Meet Our Graduates: Westley Bauer
Westley Bauer earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry under the tutelage of Dr. David Wright. His research was focused on developing new and improving existing diagnostics for the “big three” infectious diseases most closely linked to poverty: Malaria, Tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. This research pursuit afforded him the opportunity to travel to sub-Saharan Africa in collaboration with the Macha Research Trust to evaluate new malarial diagnostics tools and to South Africa in an effort to develop next-generation tuberculosis diagnostics in collaboration with the Blackburn group at the University of Cape Town. While at Vanderbilt, Westley was active in the Graduate Study Council and a VINSE-supported outreach program that brought hands-on lessons to rural Tennessee middle schools. He then accepted a role as a senior scientist at H.B. Fuller in the Twin Cities where he worked for 2.5 years developing sustainable adhesives for food packaging. When the COVID-19 pandemic intensified, he decided to jump back into the in-vitro diagnostic space as a Senior Scientist for Immunoassay Development at Qorvo Biotechnologies. He is currently developing high-performance COVID-19 assays that function at point of care to help understand and combat the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.