OWL UPDATE ■
Aileen Ferraro, ’14 Postdoctoral Research Associate University of Minnesota Medical School
W
HILE MAJORING IN BIOLOGY AT SOUTHERN,
Aileen Ferraro, ’14, was among the first five students to receive a summer Undergraduate Research Grant of $3,000, funded by the SCSU Foundation. In October 2020, Ferraro — having earned a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Georgia earlier in the year — returned to campus, albeit virtually. Her goal: to help students enrolled in Management 450, Business Policy and Strategy, a capstone course for business majors. The course challenges teams of students to “run” a computer-simulated global business — a company that creates and sells genetic testing devises. The highly immersive business simulation was developed by Capsim, creator of programs used by more than 1,000 academic and corporate institutions from more than 60 countries. Working online and in a socially distanced classroom, each Southern
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team draws on everything learned in previous business courses: accounting, economics, management, marketing, and more. Experience with genetics, or even biology, is not a prerequisite. But with knowledge comes power. And so, Linda Ferraro, an adjunct professor of management who teaches the course, issued an invitation to the newly minted Dr. Aileen Ferraro — an expert in the field of microbiology who is also her daughter. On a sunny fall afternoon, the students, all donning protective face masks, met in the School of Business building to virtually connect with the younger Ferraro, who offered a wealth of guidance. Ferraro was screened in from the University of Minnesota Medical School, where she became a postdoctoral research associate in August. Her research focus is Candida auris (C. auris), a multi-drugresistant yeast (a type of fungus) that can cause severe infections and spreads easily among hospitalized
patients and nursing home residents. “You may have seen it mentioned in the news,” says Ferraro, of C. auris, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has categorized as an urgent threat. Some 1,625 clinical confirmed/ probable cases were reported in the U.S. as of January 2021. “We basically are trying to figure out what makes it resistant to drugs,” says Ferraro of her research. At Southern, her advice to the business students touches on many topics. Among them, how genetics are used in the medical field (research on pediatric cancer, cancer survivorship, sickle cell disease, etc.), the benefits and challenges of four types of genetic-sequencing platforms in use, and risks to consumers (learning that you or someone in your family has or is at-risk for a disease can be upsetting and tests can cost more than $2,000). Equally important, Ferraro relates the importance of mentorship and credits her
