Riverdale Review: If you could pick a subject to teach that is different from the one you teach now, what would it be, and why? 

Dr. Daniel Gentille: Oh, that’s tough. I feel like I would love to teach music or art because I feel like there are a lot of really fun, creative sides of our students that I don’t always see in the sciences, although I try to bring it out in my class because it’s fun to see people play.

RR: What’s one thing all students/teachers should know about you?

DG: I have a lot of pets, and I really like caring for animals. I think a lot of my research interests stem from how we can utilize model organisms in an ethical way to learn more about our world, and also how we can use model organisms to better understand our ecology and how we can better support our environment. So, I have two cats, a dog, and an aquarium that I’ve been managing. But my aquarium is soil, and live plants, so it’s like its own biosphere.