Star Student Makes Leap from Lab to Legislature

From manipulating submitochondrial particles to setting national marine policy, from lab to legislative chambers, from Madison, Wisconsin, to Washington, D.C., Karl Gustavson is expanding his perspective and his horizons. The Wisconsin Sea Grant-sponsored student is among 41 nationwide to be awarded a Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship for 2002.

By any measure, Gustavson is a first-rate scholar. Aside from achieving an overall GPA of 3.8 in both undergraduate and graduate school, he earned the prestigious Science to Achieve Results (STAR) fellowship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency while completing his Ph.D. in environmental toxicology. By the time he defended his doctoral thesis last year, Gustavson had already published eight articles, presented a number of popular lectures, and obtained a patent on submitochondrial scanning technology, which he designed for use in the early detection of environmental pollutants.

Harvard Bioscience, a Boston-based company, licensed the patents surrounding the technology and is using it to screen for toxicity in pharmaceutical compounds. Gustavson has served as the company's technical director for the past two years.

Although he enjoyed being a student, by the end of his Ph.D. program, Gustavson longed to get out of the lab, "away from the bench," and into a situation that afforded him a broader perspective of the world. The Knauss Fellowship offers him a chance to do just that.

"This gives me the opportunity to step away from research and look at larger societal issues--things that can have a real environmental impact," he said.

In his position on the House Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans, Gustavson will prepare materials and select witnesses for hearings as well as help draft legislation. He will be working on a number of important issues, including reauthorizations of the Magnussen-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the National Sea Grant College Program Act.

- Jill Ladwig

Last updated 18 April 2002 by Karl
All contents copyright 2001 University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute

http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/Communications/news/LD_stories/2002/starstudent.html