Joshua Lequieu

For first year master’s student and California native Joshua Lequieu, the decision to become a graduate student and follow an academic career path was not always in the plan. His involvement with Professor Varner’s laboratory in CBE began during the late stages of his undergraduate experience at Cornell and has changed his career path entirely.

Before joining the lab in his senior year, Lequieu planned to take up employment after graduation, working as many chemical engineering graduates do in research and development. “Once I started doing research, I really liked it,” says Lequieu. “Senior year, I enjoyed the research so much that I ended up shifting from wanting to work in industry to just wanting to go do research right now.” Working with Professor Varner stimulated deeper interest in research and academia, leading him to stay on for an additional year at Cornell to pursue a Master of Science degree under Professor Varner’s supervision. Josh’s life as an M.S. student has proved to be very research intensive, with his typical schedule comprised of 13 credits of research and only two credits of coursework.

Josh’s research in the Varner Lab focuses on systems biology with the specific goal of understanding complex disease states such as diabetes and cancer. To this end, he employs mathematical models to study metabolism signaling pathways involved in disease progression.

“How does an input, such as sugar intake, lead to an output, such as an increase in protein production?” Josh asks. “The idea is that I build the model, and from this model, I can identify points in the system that can break, causing diabetes.” In January 2011, Josh’s work on diabetes was recognized with the top poster award at the third International Conference on Biomolecular Engineering (ICBE) in San Francisco.

Josh’s work fits well within the broader Varner lab context, which aims to develop mathematical models of signaling cascades in order to draw out system-scale behavior in complex disease cascades – information that cannot be obtained by analysis of its individual parts.

For his master’s project, Josh is studying the conditions created by rapidly proliferating tumor cells and mass transport. Some have hypothesized that cancer progresses in these states. “It’s a step in cancer progression that’s not very well understood,” Josh says. “How does this low oxygen condition lead to an even more dangerous phenotype?”

Outside of the lab, Josh has become known for his love for music and the bass guitar. Though he doesn’t play in a band at Cornell, he received the superlative “most likely to become a rock star” at the Chemical Engineering graduation party last year. Josh has also maintained involvement with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship throughout his time at Cornell.

“I like knowing everyone in the department. I like the people here. People are pretty down to earth and know a lot about everything,” he says… “I’ve been here five years and I’m still hearing about interesting research that’s being conducted in other departments and taking classes that I’d not previously heard of.”

Josh will continue to pursue his newfound passion for research. This fall, he’ll enroll in the University of Wisconsin–Madison to pursue doctoral studies in chemical engineering.