Max Denies' Alumni Testimonial

My earliest memory of Fredonia was a meeting with Professor Astry – the chair of
the Biology Department. As a high school senior, I was unsure where I wanted to
attend college and beyond my strong interests in biology and entrepreneurship,
didn’t have well defined career goals. During our meeting, I not only learned about the opportunities to personalize my education and explore different career paths at Fredonia but, more importantly, personally experienced the willingness of faculty members to help students succeed.

At Fredonia, I instantly realized that my experience with Professor Astry was not an anomaly. I quickly took advantage of opportunities to interact with professors and sought industry internships and research. My second semester, I created an internship with a local biotechnology company at the Fredonia Technology Incubator. My internship provided me with the opportunity to use my coursework in computer science, statistics, and biology to tangibly advance the company as well as see how I could transform my passions for biology and entrepreneurship into a career.

Throughout my final three years at Fredonia I conducted research in a muscle biology lab under the mentorship of Dr. Scott Medler. We studied how diet-induced obesity affected mouse muscle fiber types and consequentially diabetes. In addition to gaining useful molecular biology experience and authorship on several peer-reviewed publications, conducting undergraduate research helped me hone my presentation and time management skills. My initial experiences at Fredonia helped me become a competitive applicant for national fellowships funded by the National
Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Amgen Inc. Each summer I was offered paid research and internship opportunities at leading research universities including Boston University (NIH Scholarship), Marquette University (NSF Fellowship), and the University of California San Francisco (Amgen
Scholars Program).

As a Fredonia student, I truly had the best of both worlds. Fredonia provided me with small class sizes and opportunities to personally interact with and learn from faculty dedicated to teaching not possible at large research universities. In contrast, my summer internships gave me the opportunity to conduct cutting edge research
at world-renown research institutes and network with leaders in academic and industry research.

My many mentors and experiences at Fredonia were essential to my decision to purse graduate school at an elite research university. Currently I am a 2nd year PhD student in the Cell and Molecular Biology Program at the University of Michigan. At Michigan, I am developing new molecular proteomic and computational approaches study clathrin-mediated endocytosis and improve our understanding of how cells regulate the internalization of external signals.

Max DeNies
B.S., Biology, Fredonia, Class of 2013
Ph.D. student, Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Michigan