Established in 2007 to complement the Gerald and Sally DeNardo Lectureship, this prize is given by the Dean to recognize outstanding science research accomplishment by a graduating senior who reflects the distinctive characteristics of a Jesuit education and is pursuing a career in the health sciences.
2025 Senior Prize Winner
Evan Baerg
Biochemistry major / Biotechnology minor
Steve Suljak, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Faculty Mentor
Evan's research at SCU focuses on developing DNA based aptamers, which bind selectively to target biomarkers for disease diagnostics. Thrombospondin-l, the target protein of his project, has previously been demonstrated to undergo specific glycosylation modifications in early stages of endometrioid ovarian cancer. Identifying biosensing aptamers able to signal the presence of cancer- associated glycoforms could lead to earlier diagnosis of the disease, thereby improving patient outcomes. The actual experimental work requires expertise in a wide range of analytical and molecular biology techniques, including capillary and gel electrophoresis, fluorescence, PCR, and bioaffinity assays.
In Evan's first year, he mastered each of the needed methods, often improving individual protocols on the basis of reading more recent primary literature. As a result, Evan achieved dramatic increases in precision that allowed him to overcome roadblocks that had hindered the lab's efforts on this project for years. In his senior year, he has now worked through multiple iterations of 5-7 rounds of selection, and is aiming to complete sequencing and characterization of aptamer candidates in the last few weeks of the quarter. He has already presented his research as posters at several national conferences, including the American Chemical Society meeting (2024) and most recently at Pittcon 2025, the national conference in analytical chemistry. He and Dr. Suljak hope to communicate his work into a submitted manuscript in the fall, in which he would certainly be listed as first author.
While Evan's research experiences gave him a glimpse at the thrill of working in a team to produce knowledge, he felt they also confirmed how this opportunity can lead to immense mental pressures. Expectations to obtain perfect data and exhibit constant productivity are unhealthy expectations abundant in the research setting, and often promote shortcuts debilitating to the scientific process. Colloquially, this “publish or perish” mindset is poisoning scientific advancement.
As someone who values mental health, Evan developed and upheld a commitment to stand against mental health disparities in the communities in which he is a part. Over the past two years at Santa Clara, he has worked as a Ciocca Center Innovation Fellow in a four-person interdisciplinary student group that has directly collaborated with the University’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) to address student hesitation in participating in mental health resources. It was observed that particular student groups were notably less likely to engage with CAPS services despite disproportional markers of mental health concern. After over a year of student-body interviews and data collection, the group proposed and established an ongoing mental health liaison network within underrepresented student groups to reduce stigma and improve access to care.
In the Fall, Evan will be attending UCLA's PhD program in Biochemistry, Molecular and Structural Biology where he hopes to "focus on developing molecular imaging techniques to deepen understanding of disease progression in elusive conditions such as neurodegeneration.