Class of 2013: What Starts Here Changes the World (Seriously)

Reba Carethers has taken on poverty, diabetes, AIDS and prenatal care during her time at the School of Nursing, but she’s just getting started. In May and June 2012, the Angleton, Texas, native traveled to Ghana to work with pregnancy / maternal and child health programs, where she helped to create training materials to promote healthier pregnancies. A key source of inspiration for Carethers comes from world-renowned physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer, chief strategist and co-founder of Partners In Health (PIH), an organization founded in 1987 to deliver health care to the residents of Haiti. During her junior year, Carethers served as president and Steering Committee member of FACE AIDS, a student organization under the auspices of PIH, organizing World AIDS Day on campus and helping to raise $7,000 to revitalize a health center in Rwanda. As a public health intern last summer, she trained at Johns Hopkins University before heading to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to work on diabetes research, a project that won second prize at the Sanford Children’s Hospital Science Festival. She says she decided to enroll in nursing school because nurses, who clearly get the most patient interaction, are in the best position to make changes, whether in patient care, public policy or research. “Nurses put the plan into action,” Carethers says. Her next milestones? Becoming a critical care nurse practitioner with a master’s degree in public health, then pursuing a doctorate in nursing and continuing her research into health disparities among different populations.

The main thing you need to know about Boulder, Colo., native Will Berdanier is that he’s an NAUI-certified Master Scuba Diver. Oh, and he’s very good at violin, is an Eagle Scout, has been a leader on campus and is by all accounts a really nice guy. Almost forgot: He’s done cutting-edge research investigating methods for using relativistic beams of heavy ions to compress a pellet of fuel to extremely high temperatures and pressures (see the video for more on that). The physics and mathematics double major also been part of a team working on particle accelerator technologies that might someday help make compact accelerators for a variety of applications, such as medical therapy and homeland security. As a result of that research — and exceptional academic performance in every respect — he’s been awarded a Marshall Scholarship and will spend the next two to three years at Cambridge University in England, earning two master’s degrees. One is a legendary Cambridge degree, known as “Part III of the Mathematical Tripos,” that covers advanced topics in pure and applied mathematics. The other is in theoretical physics. After that he plans to return to the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in physics.

Leon Dean had been working on “block copolymers,” self-assembling nanomaterials that can be used to pattern silicon wafers, for more than a year. But he knew only failure in trying to get them them to self-assemble into the right pattern — before it finally happened. “For the first time I saw perpendicular lines everywhere on the surface on the film. I had never seen anything like it. I remember running upstairs, telling Chris [Bates], my graduate student supervisor, ‘Hey, you gotta come see this.’” It was an extraordinary moment of discovery for the native of Spokane, Washington, who is graduating with a degree in chemical engineering, and is the son, grandson and great-grandson of engineers. The breakthrough, which was performed in the lab of chemistry and chemical engineering professor C. Grant Willson, led to a few rather significant consequences (read about their collaboration here). Dean is now co-author on a research paper that was published in Science, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world. The overall process that Willson’s lab has developed is being field-tested by a major manufacturer of hard disk drives and may lead to a fivefold increase in the disk’s storage capacity. And the record of accomplishment probably won’t hurt when it’s time for Dean to apply to graduate school, which he plans to attend in two years, after taking some time to attend bible school.

For Isaac Gomez, theatre is not merely entertainment, it’s a life-changing event. The El Paso native created a new work called “The Women of Juarez,” which debuted during the Cohen New Works Festival this year. The play, which incorporates music and dance along with different kinds of storytelling methodologies, shares stories about women who have firsthand experience with the violence and murder of women in the border city of Juarez. “Our goal is to give a space for the stories to be told, uninterrupted and unaltered,” says Gomez, who recently won a George H. Mitchell Award for Academic Excellence. The first person in his immediate family to leave El Paso for college, Gomez was drawn to theatre at the age of 10. He acted in community theatre and school plays in El Paso and did some playwriting, but his perspective about theatre has evolved over time. One of his goals is to apply theatre studies to accomplish positive social change and activate a sense of civic duty in people. “[We want] for people to leave the space and continue to tell the stories” of the women of Juarez. “That’s how you spread awareness,” he says. Gomez, a double major in theatre and dance and journalism, plans to move to Chicago or New York and continue his work as a “theatre practitioner and scholar.”

If Jobby John isn’t starting a new outreach program, he’s volunteering in an existing one. If he’s not bringing health care to the underserved, he’s bringing it to the elderly. While serving as president of the Pharmacy Council, a student government organization, John helped advance Project Collaborate, in which students from pharmacy, nursing and social work come together to provide health screenings to thousands of people in the Austin area and around the state who can’t regularly afford them. Then he started a program — “Know Your Medicine” — that takes pharmacy students into nursing homes and assisted living centers where they inventory residents’ medications to help ensure that doses are clear and medicines aren’t conflicting. Two doctors prescribing two diuretics? Not a good idea. Next, the pharmacy doctoral student wants to start a career as an independent pharmacist, a direction inspired by his grandfather, who operated a pharmacy in India. More than a pharmacy, his grandfather’s place was a community hub, where his grandfather dispensed wise counsel as well as medications. John says he carries the example of his grandfather’s relationship with his patients. “I want to be there when they need me the most,” he says, “And provide them with the education they need to live healthier lives.”

When Damilola Olatayo was 11 years old her parents put her on a plane from Houston to spend a year in Nigeria, where she was born. It was formative. She learned an immense amount about Nigerian culture. In order to keep up with her Nigerian classmates, she had to work much harder in school than she was used to working (no offense, American schools). And she caught malaria, which forever changed her perspective on the importance of accessible medical care. “I was so blessed,” remembers Olatayo, a Gates Millenium Scholar who’s graduating with a degree in neurobiology. “I was in a country where vast amounts people die from contracting the disease, but my aunts and uncles were well off, and my parents were also able to send money, so I got treated and made a full recovery, but I saw the disparities. I saw that money was often the difference between people living and dying. I saw that health is wealth. That experience made me want to be involved in global medicine.” It’s a commitment Olatayo has kept. She has spent the last few years volunteering and working at hospitals, nursing homes and clinics in Austin and Houston (where her family lives). She’s gotten certified as a nursing assistant and medication aide. She’s worked with Texas Exes to help lay the groundwork for a medical school in Austin. And she’ll be spending next year in France and Thailand earning a master’s degree in global studies and international relations. After that she plans to go to medical school. Her ultimate goal is help spread the blessings of good medical care, which we often take for granted in America, to the world. In this short video she talks about her “deep burning desire” to leave the world better than she found it.

Four years ago, Austin native Rebekah Scheuerle was a freshman with a plan. Scheuerle, who developed an interest in science and engineering in middle and high school, set her sights on working for Nicholas Peppas, a pioneer in the field of oral drug delivery. It didn’t take long for the chemical engineering major to earn a coveted spot working in her desired mentor’s lab where she collaborated with chemical and biomedical engineering researchers studying nanoparticles used for oral drug delivery to treat health issues like Crohn’s disease and intestinal cancer. Along the way, Rebekah found time to be president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers for two years, hold offices and memberships in the engineering and chemical engineering honor societies, and played with the Longhorn Band. What’s next? Rebekah is heading across the pond, to the University of Cambridge, to attack world health issues as a graduate student and researcher. Earlier this year, she received the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, given to only 39 American students this year. The award will fund her graduate research, which is focused on developing affordable, efficient and novel therapeutics to fight diseases. “It’s been exciting,” Scheuerle said. “I came to UT, and have had so many opportunities and mentors. Dr. Peppas, as well as a number of other chemical engineering professors, graduate students and peers have been so supportive.” One day, Scheuerle hopes to develop practical and affordable biopharmaceuticals and diagnostics that can be used in developing countries and other resource-limited environments.

Everything changed for Paulina Sosa, a philosophy and psychology double major, when she journeyed to a landfill community in Mexico on a church mission trip. At age 13, she was overwhelmed by a young boy’s desperation for basic needs when she presented him with a couple of trinkets. “I remember thinking that a piece of candy and a toy car wouldn’t mean that much to him,” Sosa says. “He has nothing, so why would this make much of a difference? But to my surprise, he was completely ecstatic and incredibly grateful for this small gift.” That experience kickstarted her life’s mission: Fight and end extreme poverty around the world. She began by joining the ONE Campaign, an international antipoverty advocacy group, and encouraged elected officials in her hometown of Brownsville to help make a difference at home and across the border. While here in college, she found the key to finding sustainable solutions for poverty is through public policy. Her interest in politics intensified as she interned for several political leaders, including Deputy Ciarán Lynch in the Irish House of Parliament in Dublin, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and State Rep. Rene Oliveira (D-Brownsville). Sosa also served as a student representative for the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative University, an annual meeting that brings together students, celebrities, youth organizations and world leaders to take action on global challenges (watch a video she created about her experience at CGI). She then created the ONE-UT Austin student chapter and ONE Austin city chapter, organized a coalition of partnerships with other like-minded Austin groups and gathered the support of elected and community leaders. Her next move is to pursue a master’s degree in public health/global health policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her goal is to become a policy analyst with a government agency that focuses on eradicating extreme poverty.