About Felipe Sarmiento Gómez
Hello there! I'm a third-year student in Conservation and Biodiversity at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus. My passion for biology stems from research on pollination, insects and biodiversity at my school's gardens since I was seven-years-old. Now, I intend to continue to pursue passion this with a project that has an impact in disadvantaged communities from my home country, Colombia.
I will be studying the pollination networks of cacao trees, which is crucial to contribute to agroforestry systems in tropical Latin America, so that they are a sustainable and productive opportunity for smallholder farmers that want to restore forest areas.
On a side note, I'm a curious person by nature and that's why I like to do and learn lots of things. So whether you are interested in my project or not, feel free to reach out! I believe that there are no boundaries when collaborating interdisciplinary. For example, research on cacao trees not only spans biology. There is ongoing anthropological research that is trying to figure out how cocoa got from the Amazon (its biological origin) to Mexico!