Matthew Bacho '92

The Matthew A. Bacho Scholarship in Microbiology provides scholarships for microbiology and biohealth sciences graduate and undergraduate students with demonstrated financial needs.

Recipients can thank a National Geographic article.

"When I was in high school in Eugene, I was thinking about what I would study after graduation," said Bacho, B.S. '92. "History was kind of my favorite subject, but I wasn't sure what I would do with a degree in history. I wasn't keen on teaching."

Then he chanced across a National Geographic article about the pathogenesis of HIV/AIDS. "They had a pretty good background section on human immunology," he said. "I thought that was cool. I quickly found out it's a subdiscipline of microbiology."

It gave his undergraduate years at Oregon State a distinct focus. "A lot of freshmen don't know what they want to do, but I had a decent idea, and I stuck with it," he said.

Bacho found more than an academic focus at Nash Hall. He also found affordable living at Heckart Lodge, a co-op just down the street. "Many of the friends that I made there are still friends to this day," he said.

After graduation, he began working for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. His main focus was on HIV/AIDS. "The highlight of my time in the lab was that one of the compounds we looked at actually went on to be approved by the FDA for HIV," he said.

The compound prevents HIV from entering cells. His subsequent work included the regulatory management of immunosuppressive drugs like cyclosporine (used to treat patients if their bodies reject an organ transplant).

His final job at the FDA was helping enforce laws regulating clinical trials. He retired in 2021 after more than 28 years with the agency. Although only 51 years old at the time, Bacho said his lifelong struggle with retinitis pigmentosa was a deciding factor. The genetic disorder causes loss of vision, including trouble seeing at night and decreasing peripheral vision.

Bacho said he is glad to still be young enough to meet the recipients of his scholarship.

"I had a great experience at Oregon State," he said. "I began thinking about starting a scholarship a few years ago in microbiology, partly as a way to give back."

He received a Mark H. Middlekauf Scholarship during his senior year at Oregon State. The scholarship was created by Ruth Tyson to honor her brother, who received his degree in bacteriology at Oregon State in 1916 before dying in World War I.

Bacho decided he wanted to create a scholarship while he was still relatively young so he could meet the recipients.

"A lot of people start scholarships when they're older and have more financial means," he said. "The cool thing is that I had financial means and was still young enough and could still enjoy seeing people receive that money. I'm pretty happy about that."

Bacho said he hopes the students who receive his scholarship enjoy Oregon State as much as he did. "I really treasured my experience there at Oregon State. It led me to my career."

Debbie Bellinghausen '79

The Debbie S. Bellinghausen Microbiology Student Support Fund supports undergraduate or graduate students in financial need. Support can include, but is not limited to, travel for professional development, collaborative research projects and scholarship support.

"Like a lot of students back then and now, I paid my way through school through loans, savings, work/study money during graduate school from my professor," said Bellinghausen, M.S. '84 and B.S. '79. "We have a strong belief that getting an education is very important, and if there's any way to pay that forward and help someone along the way, that's the best way I can show my appreciation."

Bellinghausen has strong family connections to Oregon State. She met her husband Mike when he was a microbiology student. He was getting his master's degree under Raymond Seidler while she was working in the lab as a research assistant. Bellinghausen continued in the department, receiving her master's degree in 1984.

The couple's daughter Stephanie majored in biology at Oregon State and went on to veterinary school in Scotland where she now practices.

Bellinghausen traces her professional roots to her childhood as part of a farm family in Ontario, Oregon. "I've always loved biological sciences," she said. "Oddly enough, I started off as a pre-pharmacy major. I realized it wasn't really my thing. I took a microbiology course as part of my curriculum, and that's when I fell in love with it."

There is a natural connection to microbiology and food, she added. "There's a lot of interaction between the microbiology department and the food science department so it was easy to fall in love with microbiology," she said.

With an interest in dairy microbiology, her main professor in microbiology was William Sandine. Sandine taught in the department from 1959 to 1996. He became known for his research on fermentation, leading to improvements in cheese and other dairy products.

"Getting to work in his lab and getting to know some of the grad students and some of the work they were doing in Tillamook and later the wine industry, it was just a fun place to be," Bellinghausen said.

Her own career took her to Seattle where she worked for a company that researched animal probiotics. When she supervised the lab dealing with periodontic diseases, she was introduced to clinical research.

"It opened a whole new world that I hadn't thought about and enabled me to use my background in microbiology," she said. "I worked in clinical research both in diagnostic medical devices and small molecules and biologics."

As she nears retirement, Bellinghausen loves the thought of helping students. "It's great to see all the kids excited about their careers,” she said. “It made me pleased and happy to know that I could help them continue with their education.”

Paul Kenis '67

The Paul and Judith Kenis Student Travel Endowment Fund in Microbiology supports travel expenses for professional development for undergraduate or graduate microbiology students.

Although he studied microbiology at Oregon State, Paul Kenis, M.S. '67, is known for his work with much larger organisms. He and his wife Judy started the California Wolf Center in Julian in 1977 and ran it for the next 20 years.

Starting with just two North American gray wolves, the couple set about teaching people about the importance of wolves in the ecosystem. They also bred endangered Mexican wolves to return the wild wolves to their natural habitat.

"I kind of got away from microbiology to play with the wolves for a few years," Kenis explained.

Meanwhile, he also put his education in microbiology in service to the U.S. Navy as a civilian researcher for 27 years. He started working for the Navy shortly after receiving his master's degree in microbiology in 1967.

The Navy gave him a solid professional home, he said. "I lived happily ever after, and I didn't have to go to Vietnam."

Kenis was born in Portland but grew up in suburban Los Angeles. He went to Cal Poly Pomona near Los Angeles for his undergraduate studies after his parents moved to Covina, California.

"I was always interested in science," he said. "I had animals. I had pigeons. I had aquariums and everything. It was kind of natural for me, so I majored in biology and minored in chemistry at Cal Poly."

One of his professors at Cal Poly knew Richard Morita at Oregon State. Morita was a faculty member in microbiology and oceanography at Oregon State University from 1962 to 1988 and helped Kenis get a fellowship to cover his tuition and come to Corvallis for graduate work.

"Dr. Morita took good care of me," Kenis remembered. "He was a great man."

After graduation, Kenis began working for the Navy almost as a fluke. He thought about going into the public health service, but his parents saw in the phone book that the Navy had a microbiology lab in Pasadena.

The California Wolf Center was a nonprofit, and the Navy didn't pay him enough to start the endowment. Kenis said students receiving money from the endowment benefit from his decision to invest in apartments.

That money should keep flowing, he said. He has made provisions in his will for the endowment to continue even after he's gone. Oregon State deserves the support, he said.

"They were really just nice people," he said. "I never met any jerks. The campus was very beautiful. Corvallis is a unique place. It's so very positive. I just have wonderful memories from the experience."

Mary Ann Matzke

The Mary Ann and Gordon Matzke Endowed Pre-Health Scholarship Fund provides scholarships for undergraduate students majoring in biohealth sciences.

While many donors are inspired to give because of fond memories of being students at Oregon State, Mary Ann Matzke is different. While her memories are no less fond, they stem from being a staff member rather than a student.

She worked as an adviser, and later head advisor, at the College of Science from 1987 to 2012.

"As often happens, academic advising was a career that I fell into, but it became a calling for me as I felt like it used skills I’d been acquiring my entire life," she said.

Her life started in a small town in Oklahoma where her father was a local physician. She studied zoology and pre-med at Oklahoma State University. After meeting her husband Gordon, her plans changed.

"I went with him to Syracuse University where I earned my master’s in population biology and evolution," said Matzke. "We then went off to the Selous Game Reserve in southern Tanzania where I assisted him in his research for his Ph.D. in geography relating to the interaction of human populations and wildlife."

Returning to Oklahoma State University, she took an advising job in the College of Arts and Sciences. "I found that I really liked it," she said. "Upon our move to Corvallis, after spending a few years home with children, I saw an ad for an advising job in the College of Science at Oregon State University. I was fortunate enough to get that job."

She was equally fortunate, she said, to have Dean Fred Horne and Associate Dean Dick Thies as mentors.

"At that time, professional advisors at Oregon State were not common," she said. "The health professions advising center that Dean Horne established with Chere Pereira, chief premedical advisor, Shelly Murphy, and myself was a new idea in the college."

For the first 15 years of her career, she advised students planning to enter health professions. "Those fields always held interest for me due to the number of medical professionals in my family," Matzke said. "I thoroughly enjoyed seeing students develop throughout their careers at Oregon State and eventually achieve their dreams.

She also spent a couple of years advising College of Business students under Clara Horne, the head advisor in the college. "This cross-college experience informed my later advising in the College of Science," she said.

For the last 10 years of her career, she served as head advisor in the College of Science -- coordinating the advising, student recruitment and orientation services. She was also responsible for overseeing the scholarship program.

"This is where I saw the impact that a scholarship can make in a student’s life," Matzke said. "One of my mentors was Janine Trempy, professor in microbiology, and associate dean in the College of Science."

About the time she retired, a new major, biohealth sciences, was created in microbiology for students interested in entering a health profession.

"This seemed like a good place to establish a scholarship that would benefit the kinds of students I advised during my career," said Matzke.

Her husband Gordon was a faculty member, advisor and department chair in the geography department at Oregon State.

"He always supported my career and was a constant source of advice and encouragement," she said. "I’m happy that we could make this contribution in both of our names and that it will support students pursuing health professions for many years to come."

Jo-Ann Leong is an outstanding microbiologist with a long history of aquaculture discoveries at Oregon State University and around the world. After obtaining her Ph.D. in microbiology and virology at the University of California, San Francisco, she became the only female professor in Nash Hall to help run one of the first virology labs at Oregon State in 1975. Throughout her life, Leong made breakthrough discoveries that inspired faculty members, future scientists and the world we live in today.

In the 1980s, Leong helped discover a new vaccine for salmon that died from IHNV, a disease that killed millions of fish and affected their migrations across the Columbia River. She also collaborated to help found the Center for Salmon Disease Research, which continues to find vaccines and solutions to fish diseases today.

After becoming a distinguished professor and spending more than 25 years in Corvallis, she moved on to be a director of the Marine Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Read more about her transformative work that advanced aquaculture globally.

Parisa Khosropour encourages a pursuit of personal excellence over conventional markers of success. Advocating for doing what one loves and working hard, she views success as an ongoing process rather than a final destination.

Khosropour, a former president of the transplant diagnostics division at Thermo Fisher Scientific, now channels her expertise into angel investing, supporting healthcare startups with transformative potential. Her philosophy of “paying it forward” has inspired her to mentor and advise startups, emphasizing the importance of thorough research and aligning goals with investing groups.

She graduated with her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Oregon State and then transitioned from clinical pharmacology research at Stanford to industry, where she excelled in cellular immunology and assay development.

Read more about her career advice and dedication to healthcare innovation.

Simon Johnson spearheaded a novel approach to researching mitochondrial diseases that has reshaped his field’s work.

For many years, scientists speculated on the pathway from which these diseases arise, primarily focusing on the mitochondria's role in generating energy to find an answer. However, Johnson reasoned that an energetic explanation wouldn’t account for how infants with the disease commonly survive through development.

With this in mind, his laboratory instead examined the structure’s origins as a remnant of ancient bacteria within our cells. Certain bacterial components remain intact as parts of the mitochondria and, as Johnson’s lab discovered, could trigger innate immune responses if they were to leak out of the cell. These pioneering findings create a much clearer picture of the diseases than ever before, and Johnson is now focusing his efforts on specifying what particular bacterial aspect of the mitochondria could be at fault. He currently runs his laboratory in the U.K. at Northumbria University and is eager to continue exploring this mystery.

Read more about Johnson’s groundbreaking work in mitochondrial diseases.

Enjoy some photos from the event below. Click here for the full gallery of photos.

“Medical schools are set up so that you can just call down and have the medium made for you because they were organized for that kind of stuff,” Leong said. It turns out that working in higher education was different. “I remember struggling because I had never made media before. I had to make it myself at Corvallis,” she said.

Media is a substance typically put on Petri dishes to provide nutrients to microorganisms and help them grow. Leong enforced sterile conditions to make the lab a safe and successful environment. But it wasn’t easy.

Four decades ago, research techniques looked very different. “In California, we had Petri dishes and plastic growth chambers that you threw away when you were done. I came to Corvallis and saw they were using glass bottles instead. It was just different,” she said.

Leong challenged her graduate students to make enzymes and other materials from scratch. Everyone learned how to manually analyze samples–a notably more difficult task before the advent of automated gene sequencers.

Leong’s lab used DNA techniques to detect evidence of endogenous retroviruses in fresh placentas soon after women gave birth in the hospital. For Leong, this meant transporting placentas to the lab at 3 or 4 a.m. with her sleeping daughter in her arms.

“If I didn’t have those students and a really supportive Chair, I don’t know if I would have survived,” she said.

The long hours and enthusiasm for virus research did not go unnoticed. From gigantic genomes to viruses with only a limited set of genes, the research opportunities are endless. “You know what I find fascinating about a virus?” Leong said. “You can do all kinds of things with five genes and if you want to use them to begin to understand how the cell works, therein lies a whole wealth of studies you can do.”

Lethal disease leads to uncharted waters

Fast forward to the 1980s, when a sudden virus rocked the Pacific Northwest. Millions of fish suddenly dropped dead in the Columbia River from the Infectious Hematopoietic Necrosis Virus (IHNV), a disease researchers knew little about. Mysteriously enough, the virus only affected steelhead trout and salmon, leaving other fish unharmed.

Every year, salmon and trout frantically traverse the Columbia River, racing upstream and back to their birthplace. There, they spawn offspring that eat and live their busy lives downstream.

This sudden increase in deaths caused a serious problem resulting in millions of dollars in losses annually in the U.S. If these die-offs continued, even non-seafood lovers would notice the impact on the ecosystem.

The Columbia River serves as the largest concentration of hydroelectric power in the U.S., generating 40% of the total hydroelectric generation in 2012. However, there’s a catch—the fish need to succeed.

“The movement of water over those dams along the Columbia River is controlled by the salmon and their return, so the generation of power is an important component,” Leong said.

To preserve the ecosystem, one strategy is to raise more fish to make this journey. In the 1980s, the cost to raise one Chinook salmon capable of surviving the trip was approximately $670. “The cost is a tax on all of us that we pay for in many respects. And it’s a creature that we need to preserve,” she said.

Salmon not returning home has monumental ecological consequences. The entire ecosystem relies on the successful movement of fish back and forth along the river. The river’s health and vitality are sustained by what the salmon consume and their activity, impacting energy usage, food availability, species conservation, and overall ecosystem health.

For Leong, this presented a new avenue for exploration and opportunity. Through this research, she helped discover a new genus of the virus, new treatments, and a recombinant DNA vaccine for salmon.

She didn’t do this alone. Collaborating with John Fryer, the Chairman of Microbiology, she helped found the Center for Salmon Disease Research at Oregon State, where the first work on vaccines for fish took place. At the time, there was no other facility of this type and complexity in the county – specifically the clean water, disease-free conditions, and quarantine capabilities. Finding vaccines and other solutions for fish diseases continues at the center to this day.

After spending more than 25 years at Oregon State, Leong rose through the ranks. When named Distinguished Professor, her jaw dropped and she nearly fell off her seat at the faculty meeting.

She proceeded to serve on Search Committees for University Presidents, assumed roles on National Committees and took on various additional responsibilities.

Leong shared her expertise globally, presenting her work to professionals worldwide, including the European Fish Association in Spain and aquaculture farms in Japan, Norway, China, and Chile. Due to limited resources, some of these farms practiced diverse ways to treat fish diseases.

“Salmon lice is a huge problem, and they couldn’t use some of the anti-lice compounds,” she said. Given that some of the salmon were raised for human consumption, alternative measures were sought. “Sometimes they would bring out a bag of rotting onions from the tank because they were hoping it would keep the lice away. It was the only thing they had at the time.”

A vaccine could change that. Numerous farms sought to develop and use antiviral vaccines for their struggling marine life, which Leong’s work made possible.

Moving forward and across the ocean

After her time at Oregon State, she returned to Hawaii to help take care of her family, including her now 101-year-old mother and 103-year-old father. Departing from Oregon State meant she had to drop her virology research.

She landed a new position as director of the Marine Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The problem was she is a microbiologist – not a marine biologist.

When she arrived, the lab needed a microbiology background in aquaculture, especially in fish rearing and coral disease research. With 17 other faculty members, Leong led the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, including more than 50 graduate students.

Despite being an ocean away, she aimed to maintain her strong Oregon roots. “I used my own funds to bring some of the faculty over. I tried very hard to keep those friendships very strong because I didn’t want to leave them.”

Leong's leadership roles grew including serving as the chairman of the Board of Directors for the Center for Tropical and Subtropical Aquaculture, the president of the National Association of Marine Laboratories, and on the executive secretariat for the National Advisory Committee on Development and Assessment of Climate. When she retired, she thought about stopping science but when her friends kept calling her up to edit new books, she couldn’t resist.

When recalling her wild water adventures, she offers advice for aspiring scientists. “When I was young, I wish I knew to choose subjects and people not because they make you feel good, but because they are doing wonderful things for science and society,” Leong said. “Look to the future and decide what it is that you want, short and long-term, and then make the decision.”

Currently, she enjoys painting, playing piano, growing tomatoes, embarking on boat trips to Indonesia, and engaging in things she didn’t have time for before. Not to mention creating more memories with her husband in a marriage of 57 years and counting.

Even though many years have come and gone, she doesn’t forget the people who supported her through the struggles and the triumphs.

“I grew up as a scientist, teacher, and communicator at Oregon State,” Leong said. “My colleagues have been supportive and the College of Science administration as well as the College of Agricultural Sciences were so helpful as I was struggling as a young professor.”