Imagine if health care providers were to study your DNA sequence, behaviors and lifestyle, then provide personalized advice to prevent disease and prescribe tailored treatments to improve health. That’s the idea behind “precision medicine.” “The problem,” said Robert Williams, UT Health Science Center-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair for Computational Genomics, “is that everyone of…
Brian Wirth grew up in Montana near Malmstrom Air Force Base and its silo of Minuteman missiles. Going to high school during the height of the Cold War, Wirth credits a physics teacher with fueling his desire to pursue nuclear engineering as a career. Today, Wirth—the UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair in Computational Nuclear Engineering—is an authority…
Thomas Zawodzinski has always loved learning, whether it was literature, biology, chemistry, or engineering. He describes himself as a “blue collar boy” from Buffalo, N.Y., the oldest of seven siblings, and a first-generation college student who paid his college bills with scholarship money and earnings from delivering newspapers. Always an outstanding student, he loved—and still…
Steven Zinkle grew up on a dairy farm “close to nowhere” in Wisconsin. Although he had little exposure to science during high school, he wanted to pursue a career other than farming. As an undergraduate in college, he discovered a passion for nuclear materials research and development. Looking back, he thinks that working on his…