Western ranks third in the U.S. among master’s-granting universities for the number of graduates who go on to earn doctoral degrees, according to the most recent Survey of Earned Doctorates by the National Science Foundation.
We tracked down a few alums to find out where their terminal degrees have taken them.
As a principal scientist at Getty Images, Dan Gifford, ’10, B.S., physics, leads the company’s artificial intelligence and machine learning team behind Getty’s massive search engine.
But when Gifford explains his job, he references a much more low-tech scenario. It’s like wandering through a pitch-black maze with nothing but a flashlight with a short-lived battery. When do you turn it on? Where do you point it?
“A big part of it is having the right mindset: You’re going to encounter those dead ends and you’re not going to have a 100 percent hit rate. It takes some degree of trust and bravery to say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to try this and then we’re gong to spend money to do it, and we might be wrong.’”
Read how Gifford's love for astronomy led to his career in data science.
Linnea Bavik, ’17, B.S. mathematics, physics, spends her days studying the social lives of bacteria.
“Bacteria are very social organisms,” Bavik says. “They are constantly signaling to each other to figure out who to help and who to hurt. And they can do some crazy things, evolutionarily, like killing themselves to help the collective.”
While they’re mingling and signaling, bacteria can also share genes in a process called horizontal gene transfer. And genes for antimicrobial resistance get a little extra oomph.
“Oftentimes, horizontally transferred genes are encoded on extra-chromosomal units called plasmids,” Bavik says. “These plasmids can evolve some very interesting strategies, such as offering the host some benefit, such as antimicrobial resistance genes. I’m researching the relationship between plasmids and what environment we expect to see antimicrobial resistance arise.”
Bavik was delighted to find mentors at Western who encouraged her to try difficult classes and projects.
“I wanted to take risks with my education, to try things that may be very difficult for me and at which I might not achieve a high grade on my first try,” she says.
Macon Abernathy, ’15, B.S., environmental science – toxicology, is an associate scientist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, where he works with some of the brightest X-rays in the world at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource.
At Western, Abernathy worked closely with Environmental Toxicology Professor Ruth Sofield, and since coming to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, Abernathy has had another opportunity to work with Sofield.
“I started a collaboration with her on an unrelated project, just as a way of saying thank you,” he says. “Western is a very special place, and I think Ruth Sofield is the GOAT.”
Emily Peterson, ’00, B.S., chemistry, completed her first total synthesis in organic chemistry with Professor James Vyvyan looking over her shoulder.
Today, Peterson is a director of Medicinal Chemistry at Novartis, leading the multinational pharmaceutical company’s search for new drugs to treat arrhythmia.
“I’m really proud of having come from Western,” Peterson says. “I’m working in a space where I have what people would consider ‘humble beginnings.’ At Harvard I was surrounded by people who came up through the Ivies. I was able to secure a position at Harvard as a postdoc based on my Ph.D. research, a journey that started at WWU with undergraduate research in the Vyvyan lab.”
Peterson is not surprised to hear about Western’s high rate of alumni earning doctorates. She knows several from Vyvyan’s lab who are successful chemists, researchers or professors. (Western’s Chemistry Department is actually the best in the country among master’s granting institutions for chemistry doctorate-earning alumni.)
Read more about Peterson's career path in medical chemistry.
After earning a doctorate at the Indiana University in environmental science with a focus on risk assessment, Mariana Cains is now a scientist at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research building relationships between the scientists developing new innovative technologies in Earth system science and the people who use that information for decision-making, like weather forecasters and natural resource managers.
“I’m most proud of helping scientists realize their efforts have an intended end user, and to make sure that the end user’s needs and expertise are part of the scientific development process,” Cains says. “For example, more and more technical information is being developed through AI for weather forecasting, and my work bridges the technical expertise of the researchers and engineers with the domain and operational knowledge of the forecasters to co-develop a forecasting product that is both scientifically interesting and actually needed.”
Cains owes her own career to the power of connections, particularly the powerful connections she built at Western.
