A childhood trip to Cannon Beach launched a Harvard student's quest to study evolution

A childhood visit to Cannon Beach sparked Ashwin Sivakumar's interest in wildlife and birding, which led to integrative biology research at Harvard; he was named a 2026 Marshall Scholar and will pursue a Ph.D. at Cambridge studying cichlid genetics.

As a child in Beaverton, Ashwin Sivakumar saw puffins through a spotting scope at Haystack Rock during a family trip to Cannon Beach and was surprised they nested so close to home. That early experience deepened his interest in local wildlife and birding, and by sixth grade he had recorded 206 bird species in the continental U.S. He studied integrative biology at Harvard and conducted research on how genes influence wing architecture in closely related bird species. Sivakumar has been named a 2026 Marshall Scholar and will use the award to pursue a Ph.D. in England, where he plans to shift his focus from birds to cichlid fishes and work with evolutionary geneticist Richard Durbin at the University of Cambridge. Key details: - A childhood spotting-scope view of puffins at Cannon Beach sparked Sivakumar's early interest in wildlife and birding. - By sixth grade he had observed 206 bird species, and his personal birding list later passed 500 species. - At Harvard he researched genetic contributions to variation in wing architecture among closely related bird species. - He was named one of 43 U.S. Marshall Scholars for 2026; the award covers three years of doctoral study in the U.K. - He will work on cichlid genetics with Richard Durbin at Cambridge and plans to develop methods to identify genetic bases of differences between species. - Cichlids have diversified rapidly into more than 1,000 species, with many species in Lake Malawi, and genomic sequencing exists for roughly 200 cichlid species. Summary: Sivakumar's path from a local nature sighting to academic research shows a long-running interest in how genomes shape form and diversity. He will begin doctoral work at Cambridge focused on the genetics of cichlid diversification, and his adviser and mentors have said the research could inform understanding of species origination and extinction.