April 2005

Profiles of Success

Edward D. Zdobylak, B.S. 1994, Biological Sciences

Ed Zdobylak knew from an early age that he would be a Purdue Boilermaker. “My father was a Purdue graduate, and I went to Purdue football games from the time I was very young,” he says. “We were a Purdue family from the get-go. Both my sister and I came to Purdue.”

After graduation from Purdue in 1994, he went on to medical school at Indiana University. A career in medicine was in his thoughts even as a high school student in Hobart, Indiana. “It was something I thought about in high school, and I saw the biology major as the logical first step to medical school. I made it through the first two years and then picked the specialization in neurobiology,” he says. “I carried my interest all the way through medical school and my residency in neurology.

Despite Purdue’s size, Ed recalls having many classes with a core group of the same people. “Being a biology major, you pretty much go through the same sequence of courses together, and once you choose a specialization in the junior year, that core group becomes even smaller,” he says. “In neurobiology, I think it was a group of about 35 people.”

Ed remembers his senior year research experience, when he worked with one graduate student and all the faculty members in the neurobiology area. “One thing I clearly remember is when we did a live frog dissection—a very large frog, some type of African frog, I believe,” he says. “We had to stimulate the various nerves and muscles and see the reaction. That has stuck with me all these years. We did a lot of high-end stuff for the time, certainly things that a lot of undergrads don’t get to experience.”

It was in that core of students in the neurobiology specialization that Ed met his future wife, Natasha. “We met in a neurobiology class that all the seniors had to take,” he says. “As seniors with our postgraduate plans set, we had a little more time to develop our relationship than we might have earlier. We married in December 1995.”

Natasha works for Mercer Human Resource Consulting as a Certified Employee Benefits Specialist. “Natasha started out as a math major before she switched to biology,” Ed says. “Now in her career she has returned to the ‘numbers’ field.” Ed and Natasha have two children: Ariana, 4 years, and Justin, 10 months.

Ed believes the rigorous coursework in biology prepared him well for medical school. “I remember the common perception when I was in school was that in order to go to medical school, you had to go to IU for the undergrad degree,” he says. “Of course that wasn’t ever true, though it was the perception. But the fact that so many Purdue graduates get accepted to medical school is proof to me that the solid science background we get makes us well qualified to succeed in medical school.”

Ed acknowledges that being a Science major was hard work. “When I first started at Purdue, a lot of freshmen seemed to look at it as the ‘thirteenth grade’, but it didn’t take long to realize that college was very, very different from high school—much more challenging,” he says. “You might have been an honors student in high school, not having to work very hard for good grades. But at Purdue, lots of other people had been honors students too, and the college classes are really challenging. It’s definitely an adjustment to make from high school to college.”

Ed and Natasha recently established a scholarship in the College of Science in honor of Ed’s father, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in October 2003, and passed away last month. ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, afflicts some 30,000 people in the United States, and the cause is unknown. “It’s very ironic that my interest has been in neurobiology since back to my undergrad days, and ALS is one of the worst neurological diseases that strike humans,” Ed says. “My sister has a master’s degree in physical therapy, and her training definitely helped him during the course of his disease.”

On their decision to establish the Zdobylak ALS/Neuroscience Scholarship for students interested in studying neuroscience, Ed says, “I know the quality of students coming out of Purdue,” he says. “One of those great minds that will come out of Purdue and go on to graduate school or medical school might someday be the one to do the research, or work with a research based industry and find a cure.”

Another purpose of the scholarship is to raise awareness about ALS. “Most people would be very surprised to know that someone is diagnosed with ALS every 90 minutes,” Ed says. “So one of our goals in establishing this scholarship is to help students learn about ALS.”

The first Zdobylak/ALS Neuroscience Scholarship will be awarded at the College of Science Honors Reception on Sunday, April 17.

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