Page 10 - My FlipBook

Pan’s focus paid off. After Mao died in 1976, political reform came
to China, and students were allowed to take college entrance exams. He
scored very well on both mathematics and physics. Much to his dismay, he
was compelled to major in physics—a field he found “not very interesting.”
Knowing that he would never become a mathematician, Pan earned a
master’s degree in biophysics at a Chinese university. He came to the
United States to further his education, and his interest in the retina was
cemented when he studied with a retina researcher at State University of
New York–Buffalo for his PhD.
Chris Towne always thought he’d be a lawyer. As a kid growing up
in Australia, one of his favorite movies was the military legal drama A
Few Good Men. When he went to college, he took some biology classes.
“Evolution was just the greatest concept—I was blown away!” But he
thought his law lectures were boring. “I was really intrigued by the
scientific method,” Towne said. “I
wanted to make a real change, and
coming up with an idea that nobody
ever had before was just so exciting
to me.” He got an undergraduate
degree in biotechnology and went to
Switzerland to earn his PhD, working in
a lab that studied gene therapy.
“I’m not that interested in
discovering a new pathway in a cell,”
Towne said. “I’d rather come up with
creative methods of helping an animal
live longer, remove their pain or relieve
their depression.”
Khalid Shah remembers being
Chris Towne focuses his gene
therapy research on pain relief. a very curious boy when he was
He is motivated by a desire to young. Shah, who grew up in Kashmir,
make innovations that will help
people live better lives, free from remembers that when he and his
suffering.

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