Lisa Ryan:
CLASS OF 1976
North Allegheny High SchoolClass of 1976
Wexford, PA
Harvard University - Medical SchoolClass of 1995
Boston, MA
University of Pittsburgh - Public HealthClass of 1992
Pittsburgh, PA
West Virginia University - MedicineClass of 1983
Morgantown, WV
Pennsylvania State UniversityClass of 1980
State college, PA
Lisa's Story
Life
I could probably write a book, but I'll spare you. After high school, I went to Penn State, main campus, where I'll say that I spent some of the happiest times of my life. I joined a sorority, Phi Mu, and was a little sister at a popular fraternity Sigma Pi, and somehow managed to get my B.S. degree in Microbiology, join the Penn State White Band (where I was first clarinet, first chair Walter Greenwood-ha!) and did undergraduate research at the FDA and the NIH in Bethesda one summer. It was this experience that prompted me to try to make a career as a scientist. So, I got my M.S. in microbiology and immunology at our rival school, WVU (I was born in Morgantown, so this was great).
Along the way, I met an Irish engineer named Niall Ryan at my summer job at Westinghouse and we married in 1981. With my degree in hand in 1983, I first worked at Pitt, then at Allegheny Singer Cancer Research Institute at Allegheny General Hospital until 1986, when I began my Ph.D. at Pitt in Toxicology.
I graduated with a Ph.D. 6.5 years later, in 1992, right after the birth of our first child, Allison, born in April, 1992, I went to Harvard Medical School/Mass General Hospital to do a postdoctoral fellowship in pulmonary immunology until 1995. Niall died tragically during this time at our home in Wellesley, MA. Allison was 18 months ol...Expand for more
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I was then recruited into my first real career job in 1995, where I moved to Research Triangle Park, NC to work at the EPA as a principal investigator and research biologist in the immunotoxicology branch. I lived in Chapel Hill, NC with Allison.
In 1997, I married Gill Diamond, another scientist, and we now live in Short Hills, NJ. We have two kids, Sara, age 11 and Michael, age 8, in addition to Allison Ryan, who is now 17. We live near NY city and like it a lot. We have lived here almost 10 years. While in NJ, I was first the EPA's science policy advisor for Region 2 (NY, NJ, Puerto Rico and the VI), and in 2000 I became an Assistant Professor at the University of
Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, mainly studying influenza and Herpes virus immunity. I was a medical writer for CommonHealth for 8 months, until my NIH grant was funded and now I've returned to UMDNJ at the Public Health Research Institute as Assistant Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, doing research on influenza virus. So far it's going good. I still freelance as a medical writer for extra money. The kids are great and now we are getting ready to send Allison to college to major in art. She's a fantastic artist.
By the way, I attribute my interest in biology and success to Mr. Czerny and Mr. Davis, my biology teachers at NA.
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