William (Bill) Petri, MD, PhD, shares his story at The Story Collider event held at UVA.
UVA was excited to welcome the Story Collider team back to Charlottesville on April 3. During a special recording at Carr’s Hill, President Jim Ryan’s residence on Grounds, four UVA STEM leaders told stories about their careers, their research and some unexpected personal experiences. The Story Collider’s mission is to reveal the vibrant role that science plays in all of our lives through the art of personal storytelling.
One of this year’s storytellers was infectious diseases expert William Petri, MD, PhD, the Wade Hampton Frost Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health, who described science as “the best team sport there is.” He discussed how, with the help of other experts, he convinced the Gates Foundation to fund his research. The funding helped reduce the number of children paralyzed by polio from tens of thousands to around one hundred. UVA is now working on developing a better polio vaccine to reduce the number of doses needed to eradicate the disease.
“The big thing about science is that it’s not one person alone at night in the lab pipetting something into a test tube. It’s the best team sport there is,” Petri said.
It was Ken Ono, the STEM advisor to the provost and the Marvin Rosenblum Professor of Mathematics, who proposed bringing The Story Collider to Grounds three years ago. This year the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, and the Office of the Vice President for Research co-sponsored the event. Ono coordinated the faculty participation.
The other faculty who shared their stories were Stephanie Rowley, dean of the School of Education and Human Development, Kathryn Thornton, a professor emeritus of engineering and member of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, and Scott Acton, a professor and the chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The full stories can be heard on The Story Collider podcast and the Hoos in STEM podcast.
