Okay, hello. This is once again your friend Ellen Weatherford, and I'm here with our new buddy,

one of my favorite people ever that I have rapidly come to develop an appreciation for.

We have Dr. Oney Pagan, say hello.

Hi, how are you?

I'm great, and I'm really excited to be talking to you, and I'm really excited to learn about the really cool animal that we have today.

But before we dig into this animal, I would like it if you could kind of introduce yourself a little bit and let our buddies at home know who we're talking to.

Well, absolutely. First of all, let me thank you for having me on. I'm

very excited to be here. I'm a proud nerd, biology nerd. So I love talking about what I love.

I mean, it goes with the territory. By profession, I'm a professor of biology at Westchester

University in Pennsylvania.

I was also a non-traditional student, meaning that I went back to school at 35 for my PhD.

So I did my bachelor's and my master's at the University of Puerto Rico, and that was in the 1980s.

Don't tell anyone. And then I work after the bachelor's.

I work after the master's. I was already married. And I had kids. My wife helped a little bit. And I needed to work. I had a

family. So, but I always wanted to do a PhD, and I love science, and I got the opportunity to work

as a technician at a medical school in Puerto Rico.

And that's where I found so many people who actually believed in me, trained me very well

in the sciences, and then a collaborator of my mentors in Puerto Rico came to the university.

Okay? This gentleman, his name was Professor George Hess. He was at Cornell University and he

recruited people for their graduate programs. So he kind of recruited me. I applied.

I got a scholarship. And basically, I told my wife, it's Cornell University. And then we have two kids

at the time. So we packed pretty much everyone and we went.

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