TAMEST Member Roundup

When the pandemic hit, TAMEST Member Vivian Ho, Ph.D. (NAM), Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine, pivoted her research examining the effects of economic incentives and regulations on the quality and costs of health care to focus on how lockdowns early in a pandemic can impact related deaths months later. She says her career in big data and health outcomes prepared her to look at the spread of disease in populations and understand the economic incentives involved. 

TAMEST Member David R. Piwnica-Worms, M.D., Ph.D., (NAM) first met his wife, TAMEST Board Secretary Helen Piwnica-Worms, Ph.D. (NAM) back in high school in their home state of Minnesota. Since then, the couple has moved across the country in pursuit of academics and biomedical research. In 2013, the couple made Texas their home to continue their careers at The University of Texas at MD Anderson Cancer Center (MD Anderson).

Prior to his transition to Howard Hughes Provost at Rice University, Reginald DesRoches, Ph.D. (NAE)  was the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering for Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering. As a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the society’s Structural Engineering Institute, Dr. DesRoches served as the key technical leader in the United States’ response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, taking a team of 28 engineers, architects, city planners, and social scientists to study the impact of the earthquake.

Growing up in the South, Kim Orth, Ph.D. (NAS) spent the first part of her career overcoming the stigma that scientific research wasn’t necessarily seen as a job for a wife and mother. The recipient of the 2011 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Science found the field of molecular biology by accident when she signed up for it as an elective in college. She described the mixture of biology, chemistry and genetics as “awe inspiring” .

Nancy W. Dickey, M.D. (NAM), credits early exposure to the health care environment as a nurse’s aide in high school and a desire to prove wrong those who said she couldn’t become a doctor for pushing her toward her dreams. Born in South Dakota, Dr. Dickey married a Texan and has dedicated her career to the issues of rural health and team science in Texas.

Dr. Eric Olson is a man of many talents. The professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at UT Southwestern Medical Center is equal parts award-winning molecular biologist, rock band front man and family man mountaineer. From stem cells, muscle development and transcriptional regulation, Dr. Olson has dedicated his career to deciphering the mechanism that controls development of the heart, cardiovascular system and skeletal muscle tissue.

It was thanks to her clinical training as a pediatric neurologist that Dr. Huda Zoghbi first unveiled a passion for researching neurogenetics. Early in her career, Dr. Zoghbi says learning how devastating neurological disorders are for patients was tough. However, she says it was even harder to not know what caused the disorders she saw in her young patients in the first place. From there, Dr. Zoghbi decided to study molecular biology and genetics to identify the underlying causes of certain diseases in hopes of improving their management.