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A University of Maine graduate has been named as one of the country’s most promising young scientists, according to Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30.”
The magazine’s project highlights 30 individuals under the age of 30 making a difference in 12 different fields, including science, technology, food and wine, music, and media.
Ryan Tewhey of Gorham made the cut at age 29 for his work “using DNA sequencing to figure out what makes the MRSA super-germ so very deadly and hard to kill,” according to the list.
“It’s a nice honor and a really impressive list of people to be included with,” Tewhey wrote in an email.
Tewhey graduated from UMaine in 2005 with degrees in both molecular and cellular biology and biochemistry. He is currently a graduate student at the University of California San Diego working toward his Ph.D. in biology. He conducts research in a lab at the Scripps Translational Science Institute, located at the Scripps Research Institute in California.
Tewhey said he has always been “science minded” and was able to gain valuable experience in Orono as an undergraduate.
“Once I got to UMaine those interests [in sciences] became cemented with the exposure to research and some really great lab classes,” he wrote. “I couldn’t have asked for a better school to attend. UMaine is in a great location, and I made a lot of great friends.”
After graduation, Tewhey spent two years at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which he said was a “great experience and helped me decide if pursuing a career in science was really for me.”
Tewhey then traveled to California for graduate school, where he has been researching MRSA, a drug-resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus — a common cause of staph infections — and sequencing the genomes of pathogens collected from San Diego county hospitals.
He said about one-third of the U.S. population harmlessly carries S. aureus, which “likes to live in your nose.”
“MRSA also has genes that tend to make it more virulent than normal S. aureus, [and] as a result not only is it harder to kill, it is also more likely to cause an infection,” Tewhey wrote.
Tewhey’s work is focused on community-acquired MRSA, which is passed around by perfectly healthy people in places like a gym or locker room, as opposed to hospital-acquired MRSA, which may have gained resistance by developing in a clinical setting and has transmission patterns linked to health care facilities.
“What we have noticed is that strains we are specifically looking at may be evolving to become less virulent over time,” Tewhey said of CA-MRSA.
Tewhey has accepted a post-doctoral position at Harvard University to continue studying the evolution of the genomes of pathogens. He said he is excited to return to New England, where he will be able to visit his home state more easily.
“Being in southern California, I miss the seasons the most,” he said. “Nothing is better than a crisp fall day. I also really appreciate how untouched a lot of the state [of Maine] is.”
In an alumni profile on the University of Maine’s website, Tewhey looked back on his time at UMaine, listing among other nostalgia his most memorable college moment — “the Black Bears making it to the NCAA hockey finals during the 01-02 season” — and his favorite professors, including Anne Hanson, who had Tewhey in general microbiology.
“He was a very good student,” Hanson wrote in an email. “What is exciting about Ryan’s success is that he took the skills he learned at the University of Maine and his potential as a successful researcher then used them to excel and become the success he is today.
“I guess I can speak for our department in saying we are all very proud of Ryan and his accomplishments.”
Bangor Daily News