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would be arthritically crippled. “I was frustrated that the doctors
were so limited in what they could do, so I was inspired to looking
into new technologies. At the time I didn’t even know that biomedical
engineering as a field existed.”
After getting his PhD in chemistry at Georgia Tech, where he worked on
creating new orthopedic materials, Case Western Reserve recruited him.
They needed somebody with a background in chemistry to make materials
for brain implants. Capadona jumped at the chance: “I was like, wow, that’s
so cool—I’m a chemist and I get to do brain surgery!”

SCIENTISTS AS DETECTIVES
“This will probably sound corny, but one of the first careers I got excited
about was being a detective,” Liz Shepherd said. “I went to a police station
that opened in my town when I was about seven, and I remember going to
the detective unit and thinking that looking for clues and solving a mystery
was so cool.” About that time, scientists were beginning to sequence the
human genome, and her father encouraged her to read books on genetics.
“Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I think that was how I transferred my
interest from detective clue searching to biological clue searching.” She
studied microbiology in college. She also was in a summer competition
sponsored by MIT for students to complete a project in synthetic biology.
“It was such a cool demonstration of how you could engineer biology,”
Shepherd said.
Paul Miller was interested in science and math in high school and
thought he might become a doctor. But he took a biochemistry class
in college where the professor emphasized the nature of biochemical
pathways in diseases. What would happen if cells were unable to produce
the enzyme responsible for converting ammonia into urea, for example?
“That class caused me to switch my focus,” Miller said, who went
on to earn his PhD in microbiology. He initially focused on discovering
new antibiotics—“trying to figure out how to kill bacteria”—and now he’s
creating new, beneficial microbes.

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