty or graduate students to effectively communicate their scientific research. The way I look at it is, you could do amazing scientific research and have great discoveries, but they’ll languish in files if you don’t get the word out.”
This article first appeared in WLRN on October 31, 2019.
