Spotlight on BMB Award Winners
Dr. Tyler Kreitz ’09
Tyler Kreitz was the winner of the 2009 BMB award after which he attended medical school at Georgetown University. Following this, he completed a 5-year orthopedic surgery residency at Thomas Jefferson University/Rothman Institute in Philadelphia and then a 1 year spine surgery fellowship at Rush University/Midwest Orthopedics in Chicago. Tyler is currently an orthopedic spine surgeon at a medium sized private practice in New Jersey. He practices all aspects of spine surgery from elective degenerative conditions to level 1 trauma call and spinal cord injury patients. Tyler’s fondest memories at Gettysburg include, in his words “working in the basic science and summer lab programs with Dr. Deckman (Lipsett) and Dr. James. These experiences prepared me for academic research and publications in orthopedic surgery.”
Brian Lauderback ’12
Brian was the winner of the 2012 BMB award, after which he spent 3 years doing graduate research in the University of Pennsylvania Cell and Molecular Biology program with a focus on cancer biology before graduating with a Master’s degree in 2015. In 2016, he joined Stemcell Technologies which is a company that provides cutting edge reagents and instruments for stem cell, cancer, and immunology research. In Brian’s role as a Field Applications Scientist, his primary responsibility is to visit customer labs to demonstrate and provide training on immunomagnetic cell isolation reagents and instruments. Though based in the Boston area, Brian frequently travels to visit labs throughout the eastern half of the US. Brian reflected on his time as a BMB major saying “The laboratory, communication, and problem solving skills I gained at Gettysburg in the BMB program provided an easy transition into graduate research and still impact my success in my current career.”
Dr. Madison Strine ’18
Maddi Strine was the winner of the 2018 BMB award, after which she went on to complete her PhD at Yale University in the Department of Immunobiology. She is currently working with Dr. Liza Konnikova as a Yale School of Medicine Science Fellow, studying mucosal immunology at the fetal-maternal interface. In the next five years she is looking forward to all the cool science that she’ll get to do and transitioning from her Fellows program to establish her own independent research lab at Yale. Maddi’s favorite Gettysburg memories include going out for Wednesday wings at Blue & Gray and trekking around the American Southwest hunting for phage with Alex Guffey (’17 BMB), Veronique Delesalle, and Greg Krukonis.
Jordyn Markle ’22
Jordyn was the winner of the 2022 BMB award and is currently a second-year PhD student in the Pielak Lab at UNC Chapel Hill. Her graduate work aims to understand the effects of macromolecular crowding on protein stability using NMR spectroscopy – in other words, how does the crowded cellular interior affect the proteins that exist in that environment? She says the work has been really interesting so far, and was excited to already present data at a Gordon Conference this past January.
In Jordyn’s words.. “My time at Gettysburg prepared me very well for graduate school. I’ve really come to appreciate the close interaction with professors and wealth of research experiences that I had at Gettysburg, which I’ve now realized was quite a unique undergraduate experience. Being a member of the Frey Lab at Gettysburg for three years was truly invaluable to honing my research skills and finding my interests. Even outside of the Frey Lab, so many of my courses had research built into their curriculum. For example, I really enjoyed X-Lab: Salty & Fatty, where I got to learn new biophysical techniques and practice experimental design. I feel like I have such a better grasp of both hard research techniques and also softer skills like problem solving because of my time and experiences at Gettysburg.”
