Page 5 - Fall 2018 | Rochester Athletics | University of Rochester

HOW DID THE UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER PREPARE contamination in donated blood. Our CEO brought in a guy with
YOU FOR THIS WORK? hemophilia in his early 20s to talk to us about the impact we had on
his life. He said to us, “You saved my life, because now I can take a
Coming out of high school, I had visions of becoming a surgeon. safe form of factor VIII. I’ve watched many of my friends die from HIV
Starting freshman year, I started to do research in biochemistry labs or hepatitis, and now I don’t have to worry about that.” Hearing that
in the medical school and it became clear to me that I didn’t want to young man speak, it clicked for me.
become a physician, I wanted to be a scientist. I really enjoyed the
process of lab work, creating scientific hypotheses, and then doing
experiments to test them out. Being a Joseph C. Wilson Scholar gave WHY DO YOU SUPPORT ROCHESTER FOOTBALL?
me access to incredible mentors and gave me the ability to design It was a very significant part of my maturation and helped me
a personalized major that included a full-year senior thesis research understand that nothing comes easy. You have to earn it.
project in the medical school.
As I progressed in my career, I started thinking about what I could do
That experience helped me to complete my PhD degree in 3.5 years. to give back. The Rochester football program was really important
I already knew how to design experiments and work sophisticated to me. I’ve been so impressed by all of the new athletic facilities, and
laboratory equipment when I entered Illinois, so I hit the ground I realized that I could really help the team be more competitive by
running.
creating an endowment to support coaching, recruiting, and other
Football also played a huge role. I made the team as a walk-on. I had program needs. There wasn’t anything like that at Rochester and it
speed, but it was clear my football skills were behind most of my was an opportunity to do something different.
teammates. I decided to give it everything I had, because I didn’t
want to look back and think I didn’t try hard enough to succeed. I WHAT ARE YOU MOST GRATEFUL FOR?
played really hard in practice and rode the bench for two years. My
junior year, Coach Stark (former defensive coordinator) gave me a I’m grateful that I’ve been able to pursue a career that I love for the
shot as a starter and I never looked back. My senior year, they named past four decades, one that truly has had a positive impact on a lot
me outstanding back on defense. Football taught me a lot about of people. Personally and professionally, I owe a lot of gratitude to
giving 100 percent and capitalizing on the talent I had developed those in my life who mentored me and believed in me. Coach Stark,
along the way. Coach Vitone, and so many others. When I got my shot, I didn’t give
it up. I worked hard and realized that to succeed, I had to deliver.
I built on that experience in my career. I’ve started companies that
nearly went bankrupt but we survived and went on to develop
drugs that have saved millions
of lives. It was a lot of hard
work. That perseverance came The 1976 University of Rochester Football team, with Recny (#18 back row)
from the foundation I built at and his defensive teammates Billy Monroe (#40), Kevin Callahan (#22), and
Rochester. Mike Hammond (#31). Also pictured are Steve Sloan (#87),
Wayne Sebastianelli (#53), Jeff Turner (#73), and Jim Simboli (#88).
WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

Making a positive impact on
other people. I’ll give you an
example. At my first biotech
company, we were successful in
an incredibly complicated gene
cloning project: We created a
recombinant form of human
factor VIII, a necessary blood
clotting factor that hemophiliacs
lack. Before then, they had to get
factor VIII from human blood.

At the time (early 1980s),
hemophiliacs not only had
to deal with controlling
their bleeding, but many
were contracting HIV from
contaminated factor VIII because
there was no way to test for HIV

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