Hailing from Saipan and South Korea, Cevina Hwang is a junior in the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology department. With a longstanding interest in the field of dentistry, she chose to expand upon this passion through her junior work, where she will be exploring the evolution of the human jaw and teeth.
Join me below to read about Cevina’s journey in the junior work process.
Rebecca Cho (RC): What made you interested in this field?
Cevina Hwang (CH): I’ve always been interested in dentistry and human teeth, but my interest was particularly sparked in high school. I was involved in an Advanced Placement Research course where I conducted a correlational study as a part of a research project on racial disparities in dental health on Saipan. After having done the project, I discovered another side to dentistry that I hadn’t really thought of before – approaching it from a social demographic perspective. I felt that not a lot of my peers who had a similar interest in dentistry approached the field from this side and so I wanted to pursue something similar in a college setting.
After taking EEB211 (Life on Earth: Chaos and Clockwork of Biological Design), I started to gain interest in looking into the evolution of human teeth – again, looking at the oral cavity from a related but different approach. While my high school project took a more socioeconomic-driven approach, I was now intrigued to delve deeper into the mechanisms of evolutionary development. I became curious about figuring out the motivations and mechanisms behind the evolution of the human jaw and teeth morphology.
RC: What made you choose your project?
CH: I felt there’s a pretty universal understanding about the influences of changing diets and skull sizes on the decrease in size of our jaws over time. However, there are still many uncertain aspects about specific mechanisms of jaw development and the combination of genetic and environmental influences. A potential research topic that arose for me was the existence of wisdom teeth. The primary understanding surrounding wisdom teeth today is that they either have no use or actively cause a negative impact on dental health. Wisdom teeth can cause discomfort, lead to cavities in the surrounding area, and promote gum disease through intense plaque buildup – all reasons why wisdom teeth are usually taken out as a preventative measure. I’m curious to investigate why we observe the retention of wisdom teeth despite all of these disadvantages. Is there a connection to a lag in evolution? Did wisdom teeth serve a purpose up until not too long ago, and is this why they haven’t disappeared from the human oral cavity? Can we expect to see this physical feature disappear?
RC: How does your project intersect with your career ambitions?
CH: I am a pre-dental student who has always had a fascination with teeth. While the field of dentistry does incorporate a substantial amount of science and math, I think it is also useful to have this evolutionary narrative as an aspiring dentist. It is eye-opening to gain a different perspective of the field by understanding how the physical body of humans have evolved in response to biological and environmental changes. It’s fascinating to see how my junior work can be an outlet in exploring the adaptation and interactionism between the oral cavities of humans and their genetic and physical changes – something that you don’t really get to explore in a clinical setting or in coursework.
RC: What were some of your biggest challenges and how did you overcome these?
CH: In the EEB department, research specialties vary from the study of animals to disease ecology and epidemiology. However, I wasn’t able to identify a mentor who focused on human evolution, especially in relation to the jaw and teeth. As I was researching potential advisers, I found that no professor aligned perfectly with my specific interests. With the help of an EEB professor who was teaching one of my courses, I was able to connect with Dr. vonHoldt. Her specialty was in events of domestication, dogs and wolf ancestors, behavior ecology, population biology, and genotype/phenotype evolution. Again, no one in her lab had a particular focus on researching human teeth. However, she was very open to helping me pursue my interest in this field, and so being flexible and learning how to take on some of the responsibility with having a unique topic was a challenge I faced.
Another challenge I faced was figuring out the main subject of my research. Choosing a main research question entails work – reviewing literature and looking at data to see the gaps and overarching questions in the field – and I’m currently tackling this workload by trying to see the questions that spark from comparisons I can make between clinical observations I’ve made during my time shadowing various dentists and the literature I’m reading.
RC: In regards to these challenges, is there anything you might have done differently?
CH: I don’t think so. I’m very happy with my selected topic and adviser. Dr. vonHoldt has given me guidance in every way she can and I’ve also had the opportunity to meet an upperclassman who I can ask for assistance as well. I believe my challenges are a part of what comes with pursuing a topic that might seem more unique, and I’m also seeing how my time in the laboratory will be useful, especially for learning practical skills that may or may not be critical for my senior thesis.
RC: Do you have any advice for rising juniors on this process?
CH: For juniors in the EEB department, from my personal experience, the fall portion of the junior work didn’t feel as connected to the spring portion in preparation for my senior thesis as students will be randomly placed into junior tutorial sections (which tend to focus on specific topics). I would recommend spending some time in the fall (and even beforehand) figuring out the topics that interest you, as your spring junior paper (for the EEB department) focuses on preparing a literature review for the senior thesis.
As great as it is to join in on a professor or graduate student’s existing research project, it’s good to also be able to bring your own passion and motivation to the table. Have an idea of what topics or research questions you would want to look into, whether it be conducting statistical analyses of existing datasets or engaging in fieldwork to collect your own data. Be proactive in starting this research process, so that you can have a better idea of the type of work you want to get involved in by the springtime!
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I had the pleasure of speaking with Cevina about how she’s pursuing her career ambitions from a fresh perspective through her junior work at Princeton. Outside of research, she also serves as President of the Princeton Pre-Dental Association (PPDA). So, if there are any pre-dentals reading this post, be sure to check out PPDA for a tight-knit community of aspiring dentists and consider pursuing EEB as a major!
– Rebecca Cho, Natural Sciences Correspondent
