Junior Receives Prestigious Goldwater Scholarship

By Robin Roger, March 26, 2021

ROTC cadet hopes to conduct pharmaceutical research and become a professor.

Beth Ryan '22 has worked in Associate Professor Scott Ulrich's lab since spring 2020.

Ithaca College Junior Beth Ryan ’22 is one of just 410 students nationally to receive the Barry Goldwater Scholarship.

Presented by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, the award is given annually to sophomores and juniors who plan to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, or engineering. From an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, more than 1,200 students were nominated to compete for the scholarship this year, and only 410 were chosen.

“The Goldwater is one of the oldest and most distinguished and competitive scholarships in STEM,” said Melanie Stein, dean of IC’s School of Humanities and Sciences. “Winning this award reflects the quality of Beth’s work at IC, as well as the promise she shows for future contributions to biochemistry.”

Beth Ryan '22

A biochemistry major from North Carolina and a cadet in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program at Ithaca College — which is offered in partnership with Cornell University — Ryan said she hopes to earn a PhD in chemical biology or medicinal chemistry and conduct pharmaceutical research within the US Army Medical Service Corps. She would eventually like to teach at the university level. Ryan said she plans to use the $7,500 scholarship to go toward tuition or housing for her senior year.

For the last year, Ryan has worked with Scott Ulrich, associate professor of chemistry, on his ongoing research project involving designing and synthesizing inhibitors of the bacterial quorum-sensing pathway. Quorum-sensing is a method of cell-to-cell communication used by bacteria to engage in group behaviors by coordinating population size with gene expression. They are studying how to block harmful bacteria from communicating with each other through chemical messengers.

“Beth can see the big picture and understand the overall goal as well as master the details that make the difference between success and failure...Overall she’s a very talented scientist with a strong foundation of scientific knowledge and an imaginative mind, and she is rapidly gaining an impressive degree of technical talent in the lab.”

Scott Ulrich, associate professor of chemistry

“The main goal of the project,” Ryan said, “is to design inhibitors of an enzyme in the pathway making it so that the chemical signals never get produced. Therefore the bacteria can’t ‘talk’ to one another and they never engage in pathogenic behaviors. Hopefully this work can lead to a new class of antibiotics with a novel target. It’s super neat!”

Ulrich said he has known Ryan since she was a student in his class in fall 2019 and that she began working in his lab in spring 2020.

(From left) ROTC Cadets Annika Gerlach, Ryan and Ariel Staffin. Gerlach and Staffin are both Cornell students in the Class of 2022.

“Beth took on an ambitious topic on a new cancer drug” said Ulrich, who himself learned a lot from Ryan’s work researching cancer cell biology, biochemistry, and organic chemistry. “I didn’t know that much about it when we started, but I sure do now. Beth did an incredible amount of heavy lifting to understand the topic, the experimental data in the papers, and did an incredible job teaching it to me and the other students during her presentations.”

Since then, Ryan has been working on her own experiments.

“She is a careful, diligent, and creative experimentalist,” Ulrich said. “Beth can see the big picture and understand the overall goal as well as master the details that make the difference between success and failure. She has a nimble mind and can thoughtfully redesign experiments when things aren’t working well. Overall she’s a very talented scientist with a strong foundation of scientific knowledge and an imaginative mind, and she is rapidly gaining an impressive degree of technical talent in the lab.”

Ryan also worked as a teaching assistant in IC’s Organic Chemistry 1 and 2 courses, taught by Professor Mike Haaf, chair of the chemistry department, and he said she has the perfect combination of skills for teaching.

Ryan and her fellow ROTC cadets formed the Color Guard at Cortaca 2019, when it was held in MetLife Stadium.

“She is thoughtful and caring, she is consistently prepared for her help sessions, and she has an unusually strong command of the course material,” he said. “In short, she is a natural teacher, and my trust in her work is implicit.”

Haaf also credited Ryan’s tremendous mental fortitude and time management skills.

“Beth is intelligent, creative, attentive, and patient, and her enthusiasm for science is transparent,” Haaf said. “She likes to be challenged, and handles pressure situations with grace and humility. Coupled with her incredible natural ability and enthusiasm, she is one of the best students I’ve had the pleasure to work with, and I have no doubt she will make major contributions to the frontiers of science down the road.”

Te-Wen Lo, associate professor of biology, and one of Ryan’s faculty mentors, said she was thrilled to learn she was a recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship.

“I cannot think of a more deserving human,” Lo said. “Beyond being an exceptional student in the classroom and the research lab, Beth is an exceptional leader. She is one of the most popular teaching assistants in the chemistry department due to her compassion and work ethic.”

Ryan is also vice president of the recently founded IC Women in STEM organization, said Lo, who also mentored IC’s last recipient of the Goldwater Scholarship, Dallas Fonseca ’18, who is now a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, studying in the microbiology, immunology and cancer biology PhD program.