Q: How did you end up at Vassar?
A: I grew up nearby in New Paltz and went to Our Lady of Lourdes High School in Poughkeepsie, but I didn’t really know very much about Vassar. My guidance counselors were pushing me to go to one of the Catholic universities, but when I was going through the college search process, Vassar kept coming up, and I was like, wow — this place down the road, what’s going on there? I wound up visiting one of the other schools, and it was like a pep rally the whole weekend. So I said to myself, yeah — I’m going to Vassar.
Q: You didn’t feel the need to “go away”?
A: I absolutely love New Paltz, so I didn’t really feel like I needed to go very far when it came time for college. New Paltz is where I got into riding through the mountains and going on long runs — ran a few marathons eventually. Joined the swim team. The most popular sport in New Paltz is swimming. Everyone does swimming at some point, and meets are huge. And then there’s rock climbing. Plus — I have a brother who’s six years younger, so I kind of liked being able to see him but still live on campus.
Q: What was your first year like?
A: My first-year roommate was a friend of mine from high school. We got to choose that we wanted to room together, which was a nice thing about Vassar. A lot of schools don’t let you choose. So I didn’t ever have that awkward couple of months — just moved right in, had a ton of fun, got along perfectly well. Couldn’t imagine myself making a better choice. I lived in Josselyn for the first three years. Josselyn is the best dorm — as I’m sure everybody says about their own dorm. Friends of mine would come from other colleges and say, “Wow — this building is so cool; it has such a ‘home’ feel to it.”
Q: Did you come in knowing that you eventually wanted to go to medical school?
A: I knew from the beginning that I wanted to go into medicine, although I wasn’t really sure where in medicine I would fit in. I did a lot of research, both at Vassar and elsewhere. Did a summer of research in the Physics Department at UCLA, and three years of research here in the Physics Department. Had a lot of fun, my advisors were great. And I also did a couple of “shadowing” experiences. Last summer and then once a week during my senior year, I shadowed Doctor Lloyd Gayle in Manhattan. He’s absolutely amazing. He’s the head of surgery at Weill Cornell — a plastic surgeon who works in reconstructive surgery for oncology patients. When he walks through the halls in the hospital, the nurses all stop and say “hi” and have a chat. You can tell he’s having a great time, jokes, laughs — but he works nonstop. I didn’t see him eat the entire time I was shadowing him — all day, we’d do patients nonstop from 7:00 in the morning until 9:00 or 10:00 at night. So I just hung around and got to see everything he did. I don’t happen to want to go into plastic surgery, but seeing what he did and how he interacted with his patients — people just felt so comfortable with him — it was great. He was such a cool guy.
Q: So eventually you want to have a practice?
A: Doing these things — the research and the shadowing — made me realize that I want to go into an MD/PhD program and do research. I love seeing patients, but when I look at doctors — even Doctor Gayle, a plastic surgeon who does try new procedures and stuff like that — I don’t think I would like to do the same set of procedures day after day after day, as opposed to working on something new, learning something new every day. That would be a great way to live, I think. Biophysics is where I’ll probably end up. It’s really interesting. It’s using physics concepts — thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and even all of these great things you learn in quantum mechanics — and then applying them to biological systems, like neurons firing, for example. One of the projects I’m interested in is the epigenome project. Basically, we’ve mapped the genome, but just because you know the genetic sequence doesn’t mean that you have any idea at all what’s going to be expressed. So the epigenome project is looking at what factors — diet, environment, things like that — determine which traits are expressed.
Q: You double majored in Physics and Science, Technology, and Society?
A: I’m really glad I double majored. While I enjoy physics and see myself using it most in my career, I absolutely love the STS program. I wish more people knew about it. It really opens your eyes to such a range of things — sociology, philosophy, environmental science, biology, and so on. I find that I use what I’ve learned in STS in my daily life way more than I use anything else I’ve learned at Vassar. The best course I took at Vassar was a bioethics class with Eric Pahrens. We looked at things like the implications of taking Prozac, for example, and what it would mean if we didn’t have that drug in society, or what if we had had it in the past for people like Abraham Lincoln or Edgar Allen Poe? One of the texts for the course was Lincoln’s Melancholy, which is about how Lincoln’s depression actually may have enabled him to be a great leader because he had learned how to deal with problems in his own life. So normally you’d think, someone has depression — treat it, of course. That’s what doctors do. But sometimes there’s something to be gained from a part of the spectrum of human experience that we would normally consider strictly negative.
Q: What did you do your thesis on?
A: My STS thesis was on robotic telesurgeries — a new way of treating trauma patients in disaster situations. I looked at earthquakes in India, the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and how people couldn’t really get surgical care. So I designed a standard shipping container to house a robotic surgery platform that could be sent to, and operated from, anywhere in the world. You could just send this robotic unit and a team of medical workers, and then any surgical professional from anywhere in the world could donate an hour, as opposed to being called on to donate weeks to go perform surgeries after a disaster. It could get to the place in a very short period of time, enough time to save 40% more lives than is currently possible.
Q: What was the impetus for organizing the cycling championship?
A: Well, it all began when we all went up to the Boston Beanpot race together — that was in the spring of 2006 — and we just had a great time. We drove up together, got a hotel room, talked philosophically about all sorts of things, and just had this great team bonding experience, which culminated with one of our guys, Peter Horn, actually winning the race — the largest collegiate race ever at the time. So after that, we started talking about how cool it would be to bring a race to Vassar. We had no idea what it took to put on a race, but we thought it’d be really cool. So that fall, we got an email from the guy who runs the conference that said, if you’re planning on putting a bid in, we’re going to have a meeting at West Point in November. Two days before the meeting, we decided to do it. So I threw together a Powerpoint with pictures of New Paltz and Vassar and route maps and all this stuff, and the next day, Peter and I went down to West Point. We were sort of sitting there, just the two of us, and all these other teams, really big teams, were there. It was very intimidating. Luckily, I’d done a lot of Powerpoint presentations for my physics research. So I got up there, very professional, and presented this thing that I’d worked on all through the night, and they were floored. It went to a vote, and we wound up winning the bid for the championship over three other cycling powerhouses. Then, the guy who runs the conference said, basically, “Say goodbye to your GPAs, guys.”
Q: Did you have to say goodbye to your GPA?
A: Not exactly. But from that moment until race day, it was nonstop — going to town board meetings, meeting with mayors, meeting with the sheriff, coordinating with the state police, getting cavalcades for the riders to keep the roads clear. And then when race day finally came, it was mind-boggling how successful it was and how wonderful it was to see all these people come to our neck of the woods and really love it. Every person that came up to us said it was the best race they’d been to in decades. It was definitely a great adventure getting it all set up, and it was wonderful to see how much people enjoyed it. They told us they thought we should host nationals!
Q: Wow — it must have been an incredible learning experience!
A: It was. I was surprised by how much I learned about myself while doing it, too. I just never would have pictured myself going to town board meetings and getting a huge bike race approved in two cities. It was completely outside of my normal scope. That’s what Vassar and my STS major prepared me for — branching out and taking different experiences and bringing them into a solid race form.
Q: What was your favorite part?
A: The most rewarding part of that entire weekend for me was the children’s race. All the riders from all the other schools came out to the start line to see the kids race, and this little boy — must have been six? I don’t think he was even in school yet — came up to the line, and there were older kids who were 10 or 12 getting on their bikes. They’re all ready to race. Gun goes off. They take off around the loop, and this little boy was just chugging along, way in front — so tiny, but his bike was going pretty fast. And college students from all these major universities are out in the road by the finish line, waving flags, cheering him on. It looked like the finish of a major professional race. It was more exciting than the finish to the men’s elite race. And that little boy ended up winning — just took it home and won the whole race, beating kids twice his age and pumping his fist in the air when he crossed the line. It was just amazing. I still have a picture of him winning. So hopefully he’s sold on cycling now forever.
