Can you hear me? Is this thing turned on?
Hello everyone, it’s a pleasure to meet you! My name is Chris Millbern, and according to some particularly exceptional people, I’m your 2016 North American Rolex Scholar!
Before I begin, I need to give an immediate thank you to the tireless work and unwavering dedication of the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society ® and Rolex. It’s because of them that I’ve been given this enormous honor and a chance to pursue my wildest dreams without reservation.
To those who have spent years—oftentimes, decades—making such an opportunity possible, I express my deepest gratitude on behalf of the underwater arts and sciences students all over the world who could have easily shared this stage with me. I sincerely hope that over the next twelve months I’ll be able to earn the kindness that each and every one of you has already been so willing to give.
If you want to follow one of the three most amazing adventures happening this year (psst…look here and here for the other two) I’d love for you to subscribe to this blog. For more information on the scholarship, other internships, and ways to apply or get involved, please visit www.owuscholarship.org.
So where did this all begin?
“It is my great pleasure to inform you that you have advanced to the Finalist round of the…”
If you’ve ever won the lottery I beg you to send me a message of how it felt because my words will inevitably fail to describe the emotional equivalent of “adrenaline-fueled nauseous joy-panic” that a single e-mail provided me.
One phone interview later and it was official: I’d won the lottery. I’d been given the chance to stand on the shoulders of giants so tall that Icarus himself would’ve probably told me to slow down.
I was the 2016 North American Rolex Scholar. And I couldn’t be happier.
I’m a 26-year-old graduate of UCLA, where I majored in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution. There I lived and breathed field research, participating in every opportunity afforded to me.
Trapping bobcats to study anticoagulant accumulation? Let’s do it.
Following spider monkeys through a Nicaraguan rainforest? Absolutely.
Dissecting crocodile feces to search for microscopic parasites? I…I’m…sure, I guess. (You guessed it—I stayed for three years and loved every minute).
Living in Los Angeles, I worked as a backpacking guide and ambulance operator for a number of years before eventually landing at the UCLA Gonda Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine. It was there I fell in love with dive medicine and being underwater—at least, being underwater when I wasn’t nitrogen saturated from yesterday’s chamber dive. Since then I’ve become a Certified Hyperbaric Technologist, PADI Rescue Diver, Diver Medic, Wilderness E.M.T., and AAUS Scientific Diver. I couldn’t have been luckier to have had a wonderful network of coworkers, instructors, and mentors that have helped to make my descent into underwater madness possible.
Today, I look forward to developing my passions for photography, diving, medicine, and all things adventure. More importantly, I look to the future and—thanks to the shoulders of some particularly large Our-World Underwater Scholarship Society giants—I see more hope and opportunity than ever before.
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” -Isaac Newton
