Category: Undergraduate Alumni

Pathology and the Allure of Analytical Thinking

Susan Fuhrman ’75 pursued pathology because she liked providing clear answers to diagnostic questions, and has spent her retirement making complex beaded jewelry, a hobby she started more than 30 years ago as a foil for the stresses of work.

Kathryn M. O'Neill | Slice of MIT
October 7, 2025

Susan Fuhrman ’75 became a pathologist because she likes providing clear answers to diagnostic questions. “As opposed to guessing what people have, you’ve got the lab results, you have reviewed the pathology slides,” she says. “It’s pretty analytical. Your answer is the answer.”

That clarity of focus was never more valuable than in 2020, when Fuhrman was charged with answering the question everyone was asking: Is it Covid?

As the system director for pathology and laboratory services at OhioHealth, a major hospital system based in Columbus, Ohio, Fuhrman led efforts to address the epidemic—through hospital protocols and, of course, testing—all while fielding seemingly endless requests for her expertise in identifying disease.

“Everybody—from hospital vice presidents to the chief medical officer for the system— was calling me late at night and multiple times on weekends. It was incredible,” she says.

Within a year, the system’s labs had performed over half a million Covid tests and Fuhrman had been featured several times in CAP Today, a publication of the College of American Pathologists. She discussed general testing challenges as well as whom to test when and on which testing platform.

As it happened, however, Fuhrman was already famous thanks to work dating back to the 1980s.

Understanding Renal Cancer

The daughter of two chemists, Fuhrman majored in biology at MIT and earned her medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1978. She then went to the University of Minnesota Medical Center for her residency in pathology and laboratory medicine and found herself in need of a research topic. “I remember asking the head of our surgical pathology department, Dr. Juan Rosai, ‘What is a question in pathology that hasn’t been answered?’” she says. “He said, ‘Well, we don’t have a good way of determining which renal cell cancers have a bad prognosis. Currently we go by size, but there must be more than that. No one’s cracked the code. Why don’t you try that?’”

So, Fuhrman teamed up with another doctor at the Minneapolis veterans hospital, Dr. Catherine Limas, and together they developed and proposed a set of parameters to grade kidney cancers that might predict cancer outcomes. Then, Fuhrman did the painstaking work of reviewing and analyzing thousands of tumor slides, as well as cancer registry clinical data and medical charts. Her husband, Larry Lasky ’72—whom she had met at MIT and who also became a pathologist—programmed the analysis and helped her run the data she found through an early computer. “I input everything with computer cards and a teletype, super primitive stuff,” she says.

The data produced clear patterns in the predictive value of the appearance of cell nuclei, and the three published a paper proposing a grading system classifying which renal tumors are most aggressive and likely to spread based on their findings. The system, which is still the standard, is known as the Fuhrman Nuclear Grade for Clear Cell Renal Carcinoma.

American Board of Pathology President

After her residency, Fuhrman taught laboratory medicine to senior medical students as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota for 12 years before moving to Ohio in 1994. In addition to working at OhioHealth, Fuhrman served for several years as president and CEO of CORPath, a private pathology practice. In 2022, she served a term as president of the American Board of Pathology, which later named her a life trustee in honor of her many years of service.

Fuhrman retired at the end of 2020 and has since spent much of her time making beaded jewelry—a hobby she started 35 years ago as a foil to work. “The job was stressful, and beading uses a totally different part of your brain. The left side can rest,” she says. “I can sit and sort beads by size and color for hours. That’s really weird and mindless, but I love it. I also love bead weaving; it’s like physics and architecture, building beautiful, structurally sound pieces from tiny beads.”

She creates elaborate bracelets and necklaces, often giving them away to friends or donating them to charity. “Jewelry making doesn’t pay very well, but I’m very lucky I don’t need to support myself on my hobby,” she says. “I do this for me.”

Ophthalmologist Puts Mind and Hand to Art

Carmel Mercado ’09 describes herself as “existing at the intersection of health and art.” A Seattle-based pediatric ophthalmologist, Mercado is also a visual artist whose whimsical illustrations and colorful animal characters can be found in places as varied as a children’s hospital and a microbrewery.

Sara Shay | MIT Technology Review
July 26, 2025

Carmel Mercado ’09 describes herself as “existing at the intersection of health and art.” A Seattle-based pediatric ophthalmologist, Mercado is also a visual artist whose whimsical illustrations and colorful animal characters can be found in places as varied as a children’s hospital and a microbrewery.

Looking back, Mercado says that even as a premed biology major at MIT she was pursuing both paths. She took a First-Year Advising Seminar in the arts and found a mentor in Michèle Oshima, then director of student and artist-in-residence programs at MIT’s Office of the Arts, who encouraged her to apply for the MIT Arts Scholars program. That gave her the opportunity to showcase her work in a gallery at MIT.

Mercado’s next stop was medical school at Johns Hopkins (she graduated in 2014). There, too, she gravitated toward opportunities for artistic expression, such as designing T-shirts and posters for an event welcoming prospective students. “That kind of helped me get through some darker days when I was really tired or really overwhelmed by the medical part of it,” she says.

She chose ophthalmology as her specialty in part because she found the eye itself visually appealing. “The first time I saw the fundus, the retina, the back of the eye, it was so beautiful to me,” she says. “Just looking at the optic nerve, the colors, the placement, I thought about how amazing it is that we can get such beautiful and complex imagery of our world from what looks to most people like a blob of jelly.”

Initially, Mercado assumed art would take a backseat to her medical career, but time in Japan—including a MISTI summer internship in Kobe—led her to realize she had other options. She connected with a mentor, Kenji Watanabe, while studying the history of medicine at Keio University in Tokyo during medical school. Watanabe “showed me a very different lifestyle,” she says: He didn’t limit his work to academia. “He had this really cool niche where he could do all this policy work. He was traveling to different countries to meet up with other physicians. It was eye-opening,” Mercado says. “He made me realize you can shape your career and your life to be able to pursue your passions. You shouldn’t just accept the traditional way. Being exposed to that early on probably gave me the courage to do what I’m doing now.”

As a practicing ophthalmologist, she began to involve art in her work by designing patient materials featuring characters she created. Colleagues noticed and offered her commissions. About four years ago, Mercado decided to pursue art full-time. The problem: She wasn’t sure how to promote herself. “I just about tried everything to see what would stick,” she says. She started an Etsy page and social media accounts, and she applied to art shows, art walks, and galleries. After about a year, her efforts paid off, and she started to get invitations for projects.

She has since exhibited her work in juried shows and galleries in the Boston, Orlando, and Seattle areas and has received commissions for public art from several cities in Washington. She even has a piece in the permanent gallery at Japan’s Sobana Museum.

Despite her artistic success, Mercado says she eventually missed the problem-solving and patient care involved in clinical work. She started tinkering with her schedule and settled on a roughly 60-40 split in favor of medicine.

In addition to seeing patients, she continues to pursue art projects, working mostly with acrylics and mixed media on canvas and with digital illustration; her style reflects her experiences with children and her observations of wildlife and folk art around the world, especially in Japan.

“I’ve found a space where I’m happy,” she says, “and where it feels a little bit more balanced for me.”

This story also appears in the July/August issue of MIT Alumni News magazine, published by MIT Technology Review. 

Student spotlight: Aria Eppinger ’24

The multitalented member of the varsity swim team graduated with her undergraduate degree in computer science and molecular biology in 2024 and will complete her MEng this month.

Jane Halpern | Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
May 9, 2025

This interview is part of a series of short interviews from the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, called Student Spotlights. Each spotlight features a student answering their choice of questions about themselves and life at MIT. Today’s interviewee, Aria Eppinger ’24, graduated with her undergraduate degree in Course 6-7 (Computer Science and Molecular Biology) last spring. This spring, she will complete her MEng in 6-7. Her thesis, supervised by Ford Professor of Engineering Doug Lauffenburger in the Department of Biological Engineering, investigates the biological underpinnings of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm birth and preeclampsia, by applying polytope-fitting algorithms.

Q: Tell us about one teacher from your past who had an influence on the person you’ve become.

A: There are many teachers who had a large impact on my trajectory. I would first like to thank my elementary and middle school teachers for imbuing in me a love of learning. I would also like to thank my high school teachers for not only teaching me the foundations of writing strong arguments, programming, and designing experiments, but also instilling in me the importance of being a balanced person. It can be tempting to be ruled by studies or work, especially when learning and working are so fun. My high school teachers encouraged me to pursue my hobbies, make memories with friends, and spend time with family. As life continues to be hectic, I’m so grateful for this lesson (even if I’m still working on mastering it).

Q: Describe one conversation that changed the trajectory of your life.

A: A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to chat with Warren Buffett. I was nervous at first, but soon put to ease by his descriptions of his favorite foods — hamburgers, French fries, and ice cream — and his hitchhiking stories. His kindness impressed and inspired me, which is something I carry with me and aim to emulate all these years later.

Q: Do you have any pets?

A: I have one dog who lives at home with my parents. Dodger, named after “Artful Dodger” in Oliver Twist, is as mischievous as beagles tend to be. We adopted him from a rescue shelter when I was in elementary school.

Q: Are you a re-reader or a re-watcher — and if so, what are your comfort books, shows, or movies?

A: I don’t re-read many books or re-watch many movies, but I never tire of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” I bought myself an ornately bound copy when I was interning in New York City last summer. Austen’s other novels, especially “Sense and Sensibility,” “Persuasion,” and “Emma,” are also favorites, and I’ve seen a fair number of their movie and miniseries adaptations. My favorite adaptation is the 1995 BBC production of “Pride and Prejudice” because of the cohesion with the original book and the casting of the leads, as well as the touches and plot derivations added by the producer and director to bring the work to modern audiences. The adaptation is quite long, but I have fond memories of re-watching it with some fellow Austinites at MIT.

Q: If you had to teach a really in-depth class about one niche topic, what would you pick?

A: There are two types of people in the world: those who eat to live, and those who live to eat. As one of the latter, I would have to teach some sort of in-depth class on food. Perhaps I would teach the science behind baking chocolate cake, or churning the perfect ice cream. Or maybe I would teach the biochemistry of digesting. In any case, I would have to have lots of hands-on demos and reserve plenty for taste-testing!

Q: What was the last thing you changed your mind about?

A: Brisket! I never was a big fan of brisket until I went to a Texas BBQ restaurant near campus, The Smoke Shop BBQ. Growing up, I had never had true BBQ, so I was quite skeptical. However, I enjoyed not only the brisket but also the other dishes. The Brussels sprouts with caramelized onions is probably my favorite dish, but it feels like a crime to say that about a BBQ place!

Q: What are you looking forward to about life after graduation? What do you think you’ll miss about MIT?

A: I’m looking forward to new adventures after graduation, including working in New York City and traveling to new places. I cross-registered to take Intensive Italian at Harvard this semester and am planning a trip to Italy to practice my Italian, see the historic sites, visit the Vatican, and taste the food. Non vedo l’ora di viaggiare all’Italia! [I can’t wait to travel to Italy!]

While I’m excited for what lies ahead, I will miss MIT. What a joy it is to spend most of the day learning information from a fire hose, taking a class on a foreign topic because the course catalog description looked fun, talking to people whose viewpoint is very similar or very different from my own, and making friends that will last a lifetime.

Staff Spotlight: Lighting up biology’s basement lab

Senior Technical Instructor Vanessa Cheung ’02 brings the energy, experience, and excitement needed to educate students in the biology teaching lab.

Samantha Edelen | Department of Biology
April 29, 2025

For more than 30 years, Course 7 (Biology) students have descended to the expansive, windowless basement of Building 68 to learn practical skills that are the centerpiece of undergraduate biology education at the Institute. The lines of benches and cabinets of supplies that make up the underground MIT Biology Teaching Lab could easily feel dark and isolated.

In the corner of this room, however, sits Senior Technical Instructor Vanessa Cheung ’02, who manages to make the space seem sunny and communal.

“We joke that we could rig up a system of mirrors to get just enough daylight to bounce down from the stairwell,” Cheung says with a laugh. “It is a basement, but I am very lucky to have this teaching lab space. It is huge and has everything we need.”

This optimism and gratitude fostered by Cheung is critical, as MIT undergrad students enrolled in classes 7.002 (Fundamentals of Experimental Molecular Biology) and 7.003 (Applied Molecular Biology Laboratory) spend four-hour blocks in the lab each week, learning the foundations of laboratory technique and theory for biological research from Cheung and her colleagues.

Running toward science education

Cheung’s love for biology can be traced back to her high school cross country and track coach, who also served as her second-year biology teacher. The sport and the fundamental biological processes she was learning about in the classroom were, in fact, closely intertwined.

“He told us about how things like ATP [adenosine triphosphate] and the energy cycle would affect our running,” she says. “Being able to see that connection really helped my interest in the subject.”

That inspiration carried her through a move from her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to pursue an undergraduate degree at MIT, and through her thesis work to earn a PhD in genetics at Harvard Medical School. She didn’t leave running behind either: To this day, she can often be found on the Charles River Esplanade, training for her next marathon.

She discovered her love of teaching during her PhD program. She enjoyed guiding students so much that she spent an extra semester as a teaching assistant, outside of the one required for her program.

“I love research, but I also really love telling people about research,” Cheung says.

Cheung herself describes lab instruction as the “best of both worlds,” enabling her to pursue her love of teaching while spending every day at the bench, doing experiments. She emphasizes for students the importance of being able not just to do the hands-on technical lab work, but also to understand the theory behind it.

“The students can tend to get hung up on the physical doing of things — they are really concerned when their experiments don’t work,” she says. “We focus on teaching students how to think about being in a lab — how to design an experiment and how to analyze the data.”

Although her talent for teaching and passion for science led her to the role, Cheung doesn’t hesitate to identify the students as her favorite part of the job.

“It sounds cheesy, but they really do keep the job very exciting,” she says.

Using mind and hand in the lab

Cheung is the type of person who lights up when describing how much she “loves working with yeast.”

“I always tell the students that maybe no one cares about yeast except me and like three other people in the world, but it is a model organism that we can use to apply what we learn to humans,” Cheung explains.

Though mastering basic lab skills can make hands-on laboratory courses feel “a bit cookbook,” Cheung is able to get the students excited with her enthusiasm and clever curriculum design.

“The students like things where they can get their own unique results, and things where they have a little bit of freedom to design their own experiments,” she says. So, the lab curriculum incorporates opportunities for students to do things like identify their own unique yeast mutants and design their own questions to test in a chemical engineering module.

Part of what makes theory as critical as technique is that new tools and discoveries are made frequently in biology, especially at MIT. For example, there has been a shift from a focus on RNAi to CRISPR as a popular lab technique in recent years, and Cheung muses that CRISPR itself may be overshadowed within only a few more years — keeping students learning at the cutting edge of biology is always on Cheung’s mind.

“Vanessa is the heart, soul, and mind of the biology lab courses here at MIT, embodying ‘mens et manus’ [‘mind and hand’],” says technical lab instructor and Biology Teaching Lab Manager Anthony Fuccione.

Support for all students

Cheung’s ability to mentor and guide students earned her a School of Science Dean’s Education and Advising Award in 2012, but her focus isn’t solely on MIT undergraduate students.

In fact, according to Cheung, the earlier students can be exposed to science, the better. In addition to her regular duties, Cheung also designs curriculum and teaches in the LEAH Knox Scholars Program. The two-year program provides lab experience and mentorship for low-income Boston- and Cambridge-area high school students.

Paloma Sanchez-Jauregui, outreach programs coordinator who works with Cheung on the program, says Cheung has a standout “growth mindset” that students really appreciate.

“Vanessa teaches students that challenges — like unexpected PCR results — are part of the learning process,” Sanchez-Jauregui says. “Students feel comfortable approaching her for help troubleshooting experiments or exploring new topics.”

Cheung’s colleagues report that they admire not only her talents, but also her focus on supporting those around her. Technical Instructor and colleague Eric Chu says Cheung “offers a lot of help to me and others, including those outside of the department, but does not expect reciprocity.”

Professor of biology and co-director of the Department of Biology undergraduate program Adam Martin says he “rarely has to worry about what is going on in the teaching lab.” According to Martin, Cheung is ”flexible, hard-working, dedicated, and resilient, all while being kind and supportive to our students. She is a joy to work with.”

Alumni Profile: Desmond Edwards, SB ’22

An interest in translating medicine for a wider audience

School of Science
February 6, 2025

Growing up hearing both English and Patois in rural Jamaica, he always had an interest in understanding other languages, so he studied French in high school and minored in it at MIT. As a child with persistent illnesses, he was frustrated that doctors couldn’t explain the “how” and “why” of what was happening in his body. “I wanted to understand how an entity so small that we can’t even see it with most microscopes is able to get into a massively intricate human body and completely shut it down in a matter of days,” he says.

Edwards, now an MIT graduate and a PhD candidate in microbiology and immunology at Stanford University—with a deferred MD admission in hand as well—feels closer to understanding things. The financial support he received at MIT from the Class of 1975 Scholarship Fund, he says, was one major reason that he chose MIT.

Support for research and discovery

I took a three-week Independent Activities Period boot camp designed to expose first-years with little or no research background to basic molecular biology and microbiology techniques. We had guidance from the professor and teaching assistants, but it was up to us what path we took. That intellectual freedom was part of what made me fall in love with academic research. The lecturer, Mandana Sassanfar, made it her personal mission to connect interested students to Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program placements, which is how I found myself in Professor Rebecca Lamason’s lab.

At the end of my first year, I debated whether to prioritize my academic research projects or leave for a higher-paying summer internship. My lab helped me apply for the Peter J. Eloranta Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, which provided funding that allowed me to stay for the summer, and I ended up staying in the lab for the rest of my time at MIT. One paper I coauthored (about developing new genetic tools to control pathogenic bacteria’s gene expression) was published this year.

French connections

French is one of the working languages of many global health programs, and being able to read documents in their original language has been helpful because many diseases that I care about impact Francophone countries like those in sub-Saharan and west Africa. In one French class, we had to analyze an original primary historical text, so I was able to look at an outbreak of plague in the 18th century and compare their public health response with ours to Covid-19. My MIT French classes have been useful in some very cool ways that I did not anticipate.

Translating medicine for the masses

When I go home and talk about my research, I often adapt folk stories, analogies, and relatable everyday situations to get points across since there might not be exact Patois words or phrases to directly convey what I’m describing. Taking these scientific concepts and breaking them all into bite-size pieces is important for the general American public too. I want to lead a scientific career that not only advances our understanding and treatment of infectious diseases, but also positively impacts policy, education, and outreach. Right now, this looks like a combination of being an academic/medical professor and eventually leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Alumni Profile: Matthew Dolan, SB ’81

From Bench to Bedside and Beyond

Lillian Eden | Department of Biology
January 16, 2025

Matthew Dolan, SB ‘81, worked in the U.S. and abroad during a fascinating time in the field of immunology and virology.

In medical school, Matthew Dolan, SB ‘81, briefly considered specializing in orthopedic surgery because of the materials science nature of the work — but he soon realized that he didn’t have the innate skills required for that type of work. 

“I’ll be honest with you — I can’t parallel park,” he jokes. “You can consider a lot of things, but if you find the things that you’re good at and that excite you, you can hopefully move forward with those.” 

Dolan certainly has, tackling problems from bench to bedside and beyond. Both in the U.S. and abroad through the Air Force, Dolan has emerged as a leader in immunology and virology, and has served as Director of the Defense Institute for Medical Operations. He’s worked on everything from foodborne illnesses and Ebola to biological weapons and COVID-19, and has even been a guest speaker on NPR’s Science Friday. 

“This is fun and interesting, and I believe that, and I work hard to convey that — and it’s contagious,” he says. “You can affect people with that excitement.” 

Pieces of the Puzzle

Dolan fondly recalls his years at MIT, and is still in touch with many of the “brilliant” and “interesting” friends he made while in Cambridge. 

He notes that the challenges that were the most rewarding in his career were also the ones that MIT had uniquely prepared him for. Dolan, a Course 7 major, naturally took many classes outside of Biology as part of his undergraduate studies: organic chemistry was foundational for understanding toxicology while studying chemical weapons, while pathogens like Legionella, which causes pneumonia and can spread through water systems like ice machines or air conditioners, are solved at the interface between public health and ecology.

Man sitting on couch next to white dog with pointy ears.
Matthew Dolan stateside with his German Shepherd Sophie. Photo courtesy of Matthew Dolan.

“I learned that learning can be a high-intensity experience,” Dolan recalls. “You can be aggressive in your learning; you can learn and excel in a wide variety of things and gather up all the knowledge and knowledgeable people to work together towards solutions.”

Dolan, for example, worked in the Amazon Basin in Peru on a public health crisis of a sharp rise in childhood mortality due to malaria. The cause was a few degrees removed from the immediate problem: human agriculture had affected the Amazon’s tributaries, leading to still and stagnant water where before there had been rushing streams and rivers. This change in the environment allowed a certain mosquito species of “avid human biters” to thrive.  

“It can be helpful and important for some people to have a really comprehensive and contextual view of scientific problems and biological problems,” he says. “It’s very rewarding to put the pieces in a puzzle like that together.” 

Choosing To Serve

Dolan says a key to finding meaning in his work, especially during difficult times, is a sentiment from Alsatian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer: “The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”

One of Dolan’s early formative experiences was working in the heart of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, at a time when there was no effective treatment. No matter how hard he worked, the patients would still die. 

“Failure is not an option — unless you have to fail. You can’t let the failures destroy you,” he says. “There are a lot of other battles out there, and it’s self-indulgent to ignore them and focus on your woe.” 

Lasting Impacts

Dolan couldn’t pick a favorite country, but notes that he’s always impressed seeing how people value the chance to excel with science and medicine when offered resources and respect. Ultimately, everyone he’s worked with, no matter their differences, was committed to solving problems and improving lives. 

Dolan worked in Russia after the Berlin Wall fell, on HIV/AIDS in Moscow and Tuberculosis in the Russian Far East. Although relations with Russia are currently tense, to say the least, Dolan remains optimistic for a brighter future. 

“People that were staunch adversaries can go on to do well together,” he says. “Sometimes, peace leads to partnership. Remembering that it was once possible gives me great hope.” 

Dolan understands that the most lasting impact he has had is, likely, teaching: time marches on, and discoveries can be lost to history, but teaching and training people continues and propagates. In addition to guiding the next generation of healthcare specialists, Dolan also developed programs in laboratory biosafety and biosecurity with the State Department and the Defense Department, and taught those programs around the world. 

“Working in prevention gives you the chance to take care of process problems before they become people problems — patient care problems,” he says. “I have been so impressed with the courageous and giving people that have worked with me.”