More than 20.8 million people in the United States — about 7 percent of the population — have some form of diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Brian Bower doesn’t know a single one of them.
Yet Bower, an Ohio University senior, immersed himself in diabetes research at the beginning of the school year, conducting studies that have made significant progress in discovering a cure for the widespread disease.
At 25, Bower has taken seven years to get to this point. But he’s no Van Wilder.
Bower enrolled at OU in 2001 to pursue a career in his favorite high school subject, chemistry. But as he describes it, he “did not do very well.”
One year later, Bower dropped out and joined the National Guard. It wasn’t a move made out of patriotism, but simply financial survival, as he had to fund his education after his parents cut him off. In 2005, he was deployed for a one-year stint in Iraq.
Upon returning to Athens, Bower changed his major to biological sciences. About one year later, he was recruited for his current position, researching how growth hormones affect diabetes — Kopchick’s expertise — with funding from the AMVETS Diabetes Research Institute.
List said Bower has been “a poster child” for the program.