What is a Reed thesis? Search online and you might come across:
The Reed Thesis
During your final year, you will plunge headlong into an intellectual adventure—the senior thesis. Undertaken with support from a faculty adviser, the senior thesis is your opportunity to explore a problem or answer a question that holds particular significance for you. (read more)
For some seniors, this adventure may be more than ‘intellectual,’ it may also involve coming face-to-face with a life-threatening disease that attacks millions of humans every year: malaria.
This year one member of the Class of 2017, Rose Gonoud, took advantage of a special opportunity to synthesize anti-malarial drugs in the experimental chemotherapy laboratory of Prof. Michael Riscoe at OHSU. You can read more about Rose and how this came to pass at “Chem major battles malaria parasite“ (Sallyportal blog, 24 Apr 2017).
Rose Gonoud ’17
To give full credit where credit is due, Rose’s opportunity came about when Lisa Frueh ’15, a Reed chemistry alum who was working in the Riscoe lab, approached her supervisor, Dr. Aaron Nilsen [chemistry, 2013-14], with a crazy idea: if Nilsen and Riscoe would provide lab space and a project to a current Reed senior, Frueh would volunteer to provide day-to-day training and direction in laboratory procedures for Rose on top of her regular duties.
The Gonoud-Frueh partnership worked beautifully from Day 1. As Lisa told me by email, “It was such a fun and rewarding experience–being in a teaching/mentor position always reminds me why I love the scientific process and being in the lab. Congratulations on sending another class of qualified chemists out into the world!”