Biological Sciences 2006 Outstanding Alumni

Millicent Goldschmidt (M.S. 1950; Ph.D 1953)

Dr. Millicent Goldschmidt is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Medical School. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor in Microbiology at the Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. In 2005, she was honored with an Exceptional Achievement Award from the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition of the Food and Drug Administration for dedication and significant contributions to the field of public health. The American Society for Microbiology awarded her a Certificate of Lifetime Achievement in 2004 and named an annual lecture at the Texas Branch after her. One of her first professional experiences was coordinating the Baylor Protocol with NASA to plan experiments on lunar materials in 1966-1967.

Barbara Reed (B.S. 1975)

Dr. Barbara Reed is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. She received her M.D. from the Washington University School of Medicine in 1978. While on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Family Practice Faculty Development Fellowship (1981-83), she pursued an M.S. in Public Health at the University of Utah School of Medicine (1984). Dr. Reed’s research interests are in the epidemiology and pathophysiology of vulvodynia and recurrent vaginitis. She has received the Walter Kemp Award from the American Academy of Family Physicians, for the Outstanding Paper in the “American Family Physician.” Dr. Reed serves on NIH Study Sections on Infectious Disease, Reproductive Health, Asthma, and Pulmonary Epidemiology (IRAP), and on Health of the Population (HOP).

Chemistry 2006 Outstanding Alumni

Jonathon Amy (M.S. 1950; Ph.D 1955)

Dr. Jonathon W. Amy grew up in Delaware, Ohio where his father was head of the English Department at Ohio Wesleyan University. He spent the war years in the Mediterranean and the Far East acquiring a taste for sailing and for electronics. He took a Ph.D. at Purdue University working on spectroscopy with Walter Edgell in 1955 and stayed to direct the department’s Instrumentation Facility. Prof. Amy has worked with manufacturers such as Fisher, Aerograph, Varian, Hewlett-Packard, Perkin-Elmer, Galileo, IBM, and Finnigan MAT in perfecting instrumentation. He has made contributions to mass spectrometry, electron spectroscopy, chromatography,and nuclear magnetic resonance. He has been a problem solver par excellence, whether the problem was one of local fire service or the future direction of scientific research in the U.S. Prof. Amy has been recognized by the American Chemical Society through its Chemical Instrumentation Award as well as locally through the George Award for outstanding service to the community. The Chemistry Department’s Amy-Mellon lectureship was established by the analytical faculty to assist their students in perceiving the origins of their subject through personal encounters with some of its pioneers.

Barbara A. Burke (Ph.D 1970)

Dr. Barbara Burke is a professor of chemistry and director of the Science Educational Enhancement Services (SEES) program at California Polytechnic University, Pomona. Her professional work is focused primarily in the field of chemical and science education. Since 1998, she has been a member of NASA’s NOVA leadership team, a nationwide consortium which works to improve science and mathematics education of preservice teachers through the collaboration of faculty in colleges of science and education. Cal Poly Pomona was the first California State University to be accepted into the NOVA program. She developed and became editor (in 2000) of The Journal of Chemical Education’s Online column, “Biographical Sketches of Famous Chemists”, a scholarly, fully referenced website that features only women and minority chemists. Dr. Burke had begun compiling these data in 1994 as part of her involvement with the CSU AMP program. From 1990-2000, Dr. Burke was chair of the editorial committee for the Favorite Demonstration column in The Journal of College Science Teaching, which publishes fully tested and reviewed demonstrations from all the scientific disciplines.

Pedro A. Rodriguez (PhD 1968)

Dr. Pedro (Pete) Rodriguez came to the United States to do graduate work after graduating from the Universidad Central de Venezuela. After earning his doctorate in 1968, he joined The Procter and Gamble Co., where he worked until his retirement in 2000. As a problem solver, Pete developed novel instrumentation and approaches designed to understand the role key organic compounds play in a wide variety of matrices, including products, surface waters, ambient air, or animal fluids. With toxicologists, he addressed biotransformation issues associated with the safety of flavor and perfume materials. His work to understand olfaction and its application to the delivery of perfumes set the current procedure for the delivery of cost-effective perfumes within the company. He worked with product development personnel to find solutions to product stability, flavor, and odor problems. Pete has authored more than 100 external and internal publications, including a book chapter on electronic noses. He has lectured extensively on the topic of ultra-trace organic analyses, and taught chromatography and instrumental analysis as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Chemistry at Xavier University. He is a former member of the American Chemical Society and the organizing committee of the Ohio Valley Chromatography Symposium. In 1990, he was inducted into the Victor Mills Society, created at Procter and Gamble to honor the company's top technologists.

Ronald E. Shoup (BS Math/Chemistry 1974; PhD 1980)

Dr. Ronald Shoup is president of Contract Research Services. He joined Bioanalytical Systems, Inc. in 1978 as a research chemist and is now vice president for research and a member of the board of directors. Dr. Shoup has extensive experience in the development and testing of sensitive analytical instrumentation for commercialization, including specialized chromatographic systems, electrochemical analyzers, and controlling software, as well as the synthesis and characterization of commercial reagents and immobilized enzyme supports and columns for specialized detection of substrates such as glucose, choline, and acetylcholine. He is a member of the chemistry department's external advisory board, the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry, the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, and the Drug Information Association.

Zhong-Yin Zhang (PhD 1990)

Dr. Zhong-Yin Zhang is professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. His research efforts focus on developing novel biochemical, chemical, proteomic, and cellular approaches to study the physiological functions of PTPs. He also studies activity-based and interaction proteomics and chemical genetics. After earning his doctorate from Purdue, Dr. Zhang did postdoctoral training at the Upjohn Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan and the University of Michigan.

Physics 2006 Outstanding Alumni

Virginia Ayres (Ph.D.1985)

Dr. Virginia M. Ayres is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Michigan State University. She earned her Ph.D. in physics from Purdue and two B.A.s in physics and in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests are in nanobiology and nanoelectronics and scanning probe microscopies. Dr. Ayres has received two NASA Faculty Fellowship Awards, two NSF Outstanding Performance Awards, and two international awards from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science and from Tokyo Institute of Technology for research and education in Japan.

John Parker (Ph.D 1988)

Dr. John Parker is vice president of Cabot Microelectronics. He earned his B.S. in Physics at Northeastern Illinois University in 1983.John has spent his career contributing to the commercialization of emerging technologies, predominantly focused in nanotechnology and entrepreneurial development. He was formerly employed at Argonne National Laboratory as a research associate before joining Nanophase Technologies Corp., where he served as co-founder and chief scientist and then as CTO/VP Technology and Manufacturing. In 1999, John was the director of engineering at Cirqon Technologies Corp., before joining Cabot in 2002. He holds nine US and international patents, has authored over forty technical and scientific publications, and contributed to two textbooks on nanotechnology. He organized and edited five Materials Research Society symposia on nanotechnology. John received the 1998 Entrepreneur of the Year award from the Research Directors Association and the 1995 R&D 100 Award presented by R&D Magazine (Cahners Publications).

James Vickers (BS 1986)

Dr. James Vickers is chief technology officer and founder of T-Metrics. Seeking work experience after graduation from Purdue, he deferred graduate school and accepted employment at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, where surrounded by two thousand Ph. D. scientists, he studied semiconductor surface physics using an ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscope. Eventually he succumbed to group mentality and entered the Physics program at the University of California in Berkeley, where he earned his own Ph. D. in 1996. Although he had intended to remain in solid state physics, he became, instead, a rocket scientist studying atmospheric physics, ultimately launching four sounding rockets and one small satellite during his days as a graduate student and then a post-doc. After the rigor of working four years on most aspects of a satellite project, and the excitement of its launch into a perfect orbit from an experimental rocket that had crashed on its three previous missions, his renewed hopes were, alas, dashed by a common sign error, which caused the spacecraft to align its only solar panel in an anti-sunward direction. Thus left pondering the vagaries of space missions, Dr. Vickers decided a career change was in order and opted for the safety of a Silicon-Valley startup, which he co-founded in 1998 with a fellow Purdue Physics graduate. The company, Optonics, designed and produced a picosecond-timing diagnostic tool akin to a very high-speed optical oscilloscope, which was used for debugging complex integrated circuits. Optonics grew to over forty employees before personality conflicts, culminating in a boardroom arrest, led to its sale to a larger company in 2003. Dr. Vickers is currently pursuing a second startup company, once again with the same fellow Purdue Physics graduate.