A magnetometer whirs in the background when we reach Noah, one of two Dartmouth recipients this year of a Rhodes Scholarship. He's in a lab at Harvard, under the earth sciences building. Over a summer expedition to the Gobi Desert, Noah collected rocks surrounding dinosaur digs and drilled out nickel-sized cores. These disks are fed into the noisy magnetometer, which interprets the magnetic field that existed when the rocks were formed, giving researchers a timeline for the dinosaur bones.
Dinosaurs are "big, flashy, and exciting," unlike his "snail project," work related to his senior thesis on Bermudian microsnails. This research, conducted with advisors Caitlin Hicks-Pries (BIOL) and Joshua Landis (EARS), explores the impacts of soil biogeochemistry on Bermudian micro-snails. Ancient ecosystems and mass extinctions: these are the aspects of paleobiology that fascinate da Silva. As part of this project, Noah has worked with the Bermudian government to preserve the snails.
"Science can be limited," he says, excusing himself to fix the machine. He's learned to look for ways that science can influence regulators. While his first love is research, he finds himself torn between policy and science.
Noah's entire family, aunts, uncles, cousins, all live within twenty minutes of each other on Bermuda. "You are living in the greatest place in the world, unlike any other" his father would tell him. "It was a 'Calvin and Hobbes' childhood," he says. Full of adventures, digging and exploring. Noah's time at Dartmouth has fed his adventurous spirit—with a biology FSP to Costa Rica, and research in Mongolia, Europe, and throughout the U.S. "If you told 12-year-old Noah he'd be doing all this, he would collapse," Noah laughs.
The Rhodes will take him to England, where much of his work will be inside, on computers. It will, he understands, rain a lot. It will, he understands, be the first time he has lived in an urban environment. But he's game, already planning side trips to the Jurassic Coast, near Bournemouth, to look at ammonites and other fossils, and a "pilgrimage" to learn more about Mary Anning, the "mother of paleobiology."
Noah was expecting an email saying he did not get the fellowship on the day of the Rhodes decision, so when his phone started buzzing, he almost didn't answer. He went immediately to a supply closet in Earth Sciences on the Dartmouth campus to call his parents. On the day we talked, he received another call from Oxford accepting his admission to the college.
Noah credits Caitlin Hicks Pries (Biological Sciences) and Sarah Slotznick (Earth Sciences) with teaching him "how a scientist behaves." Jeff Sharlet (English) inspired Noah in his reading and creative writing. He's a big science fiction fan, especially the work of Becky Chambers. He's also a Dungeons and Dragons player and has been part of a group of friends from Bermuda who play regularly.
Dinosaurs and snails. Science and policy. Paleobiology and science fiction. How will he weave all these interests into a life? Noah's not worried. He's taking it one step at a time. Island time.
