By Lillien Waller

Biology, that science of living organisms, is squishier than others in more ways than one. The options available to biology experts are vast and varied—from funding lifesaving medical research through the NIH to organizing for a living wage for graduate student employees to teaching young people to embrace the sciences and designing experiments that test therapeutic antibodies against autoimmune disease—as these four members of the Commonwealth community prove.

Rowan Heneghan '19: Research Associate, Generate:Biomedicines

“If you try to understand what is happening that makes a human able to function, you can get down to the level of organs,” says Rowan Heneghan ’19, pondering the earliest questions that led her toward cell and molecular biology. “But what makes the organs work? You can get down to the level of cells, but what makes the cells work? As a kid I was really interested in how far you could take it. How do you get to the base level of the molecular pathways and circuits that power us to move through the world? At a certain point, you’re just talking about chemical interactions between a variety of molecules. And that’s what makes a human being.”

A recent graduate of Northeastern University, Rowan is a research associate at Generate:Biomedicines, a medical therapeutics company that uses machine learning to produce monoclonal antibody therapeutics more efficiently than traditional methods. Her work focuses on autoimmune and allergic diseases. She explains: Think of the body as a vast network in which a signal has gone haywire. The goal in treating the disease would be to identify the signal—a key molecule within this network—and create a particular kind of protein, an antibody, that will bind to it, block its path, and make it inert. Rowan’s job is to design experiments that test the functionality of the antibodies. Do they block the intended pathways? Her data becomes part of the broader decision-making process that determines which therapies the team might want to move forward toward clinical trials.

It’s work that has intensified her interest in immunology, so much so that she plans to eventually pursue graduate study. “I have really grown to appreciate the field of autoimmune disease and how many open questions there still are,” she says.

“People receive diagnoses based on the few things we do know. And maybe there’s a drug that helps by shutting down a huge portion of the immune system. But we don’t actually understand all of the mechanisms involved in why particular people get the immune diseases they do, like lupus or chronic fatigue syndrome. For a long time we’ve said, ‘Well, you’re going to be exhausted and achy, and that’s just your lot in life.’ I’m really interested in studying the pathophysiology of how these diseases manifest and why.”

This sounds a lot like Rowan following her own advice to “date around” in one’s field. Academia, industry, and medical science can be varied ways of looking at similar questions, she explains, and young folks interested in science owe it to themselves and their careers to see what each path offers and find the best fit. She approached her early passion for science with a lot of certainty, she says, arriving at Commonwealth “knowing” that she wanted to be a laboratory researcher, a role she loves but also understands to be the first of many possibilities.

Rowan’s science education at Commonwealth did put her ahead of the game academically, however. Among her many (often genetics-focused) science classes, she recalls taking an elective in gene expression and regulation with former Commonwealth teacher Samantha Burke in which the class read seminal scientific papers from the last century. The course prepared her not only to dissect research findings but also to identify the scientific methodology such papers have in common.

During this time, Rowan also learned the value of keeping one’s mind open to other disciplines and the greater world. “Some of my favorite classes that I took at Commonwealth had nothing to do with science, but they continued to foster this love of learning in me,” she says. “Mr. Connolly’s Russian literature class or Ms. Haber’s Bible history class were so fantastic and interesting. It’s important not to become one of those people who is so focused on science and math that you block out everything else. You really need to appreciate every sector of education to be a well-rounded person. Keep your mind open to things beyond biology.”

Jon Lorsch '86: Director, National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Since 2013, Jon Lorsch ’86 has served as Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), one of the twenty-seven institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that fund and produce research across diseases, body systems, and medical areas from diabetes and cancer to the effects of the environment and economic disparities on human health to understanding the human genome. The NIH is a vast federal agency working in the background of American life, largely unnoticed but vitally important to how we live and how the country meets unexpected challenges—the COVID-19 pandemic, for example—that only medical science can address.

Within this system, Jon explains, the NIGMS, which “lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention,” is key to understanding the fundamental principles for how life works. Jon’s background in RNA research, leadership acumen, and lifelong passion for science come together in his work as director and senior investigator of the institute’s Laboratory on the Mechanism and Regulation of Protein Synthesis. And it all began with a cow heart.

One of Jon’s earliest memories, and the root of his love of science, dates back to the age of four. He recalls sitting in a classroom with other children. Whether it was preschool or kindergarten he doesn’t remember, but the moment a teacher walked in and showed the class a cow heart, he was rapt. “I was just transfixed by this thing with all these flaps and tubes coming out of it,” he says. “At that moment I decided I wanted to be a scientist.”

Jon’s passion for science continued through his time at Commonwealth, where he took courses in chemistry and biology with Richard Robinson, Jane Farber, and others. After graduating, he went on to major in chemistry with a minor in biology at Swarthmore. It was there that Jon began what he describes as a circuitous path toward the biology of RNA, ribonucleic acid—a molecule that carries genetic information and the focal point of his life’s research. Biochemist and textbook author Judith Voet got him “hooked” on enzymes and how they work, which led him to graduate work at Harvard with acclaimed enzymologist Jeremy Knowles. After three months of working in Knowles’ lab, the scientist shuttled Jon off to work with biologist Jack Szostak at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“I didn’t think of that on my own,” Jon chuckles. “He sent me there, and that’s where I started to work on RNA, because that’s what Jack Szostak was working on. From there, I became part of the RNA world, as it’s called. And I combined my love of enzymes with this newfound love of RNA because I started to work on catalytic RNAs—that is, RNAs that are themselves enzymes.”

After fourteen years teaching in the Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Jon has established himself as a leader in the field of RNA biology. His own research focuses on how mRNA gets translated into a protein: “We study how protein synthesis works inside of a cell, and proteins are made from an mRNA template. That’s the code that says what the protein is going to be composed of. It’s then translated from that mRNA by a machine called a ribosome, which is itself made, in part, of RNA.”

As director of the NIGMS, Jon’s role is to oversee the institute’s mandate to fund medical research in all fifty states. He explains that the foundation for advances in every aspect of the medical sciences comes from the kind of basic research that the NIGMS supports. The mRNA vaccines developed during the COVID-19 pandemic are obvious recent examples. Scientists didn’t create those vaccines out of thin air, he emphasizes. They were the result of more than a hundred years of accumulated knowledge, which also made it possible to develop them so quickly.

“That’s why we fund the research,” he says, “so that it’s there when we need it, and we can keep making progress in medicine. How does a cell work? How do the components of a cell fit together to make that cell operate? By understanding that, we can then understand when something breaks, that is, you get a disease. Why does disease—the breaking of a system—take place? Then by understanding that, hopefully we can figure out how to fix it, how to make a therapy for the disease or a vaccine to prevent it.”

Eva Earnest: Science Teacher, Commonwealth School

Eva Earnest teaches most students who come through Commonwealth. Ninth-grade biology, which she teaches along with Emma Sundberg, introduces her to each new generation of Mermaids while introducing them to the wonders of the natural world. She is well known to students and families—or so they think.

For example, many students know that, prior to joining the Commonwealth science faculty three years ago, and after graduating from Boston University with a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology, Eva became an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), and she maintains her certification to this day. She is open about the fact that she has wanted to teach since she was a child, and at Commonwealth she has come to love the work deeply. She is definitely known for her infectious laugh.

What may not be entirely obvious, however, is her passion for the same interdisciplinary problem solving she encourages in students, as well as her experience-based perspective on why science education is important. Science, she suggests, is not just a collection of disciplines that lead to STEM careers; it is functional knowledge. And you may not even realize you need it until you do.

“Teaching biology, chemistry, or science in general—and working in a health-care field where you see individuals who have gone through the education system and are now being hit with a lot of information about their own health and conditions—really does remind me how important it is for everyone to learn about science in school,” Eva says. It’s a perspective forged by both her background in biology and her having seen people in the midst of medical crisis with no clear understanding of what is happening to them.

Science education is also an education in how to approach and solve problems. Eva learned this first-hand as an EMT. “You get a call, you show up, and someone is having a problem. It’s your job to use the information you have, as well as your education, to ask the right types of questions,” she explains, “to try your best to figure out what’s going on. And if you can’t figure out what’s going on, you at least have to figure out what’s going to make this situation better in the short term. Do that under a time crunch as an EMT where you are in an emergency, and it is really important that you have effective and fast problem-solving skills.”

We all tackle problems in our day-to-day lives; Eva insists that the same problem-solving abilities come up in science classes at every turn. “You are given a distinct set of information and must try to figure out what is and isn’t important. How can I use what I have to either solve the problem or find out what I need through follow-up questions?”

Is that what attracted her to biochemistry and molecular biology? Not quite. Or not entirely. When Eva chose her major in college, she wasn’t thinking about what she would do with the rest of her life, only what she would devote her attention to for the next four years. Biology, in particular, was how she wanted to spend her time because of its real-world relatability, something she believes is true for many students at Commonwealth, too. “Biology is so applicable to who you are,” Eva says. “We work hard to make our biology classes relatable. We give the students lots of labs. We give them lots of problems that involve things they could see in the world. And so, with biology, the goal is ‘How can we explain how the living things around us act?’”

Even as Eva loves biology in particular and science in general, she still thinks that students should think expansively about their lives while they are in high school and not devote 100 percent of their time to one thing—even biology. She pushes them to keep an open mind, she says. “Remember that every moment of your life, when you’re attacking new problems, you are adding another piece to who you’re going to be. And that piece could be the integral one.”

Ruth Hanna '13: Labor Organizer and Graduate Student, MIT

The number of unionized graduate student employees (GSE) grew by a whopping 133 percent between 2012 and January 2024. That’s more than 150,000, or thirty-eight percent of all current GSEs, according to The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions. It’s not surprising that organized labor is gaining in popularity in higher education. Graduate student workers are cheap and easy labor for universities, which often offer low wages and few to no benefits. Yet their contributions are invaluable, as they work on the front lines of research, sometimes in potentially hazardous working conditions, if they’re in the field or in labs with dangerous chemicals.

Since 2024, Ruth Hanna ’13 has been Vice President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Graduate Student Union. She is also a master’s student in biology. These two positions may seem unrelated, but ultimately, they represent facets of Ruth’s interest in and dedication to human health. In spring 2022, MIT graduate students voted overwhelmingly to form a graduate student union. Having joined other student organizers in the effort, Ruth then worked with the newly formed union toward a contract with the university. Faced with an impending GSU strike in September 2023, the university agreed to a contract that included formal nondiscrimination procedures and a compensation package of successive annual wage raises, dental premium coverage matching that of other employees, a seventy-percent transportation subsidy, and three months of back pay.

It was an incredible triumph, one that confirmed for Ruth—who, prior to graduate school, had been working as a lab tech in Boston—that how scientists and science workers are treated matters as much as the science itself. “I’ve always been really supportive of unions. And the other thing that made me interested was that, when I got to grad school, I was coming from this lab tech job and, in a lot of ways, doing similar work,” Ruth explains. “But in grad school, the pay is lower. People often don’t have a lot of benefits, and in academia in general, there are a lot of issues around harassment and discrimination. Without organized labor, it’s hard to push back against those kinds of injustices when they happen. So I was very interested in this organizing and started getting more involved.”

Like many people who eventually major in biology, Ruth discovered her love of science early. Once she arrived at Commonwealth, she took a broad range of science courses. But it was one Project Week in particular that stayed with her—so much so that it helped inform her choice of a major later on in college. “I shadowed a primary care doctor,” she recalls. “That definitely made me more interested in learning about human health, and how biology relates to human health more broadly, so that made me more interested in health care. When I went to college, I ended up pursuing a double major, studying both biology and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. I was really interested in understanding human health from the scientific angle through biology but also looking at it by way of the societal angle.”

Ruth’s research focus is microbiology and pathogens, specifically Listeria monocytogenes, a foodborne pathogen that causes serious illness and even death. She was drawn to it because of her interest in genetics and infectious diseases. “It’s an interesting field because you get to look at the interplay between the pathogen and the host and see that two-sided relationship. How does the host biology respond and adapt to this infection? What is the immune response? What are the ways that the host is going to try to kill the pathogen? Then how is the pathogen going to respond to try to evade detection or block the host response? That’s what intrigues me: being able to look at this complex system that has a lot of relevance to human health.”

Ruth says she plans to continue full time with MIT GSU as staff organizer. She has discovered more of what matters to her in life and in work, and she has found a way for those things to live in concert. “I’m definitely going to bring a scientific lens to organizing and, likewise, an organizing lens to science.”

Lillien Waller is a poet, essayist, and editor. Her essays focus primarily on the intersection of art and personal history. In 2023, she was awarded an Arts Writers Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to profile interdisciplinary artists of color in her hometown, Detroit. This article originally appeared in the summer 2025 issue of CM, Commonweatlh's alumni/ae magazine.

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