“Donors let us ask ‘What can we do to make the world a better place?’ And our students want to do that. They want to ask those questions.”

Jeanne VanBriesen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Biomedical Engineering; Recipient of the Paul and Norene Christiano Faculty Fellowship

Professor Jeanne VanBriesen is focused on researching “good bugs and bad bugs,” in other words, microbiological processes in the environment. She specializes in understanding how some bacteria consume toxins and others contaminate our drinking water. In both cases, she is looking at what makes them tick and why do they do what they do.

Because of the support she receives from donors, Professor VanBriesen is able to focus her research on areas where she would not normally be able to go with traditional research funding.

“Donors allow our students to have freedom,” she explains. “The freedom to think really big thoughts. To think beyond what they’re learning in the books and in the laboratory and think about where that might apply in the rest of their lives and the lives of people throughout the world. Donors let us ask ‘What can we do to make the world a better place?’ And our students want to do that. They want to ask those questions.”

She notes that the experience that students who are here now have is largely enhanced by the actions and the generosity of those students who were here 5, 10 and 20 years ago. “Support from our donors creates an overall experience for our students that is more than just four years of classes and listening to professors. Instead, it’s really an engaged experience that changes the students as people, as much as it trains them for a career. It makes them different kinds of thinkers.”

That is due, in part, to the fact that Carnegie Mellon is a unique academic experience, even for its faculty members. It encourages various areas of expertise to attack the same problem from multiple perspectives. Professor VanBriesen explains, “What people who come here want to do is be broadened. No matter what level you are here, you can’t stop learning and you can’t stop approaching problems from new angles.”

“I come at almost every problem thinking that the microbes are either the cause or the solution,” she says. “And my colleague next door thinks that everything has to do with geochemistry because he’s a geochemist. At other universities, we’d be allowed to go our separate ways and believe those things and just study intensely in our own little worlds. But Carnegie Mellon doesn’t let you do that. And it doesn’t attract people long-term who want to do that. I love being able to work in that dynamic.”

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