BMSIS Visiting Scholar: Ruvan de Graaf

Ruvan de Graaf (he/him) is a current graduate student at College of the Atlantic, Maine, USA, pursuing a MPhil in Human Ecology, and he is our newest Visiting Scholar at BMSIS, taking on work with Dr. Shawn McGlynn.

Born and raised in South Africa and Eswatini, he completed his baccalaureate at United World College Southern Africa in 2017, and continued to complete his undergraduate program in Human Ecology in Maine. His work focuses on a metabolism first theory for the Origin of Life, primarily simulating conditions at prebiotic submarine alkaline hydrothermal vents to probe mechanisms of carbon fixation.

Additionally, Ruvan works with collaborators at his college and University of Maine to gather paleoecological data on human presence over time in Maine alongside other hypotheses.