From: John Kiel
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 8:41 PM
Cc: Kiel, Johnathan L Civ AFRL/HEPC
Subject: Re: Pulse Article – Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
Dr. Kiel,
I hope you enjoyed the previous issue of Pulse I mailed last week. I am looking forward to working with you!
Below you will find several questions regarding you, your job and how you arrived where you are in your life today. Please feel free to add any additional information you feel would be helpful. Once I have your answers if I don’t need further information I will draft the article and send it to you for your review. Our first draft deadline is February 19th.
Thank you again for your help!
Where are you from? I was born in Houston, TX and grew up there, although my Mother is British and I spent some summers as a child with my Grandparents in St Helens outside of Liverpool UK (UK is kind of my second home).
What other degrees do you hold? BS (Texas A&M, veterinary science, 1973); DVM (Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine, veterinary medicine, 1974); PhD (TTUHSC, interdisciplinary in biochemistry and microbiology, 1981)
Why did you choose TTUHSC? Originally, because of a wound healing research program at TTUHSC that I saw in an advertisement on a bulletin board at Indiana University, Kokomo, Indiana, when I was taking classes there in calculus, during my duty as a USAF Base Veterinarian on Grissom AFB, Indiana, Peru, Indiana; when I got to TTUHSC, the program was no longer in effect, so I shifted to the anti-tumor effects of granulocyte and macrophage oxidase/peroxidase systems.
Who did you study under? Johannes Everse (Dept of Biochemistry) and Stanley S. Lefkowitz ( Dept of Microbiology; I believe he is now at University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, on the faculty of the Dept of Microbiology and Immunology).
Describe your experience here. It was very intense and stimulating. I was among the first of the PhD students at TTUHSC and maybe the very first inter-departmental interdisciplinary student. The USAF demanded that under the Civilian Institutions Air Force Institute of Technology Program that I complete my PhD in 3 years; I did so with a six month extension (in 3 ½ years); I believe this might be some kind of record of a single subject PhD, much less a double major PhD.
What did you like or not like about the university and or your experience? I didn’t like the hail, dust storms and the tornadoes; I did like the small town atmosphere for my wife and children and the flexibility of the university in accommodating my educational needs as a USAF military officer assigned to a civilian university; I especially liked the Chemistry Department courses on the main campus and the highly intellectually stimulating environment of the Dept of Biochemistry at TTUHSC; I also enjoyed working with the Dept of Surgery in the Medical School; we gave lectures together to local AMA branches on venomous snakebite treatment (another one of my avocations—venomous snake herpetology).
How did you come to choose medical biochemistry and what drove you to get your PhD? Although I had been on faculty, after my graduation from the Vet School at A&M, as an instructor of pathogenic bacteriology, before going into the military, I thought that pathogenic microbiology was on its way out in the late 70s early 80s; boy was I wrong, with the advent of AIDS (HIV), and other emerging infectious disease, this attitude completely changed (after I graduated from TTUHSC); so I decided to look at biochemistry as a way to unravel the mystery of why white blood cells would make free radicals to kill cancer cells (or infectious agents, but I focused on cancer because that was where the grant support was coming from for my graduate advisor in biochem), when such free radicals probably originally caused the genetic damage that led to the cancer in the first place (and aging as well). In the long run, my interdisciplinary education and approach has led to many opportunities within my military and scientific career to see interactions among many militarily and medically relevant “stressor” interactions—radiation, chemical and biological.
What is your rank and/or title? I am the Senior Scientist for Counterproliferation (a Brigadier General Civilian Equivalent in USAF) for the Human Effectiveness Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory
What do you do for the Air Force and why do you enjoy it? I mentor and lead a research team and serve as the USAF’s senior advisor on preventing and countering biological warfare and bioterrorism attacks through non-medical means (not vaccines or therapeutics, although we have spin-off research in this area). I like working with a team, like the conductor of an orchestra with very skilled, mature researchers being the concert masters or first violins. I prefer the group approach as opposed to the individual investigator approach, although I also enjoy having young people enter our group. They come as summer students, post docs, or in collaborative graduate study programs with various universities. I also enjoy “making a difference” in the defense of my country and its civilian population (especially in the case of preventing bioterrorist attacks).
I noticed that your research varies considerably in topic. Is that a result of your job role or are you interested in a myriad of topics? One of my patent attorneys once said that I was a “consummate scientist” ; I am really just a person with insatiable curiosity and interested in learning anything new in science—whether it is biochemistry, microbiology, physics, astronomy or engineering—I guess I am just a generalist or at worst a megalomaniac.
Are there any unique experiences that you’ve had in life you’d like to share? In 2005, I traveled around the world from West (from San Antonio) to East through Dublin, Ireland; the Netherlands; Hong Kong; Hanoi, Vietnam; Korea; San Francisco; and back to San Antonio in 2 weeks. In my last 10 years, I have traveled almost every month. My wife says I have learned to like every place I visit (and especially the one I visited last). These experiences have made me greatly appreciate, and respect other peoples, cultures, and countries, and has led to many gratifying professional international collaborations and interesting experiences abroad. Someday I will write a book about it.
Dr. Kiel,
Thank you for getting this back to me so quickly. I wanted to run something by you. It seems to me based on your answers that I have come across a diamond in the rough.
In this issue of Pulse I am also writing a four page feature story on alumni of the Health Sciences Center who are working in uncommon avenues of health care. I have already started contacting graduates who I knew fit in that category and I believe after what I just read you would be perfect to include in this feature as well.
If you are open to this, I would like to look for another Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences alum to feature in our alumni feature section (the one page features toward the back of the magazine) and move you to my uncommon occupations article instead.
I know you are busy and travel frequently but I will be happy to work with you in any way I can. Because the feature is much more in depth I may have some additional questions.
Let me know what you think. Thanks!
Global Biosurveillance 