SciTech Alumni - Jamie (Brewer) Miller

Given the scholastic background to attend a myriad of “top-notch” schools, I opted to stay close to home and attend Fairmont State, at least for a semester or two, on a full academic scholarship. I knew I wanted to be a medical researcher and, after all, how in the world could I be adequately prepared to do that with an education from Fairmont State? Very easily, as I found out, with much credit due to the learning environment and the outstanding faculty. During my undergraduate studies, I spent a summer working in the HIV vaccine lab at Johns Hopkins Medical School and was even chosen as the top national applicant to attend a semester study session at the National Institutes of Health. The best part…being surrounded by undergraduates from Ivy League institutions and knowing that even though I came from a school they had never heard of, I, the student from Fairmont State, was academically ranked above them. After completing my undergraduate studies in Biology and Chemistry at Fairmont State, I directly began my Ph.D. studies in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cell Biology at West Virginia University’s Health Sciences Center. In July 2005 I defended my doctoral dissertation on the recovery and role of immune cells after human hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Upon completing my graduate work, I immediately began working as a scientist for the Institute for Scientific Research, Inc., in Fairmont, W.Va. My task is to promote the establishment of biotechnology as a core competency within the institute and to contribute to the establishment of biotechnology within our region, with much of this work being based upon patented work I completed while in graduate school.