Joanna Ayoung

Joanna Ayoung came to Hunter College to earn her second Bachelor’s degree after having earned a B. Sc. in Chemistry from the University of West Indies.

• She graduated from Hunter College in 2005 with a BA in Biology.
• During her junior year she was selected for Hunter’s merit-based Minority-Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) program.
• She participated in the ACCESS Summer Research Program of Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences at Cornell University.
• In 2006, she was awarded the Salk Scholarship to study medicine.
• She is currently attending the Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

Erich Jarvis

Erich Jarvis (’88) was named this year as one of Popular Science’s Brilliant 10, a list of “some of the brightest, most promising names in science.” Dr. Jarvis is an associate professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center, where he heads a team of researchers using songbirds to study vocal communication. After earning his Hunter BA in biology and mathematics, he went on to receive a PhD from Rockefeller University. In 1998, he joined the Duke faculty. This is not the first time Jarvis has been singled out for national attention. In 2002, the National Science Foundation awarded him its highest honor for a young researcher: the Alan T. Waterman Award. And in 2005, he received the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award, which provides unrestricted grant support of $500,000 per year for five years.

Arlie Petters

He also is the first recipient of the Blackwell-Tapia Prize from the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute for excellence in mathematics and for serving as a role model to minorities underrepresented in math and science.

Gillian A.M. Reynolds

Gillian A.M. Reynolds (’89) is an award-winning research physicist. After earning her bachelor's and master’s degrees in physics cum laude at Hunter, she went on to earn a PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — one of only nine black women to receive a doctorate in physics in the history of that prestigious institution.

Reynolds currently serves as a senior research physicist at E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., an industry giant based in Wilmington, Delaware.

Reynolds, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, has also conducted research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California and at AT&T Bell
Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey; and served as a faculty member at the Baptist Bible College East in Hyde Park, Massachusetts.

Vanessa Ruta

Vanessa Ruta graduated from Hunter with a 4.0 GPA in 2000.

• After graduation, she entered a doctoral program in biomedical sciences at Rockefeller University and graduated in 2005.
• While there, she conducted research in molecular neurobiology and biophysics as a National Science Foundation Fellow.
• She is currently working in the Columbia University lab of Dr. Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize winner.

Gwendolyn Williams

Gwendolyn Williams was Co-Valedictorian of Hunter’s June 2006 graduating class.

• A pre-med student in the Hunter Honors College, Gwen maintained a perfect 4.0 with a major in psychology.
• Gwen studied Public Policy at Princeton in the Summer of 2005.
• She also volunteered in the pediatric wing at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
• She is currently attending the University of Pittsburgh Medical School on a full scholarship. She will begin her second year as a medical student this fall.