Lucas Medeiros is a PhD candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT under the supervision of Prof. Serguei Saavedra. His research focuses on understanding how ecosystems and their constituent species resist to and recover from perturbations, that is, on understanding ecological resilience across biological levels of organization. He uses a combination of population dynamics models, nonlinear time series analysis, and empirical data to understand and quantify how whole ecosystems and individual species respond to different types of perturbation. Ultimately, Lucas’ research can help to improve the way we monitor and protect ecosystems and their constituent species so as to preserve the important services they provide to humanity.
Lucas is originally from Brazil, where he obtained a B.S. in Biology, a B.S. in Applied Mathematics, and an M.S. in Ecology from the University of São Paulo. Outside of research, Lucas enjoys exploring nature and the outdoors as well as playing guitar and listening to live music.