Dr. Ivan Rusyn--A Man on a Mission
Posted March 27, 2017
Dr. Ivan Rusyn
A Life We Can Only Imagine
Dr. Ivan Rusyn, a professor at the College of Veterinary
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, was born in Kiev, Ukraine, the
son of two engineers. From the beginning, the importance of
education played a large role in his family; his parents were each
first-generation college graduates who impressed their appreciation
for science and learning on their children. So, it came as no
surprise to the elder Rusyns when their son went on to get his
M.D., then Ph.D. in toxicology, and their daughter a Ph.D. in
biochemistry. “We’re trying to one-up our parents,” Rusyn
joked.
It was his parents’ education that brought the Rusyn family from
a coal-mining community in southeastern Ukraine and a farming
village in western Ukraine to the capital city, Kiev. His parents
were sent there in the 1960s after getting their college degrees to
“repay” the free education the government provided. As a result,
Rusyn grew up in Kiev during a unique period in Ukraine’s
history.
In May of Rusyn’s eighth-grade year, the infamous Chernobyl
nuclear power plant accident occurred—only 30 miles from Kiev.
Despite the lack of official information in the immediate
aftermath, news of the danger spread fast. “The biggest immediate
threat was from radioactive iodine,” Rusyn explained.
Although it wasn’t potentially hazardous for Kiev adults,
children were at risk because the iodine could affect thyroid
development. “All of that wasn’t common knowledge, but it became
common knowledge fast enough,” Rusyn recalled. “It took about two
weeks for the [government] propaganda machine to actually admit
what happened, but the rumor mill worked very fast. A lot of kids
started disappearing from school.”
Rusyn soon joined the flight of children from the affected area
to “safer places.” His parents stayed behind, sending him to his
maternal grandmother’s home in southeastern Ukraine for the summer.
When school started, he went to his father’s hometown in western
Ukraine for the semester. It was nearly a year before he returned
to his parents’ home in Kiev.
Educational Path to Science
After high school, Rusyn went on to medical school at the
Bogomolets National Medical University in Kiev, where he spent the
next six years training to become a physician. However, as he
progressed through his studies, his interests began to veer away
from clinical medicine. “I was really enjoying training to be
a physician,” Rusyn said, “But I dabbled into research in the last
two years [of medical school] and really, really liked it.” Once
again, the Chernobyl blast altered the course of Rusyn’s education,
albeit a bit more subtly this time. “[In our research] we were
working with [Chernobyl] first responders and their blood samples
and looking into reactive oxygen species and DNA damage. This work
was both important and immediately applicable to prevention of the
deleterious effects of radiation.”
Although Rusyn started his residency in ear, nose, and throat
surgery, he couldn’t resist the research career. During a trip to a
conference in Germany he met Helmut Sies, one of the leading
researchers into oxidative stress at the time. Sies made Rusyn an
offer he couldn’t refuse: an invitation to work in his lab for a
year on a German government fellowship (DAAD). Rusyn leapt at the
opportunity. He left his residency in Kiev for Germany and never
looked back.
After spending a year in Germany, Rusyn was thoroughly hooked on
research—with a particular interest in toxicology. On the advice of
colleagues, he applied to graduate school in the United States. In
1996, he began his doctoral studies in toxicology at the University
of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, followed by two years of
post-doctoral work at UNC and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT). He then returned to UNC in 2012 to launch his
career in academia as an assistant professor. He made full
professor in just eight years—quite the feat.
Texas A&M University Snatches Rusyn
In 2014, Rusyn moved to College Station to join the Texas
A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical
Sciences (CVM) team. As with many of his career changes, it wasn’t
an expected move. He was happy at UNC, but was ultimately swayed by
Texas A&M’s commitment to the One Health Initiative, which fit
his research in environmental health. “The concept of One Health
was a very big attraction because I knew this wasn’t just an
attempt by university administrators to bring in one person,” he
explained. “It was a concerted effort with all these outstanding
researchers coming together in the college, having this drive. It
was very important for me to feel that the administration had a
commitment to the broader [One Health] picture, rather than just a
commitment to me and my lab.”
Since moving to the CVM, Rusyn has devoted himself to filling in
the gaps in knowledge about the chemicals in our environment that
affect human health. “The biggest problem in the field of
environmental health and toxicology is lack of comprehensive safety
information on most chemicals in the environment and commerce.
There is this paradigm: no data, no hazard; no hazard, no risk.
Most of the chemicals in the environment have not been tested for
safety, so we just assume that they’re safe,” Rusyn explained. Here
at the CVM, Rusyn is working to develop experimental models that
explore the connections between chemicals and human health and
quantify inter-individual differences in chemical effects.
Using his background in medicine and toxicology, Rusyn seeks to
understand the root causes of environmental disease and to assist
both the government and industry with making science-informed
regulatory decisions. “As a former physician in training, I would
much rather prevent diseases than treat them, but you also need to
make sure we are using solid science to protect human and
environmental health, while allowing safe use of chemicals in our
lives,” he said. “Dealing with people that are sick is A,
expensive, and B, not very effective. Trying to prevent diseases
has a potentially larger impact.”
To that end, Rusyn works with both regulators and the industry
to develop models that determine the safest levels and combinations
of the chemicals in our environment. He works with industry
toxicologists to identify gaps in knowledge about their products,
then designs and conducts experiments to produce safety
information. On the other side of the aisle, Rusyn addresses the
big-picture concerns of regulators at state, federal, and
international levels, listening to their questions, using his
research to produce answers, and understanding how best complex
scientific information can be communicated. “We’re trying to serve
as an impartial broker between the regulators and the regulated and
listen to both sides and try to come up with solutions,” Rusyn
said. “A strong institutional commitment to multi-disciplinary
research and applied solutions creates an incentive for our work
with the industry and governmental partners to figure out what
challenges they have. We can design and do experiments and connect
all the dots, and that’s extremely rewarding to me.”
Much of Rusyn’s research focuses on analyzing the combined
effects of multiple chemicals on human health. By focusing on
complex substances, such as petroleum refining products which “may
contain a myriad of individual chemicals,” he seeks to develop
experimental models that will radically change the way we look at
chemical toxicology, shifting the focus from testing and regulating
individual chemicals to complex mixtures, a much more realistic
exposure scenario. “Human exposures are not one chemical at a time,
but we try to regulate and protect human health one chemical at a
time,” Rusyn explained.
“Petroleum substances are an excellent example of complexity of
chemical exposures and we’re trying to stay on the cutting edge of
the field.”
Rusyn and his lab and collaborators are developing models that
look at mixtures both forward and backward. He’s not just looking
at known chemical combinations, but also creating methods to
analyze the effects of an unknown mixture to predict the chemical
components and how they will affect human and environmental health
as a whole.
In addition, he led a team of researchers at A&M and beyond
to propose a large research program to the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) to analyze the impact of chemical disasters and
develop first-response tools to protect human health. From tropical
storms and flooding events to oil and chemical spills, we live in a
world of constant environmental threats. The consortium’s goal is
to “develop faster, cheaper, better tools for decision-makers to
decide quickly whether there is a danger or hazard” and how those
dangers may affect different individuals or populations. “We’re
trying to develop tools that can be used to actually get a
[high-level] answer within days rather than months or years,
because within months or years, it’s too late. Most decisions right
now are, ‘Let’s just move people out because we really have no
idea,’” he said.
Rusyn is a pragmatist at heart. His ultimate goal is to provide
the research tools and data that will allow for responsible
decision-making on both sides, to identify acceptable exposures
rather than ignore problems or raise false alarms. “The challenges
are many and daunting, but they’re not completely intractable,” he
said. “What makes me excited is that we’re trying to bridge between
the industry and the regulators and while being protective of human
health, at the same time bring facts and data for them to make
decisions.”
Collaborative Efforts
Since joining the CVM, Rusyn has been impressed by the
interdisciplinary cooperation that makes his research possible.
“The beauty of this campus is that there are lots of very smart
people and you can collaborate with many of them. The overall
intellectual and physical capacity of this campus is just
staggering.”
He embraces the CVM’s spirit of innovation and gets just as much
satisfaction from teaching the next generation of toxicologists as
from his research. Just as his parents encouraged him to exceed
their accomplishments, he enjoys training his students to succeed
in their own rights. Rusyn measures his own success not by
recognition or awards, but by the accomplishments of his mentees
and colleagues. “Success of trainees is easier to measure,” he
said. “I see how many of them have successful careers in academia,
industry, or government, how many of them I see being successful
and sought after and become stars. I think that would be a better
measure of my contributions to the field.”
Rusyn’s emphasis on sensible, data-driven solutions and
collaborating for a better future falls in line with his pragmatic
world view. “I’m just a simple person. I’m trying to communicate at
the right level,” he said. Whether he’s working with industry or
government, teaching students, or speaking in the international
media, Rusyn’s goal is clear: Get the facts, communicate the
message to the right people, and make this world a safer place for
all.
###
For more information about the Texas A&M College of
Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, please visit our
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Contact Information: Megan Palsa, Executive Director of
Communications, Media & Public Relations, Texas A&M College
of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Science; mpalsa@cvm.tamu.edu
; 979-862-4216; 979-421-3121 (cell)
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