December 2015 Science Journal

Alumni News
Five Honored with Penn State’s
Outstanding Science Alumni Award
The Penn State University Eberly College of
Science has selected five alumni to be honored
with the Outstanding Science Alumni Award
for 2015. The Board of Directors of the Eberly
College of Science Alumni Society established
this award to recognize alumni who have a record
of significant professional achievements in
their field and who are outstanding role models
for students in the college. Receiving this award
are:
Donna Bortner, ’84 B.S. Microbiology
Alexa Dembek, ’91 Ph.D. Chemistry
Sudhir Kumar, ’96, Ph.D. Genetics
Caryl Russo Singer, ’82 B.S. Biology
Larry Travis, ’71 Ph.D. Astronomy
Donna Bortner is the chief executive officer
at TransViragen, Inc, a company she cofounded
in 2009. TransViragen focuses on the
generation and analysis of genetically modified
cell lines and animal models for scientific research.
The company provides a variety of custom
services to a growing list of clients in the
government, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and
academic sectors.
Prior to establishing TransViragen, Bortner
worked for nearly twenty years in the pharmaceutical
industry at GlaxoSmithKline. She
joined GlaxoSmithKline as a postdoctoral fellow
in the pharmacology department, where her
research entailed the development of animal
models to study mechanisms of cancer relevant
to human disease. She went on to hold positions
of increasing responsibility in the research division,
most recently as the head of the company’s
transgenics, viral-vectors, and sequencing operations
in the United States. In this position,
she led a team of scientists in research efforts
focused on the development and application of
genomic technologies to drug discovery and development,
with particular emphasis on genetically
modified rodent models. She also served
as the chair of the institutional-biosafety and
animal-welfare committees.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in
microbiology with honors and high distinction
from Penn State in 1984, she worked at the National
Animal Disease Center until 1987. She
went on to earn a doctoral degree in 1992 in Microbiology
and Immunology at Duke University,
where she was a National Science Foundation
graduate fellow.
Alexa Dembek is the director of Central
Research and Development at DuPont. She is
responsible for the development of opportunities
involving transformational emerging science.
Dembek joined DuPont in 1991 as a research
chemist. In 1995, she took the position of tech-
nical manager at DuPont Protection Technologies.
As her career progressed, she assumed
roles that spanned a range of areas, including
supply chain, operations, sales, marketing, and
business leadership.
In 2005, Dembek was assigned leadership
roles in DuPont Building Innovations, first as
a commercial business segment manager and
later as the North American marketing manager.
In 2006, she transferred to DuPont Performance
Polymers. In 2011, she was appointed
the regional director of the Americas region.
Most recently, Dembek was named the global
business director for Dupont’s cross-business
Energy Storage venture.
Dembek holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry
from Northern Illinois University. She completed
her Ph.D. degree in chemistry in 1991 at
Penn State.
Sudhir Kumar is the Laura H. Carnell Professor
and the director of the Institute for Genomics
and Evolutionary Medicine at Temple
University.
Kumar has developed new methods and algorithms
for big data, and has translated them
into widely used software packages and knowledge
bases, such as MEGA and TimeTree. He
uses integrative and comparative approaches to
make fundamental discoveries in the fields of
molecular evolution, functional genomics, and
biomedicine.
Kumar’s research has been cited more than
90,000 times. One of his scientific articles was
included in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science
top-100 most-cited papers of all time and
designated the top article of the decade by the
Scopus database of peer-reviewed literature.
He received an Innovation Award in Functional
Genomics from the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund
in 2000 and is a fellow of American Association
for the Advancement of Science.
In 1998, Kumar joined the Arizona State University
as an assistant professor and became the
Regents Professor in 2012. Kumar joined Temple
University in 2014 as the founding director
of the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary
Medicine, a hub for transdisciplinary research
in medicine, informatics, and molecular evolution.
Kumar received his bachelor’s degree in electrical
and electronics engineering and master’s
degree in biology from the Birla Institute
of Technology & Science in India in 1990. He
completed his Ph.D. degree in genetics at Penn
State in 1996.
Caryl Russo Singer is the senior vice president
for Barnabas Health Corporate Care, a division
of Barnabas Health, the largest healthcare
system in New Jersey. Russo is responsible
for the workers’ compensation program and employee
health services for Barnabas Health and
its more than 22,000 employees. Russo is responsible
for the occupational-medicine services
offered through Barnabas Health Corporate
Care in six sites located throughout New Jersey.
Prior to joining Barnabas Health, Russo was
the director of marketing and communications
for First Option Health Plan, a healthcare insurance
provider in New Jersey. Additionally,
Russo was the director of strategic communications
for Enzon, Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology
company.
Russo is active with numerous business and
civic organizations including the New Jersey
Self Insured Association and the Monmouth-
Ocean Development Council. She also serves
as a member of the Eberly College of Science
Biotechnology Advisory Board, the Delta Dental
Foundation Board of Directors, and the New
Jersey Chapter Board of Directors of the Arthritis
Foundation.
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in
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