Juliann Guiffre
Co-News Editor
Eric Lemmon, a triple science major, was, by his admission, a poor student in middle school.
“I was bright, but I didn’t do the work,” he said. Now, seven years later, as a junior in college, Lemmon is majoring in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and by picking up a few more classes will also fulfill the Bio-Chem dual major?technically qualifying him as a quadruple major.
Science first came alive for Lemmon in freshman year of high school, upon the realization of his talents in biology. “I realized, wait, I’m really good at this?and when I took Chemistry sophomore year and was the only one who knew what was going on, I said, wow, I’m really, really good at this.”
After taking physics in his junior year, along with forensic science and human anatomy and physiology, he quickly understood that his passion would not only lie in one branch of science.
“I really want to incorporate all the major sciences,” said Lemmon, “I feel like that’s where the world is heading, I think you will need to understand all of them.”
Lemmon’s goal is to integrate his numerous studies into a combined M.D./Ph.D program in molecular engineering or biophysical chemistry. He hopes to use the research background of a Ph.D and the medical background of an M.D. to run a lab with a Neuro-Oncology (brain cancer) clinic.
Lemmon ended up at McDaniel through a forensic science camp program recommended to him by his forensics teacher in high school. There, he met Dr. Brian Wladkowski, a chemistry professor, and Dr. Jeff Marx, a physics professor, whom he liked so much that he decided to apply to McDaniel.
“I found him to be very enthusiastic about and well prepared for the class,” said Marx. “I can say that Eric is a very hard worker and strongly committed to his scholastic achievement. He is also just a very likeable guy.”
Lemmon’s commitment has led him to pursue a multitude of research projects, ones which have left him in quite a different predicament than any of his classmates. He will now have to sift through all his research to decide what to use for his senior seminar projects, other than working hard to find a topic in the first place.
His first research project took place the summer after his freshman year with Dr. Peter Craig, who Lemmon says specializes in inorganic chemistry?anything without carbon, such as metals. They were mainly interested in cadmium?a toxic metal that Lemmon says may cause poisoning in industry workers?and the binding ability of two agents to this metal.
He turned this research into a poster, which later won first place in a competition for undergraduate research.
This past summer Lemmon worked at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, in the Department of Bio-Chemistry and Molecular Biology. He had applied to several labs and had not had any luck, so he called some contacts at Maryland and asked them to send his resume around; he even said he’d work for free.
There he performed basic science research, looking at proteins to see if they would bind to DNA, an experiment that he said he performed over and over again.
Lemmon was approached last semester by Dr. Susan Parrish, a biology professor, who asked him if he would be willing to travel to Washington University in St. Louis to learn a computer program that they would then use to look at a fly species genome and compare it to the genomes of more well known fly species?a process called Annotation.
“I was Eric’s professor for Advanced Genetics?I was impressed with his academic talents, his many majors, and his people skills,” said Parrish. These convinced her to ask Lemmon to be a teaching assistant for her upcoming Genomics course, one more activity to add to his busy schedule.
Besides his usual five or six classes a semester, Lemmon is the President of Gamma Sigma Epsilon, a chemistry honor society, Vice President of Beta Beta Beta, the biology honor society, and a member of the Society of Physics Students. He’s also on the film committee for CAPBoard and a member of the Jewish Student Union.
He’s a teaching assistant for the Organic Chemistry lab as well as a tutor, and yet Lemmon insists that “I get my seven hours of sleep a night?my girlfriend says I don’t have enough free time, but I think I do.”
“His face always lights up when he eagerly tells me about water bears, chemical structures, megalodons, and black holes,” said junior Melissa Atkinson, Lemmon’s girlfriend, “When the History Channel has a special on the evolution of birds or ancient sharks, he is instantly riveted.”
Many of Lemmon’s friends observe this uncanny dedication to his work. Senior Adam Pritchard often jokingly says that “Eric is indeed insane, considering the number of courses he packs into his schedule.” Pritchard points out that despite this, Lemmon is still a regular college student.
“He still likes to watch King of the Hill a lot, though,” he said.