CHS ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR SELECTED
By Ford Burkhart ('59)
The Catalina High School Foundation has presented its first outstanding alumnus award to Dr. Eugene Seymour, a physician and entrepreneur who is leading an effort to create anti-viral drugs against a wide range of viral diseases.
Gene was selected in 2007 to receive the award after he was nominated by Sandy Tanner Elers('58). He received the Alumnus of the Year Award on January 18, 2008, at a gathering in his honor from the Foundation President Emily Kittle Morrison ('60). He has agreed to speak to Catalina students at an assembly in the near future.
Gene is the CEO of NanoViricides, a biopharma-ceutical research company based in New Haven, Conn. The company is seeking to develop drugs to treat such human diseases as HIV/AIDS, Hepatitus B and C, Herpes, Influenza, Rabies, Asian Bird Flu, and dengue fever, which affects 100 million people yearly.
"The key to the system is a broad spectrum of nanoviricide which should work against 90 percent of all viruses with minor modifications," he said.
Gene graduated from Catalina in 1958 and from the University of Arizona. He was trained at Baylor Medical College and Columbia University College of Physicians. He did post doctoral training at UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was on the medical faculties of UCLA and USC. During the Vietnam War he was a major in the Medical Corps.
In the 1980s he created an AIDS testing lab to serve the large Hispanic population of Los Angeles. Later he founded a company that developed a rapid HIV blood test and he has conducted HIV research worldwide. He consults for the United Nations.
Gene admits he was hardly a good student at CHS. He says he owes his success to some U of A professors who took an interest in him and inspired him to achieve. Character and persistence count. CHS students can benefit from Gene's example.
