The most significant findings in the fields of medicine and science are often made by the top academics on the continent and one key contributor hails from 100 Mile House.
Jeremy Willsey is making leaps and bounds in advancing this field in his work toward a PhD in genetics at the prestigious Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Recently, Nature Medicine (medical/science journal) listed a set of autism papers prepared by Jeremy and his fellow science lab associates at the top of its list of Notable Advances for 2012.
Discover Magazine also listed it as No. 5 in its top 100 Science stories of 2012, and two key autism research organizations have also recognized its importance.
He notes this is a significant validation of his team's success.
“It was very exciting and gratifying in the sense that we had done a very good job of doing the research and presenting it in a very useful format for the rest of the scientific community.
“But, it's always nice to get outside validation that other people believe your research is also important and well done.”
Even more exciting for him, Jeremy says, are the possibilities his lab's research opens up as a way toward further success in isolating the remaining autism genes and eventually treating the disorder.
The team "sequenced" about 1,000 individuals in autism genetic research, but he explains what really “brought it home” was that the research paper offers a major step forward in autism gene discovery for the first time in about 40 years.
One of only two grad students participating in the project with a variety of other experts in the field, Jeremy will be the “first author” of the lab's next autism genetics paper.
He says it extends these groundbreaking research results and develops even more medical advances in autism research.
“We believe it is taking huge strides forward in essentially figuring out how these genes all work together. We're very, very excited about it and we've been working around the clock to get this published.”
After undergoing all of his early education in South Cariboo schools boosted by plenty of family support for pursuing his academic goals, he had formed a foundation that initially led him to post-secondary studies in science.
Jeremy explains he was determined to further his studies of science by the time he graduated from Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School.
“I wanted to understand it completely. I've never really been OK with just the simple answer.
“During high school, I was very interested in all science, physics, chemistry and biology, and I was very into math as well.”
Jeremy says he formed the desire to focus on molecular genetics as he approached the end of secondary school, although he didn't fully realize that until later.
“The field had essentially just finished a draft sequence of the human genome [the entirety of hereditary genetic information], so it was a very exciting time to be involved.”
Then, the budding scholar successfully enrolled at Simon Fraser University (SFU) with a four-year, $24,000 Gordon M. Shrum entrance scholarship under his arm, and a quest for knowledge in his soul.
He achieved his Bachelor of Science in a five-year honours degree in molecular biology and biochemistry, with a minor in biology.
By his fifth year, Jeremy had secured further scholarships to sustain his SFU science studies, and he says it was at this crossroads where he was further inspired toward higher education.
The university nominated him as its sole Rhodes Scholar award candidate, which was a “pretty awesome honour in itself,” he explains.
He didn't win that award, but Jeremy notes that had he gotten it, it would have landed him a fully-funded masters degree at England's distinguished Oxford University.
However, that nomination set him on a path to seek a higher standard of education, he says.
Jeremy had to prepare a scholar's study plan as part of that nomination, and he explains that it, together with about two years of undergrad lab experience working on honours' degree research that he “really enjoyed,” solidified his desire to pursue further academic studies.
“I decided I definitely wanted to go to graduate school, so I did my applications in the fall of 2009 at the end of my time at SFU. I got accepted at several schools, but I went and interviewed at Yale, and that was my top choice.”
He also interviewed at Harvard University, but says Yale better suited him.
Jeremy left SFU with the Dean's Convocation Medal for having the highest graduating grade point average (GPA) in its Faculty of Science.
“From SFU, I actually went straight to the PhD program at Yale.”
Now, a full-fledged scholar, he didn't need to do his masters degree separately, he explains, as the Yale program has also earned him a Master of Philosophy, which he'll receive this May.
Halfway through his third year in the PhD program, Jeremy says it usually averages six-and-a-half years to complete, but he's currently on the fast track to finish it in five.
Meanwhile, his illustrious path in academia is being bolstered by about $100,000 each year in fellowships (high-level scholarships).
This includes the standard stipend (a $30,400 salary) for students at that level, but in his case, Yale also paid for his annual tuition (about $50,000) and health care (about $20,000) in an international training grant, which he explains is “very hard” to get.
“They usually only accept one or two students per year from out of the country for each program.”
The stipend ended after two years because the Canadian Institute of Health Research awarded a Doctoral Research Fellowship, which he explains provides $105,000 over three years.
He notes his Yale science lab's main focus is cutting-edge DNA sequencing technology.
“You have to put these pieces together essentially like a puzzle to get the full sequence of the human genome, and that's actually quite computationally intensive.”
The next paper he is publishing jumps right into the theme of his thesis, Jeremy says, adding it takes a team effort to do the research and make the discoveries his lab has accomplished.
“By the end of this year, we expect to have identified between 25 and 50 new autism genes.”
This leads directly into the goal of his research, he notes, addressed in his thesis research and in the new paper.
“So, the next big question now is: how do you put all these genes together to actually understand, at a cellular or molecular level, what is going wrong in autism?”.
For more information on the autism research papers, visit www.nature.com/nm/journal/v18/n12/full/nm1212-1732.html.
