Helen Donis-Keller has crafted a diverse career that has spanned the arts and the sciences and back again.
Helen Donis-Keller has crafted a diverse career that has spanned the arts and the sciences and back again.
After high school, she began earning her degree in graphic design and photography from the University of Cincinnati before a move to Canada cut her time in the program short. She began working as a graphic designer at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, instead.
“While I was there, I started grazing through different classes that the university offered,” says Donis-Keller. “I tried many subjects—anthropology, psychology, geography—before I discovered chemistry, which was like opening up a whole new world.”
Donis-Keller became interested in synthetic organic chemistry, which is a branch devoted to creating organic compounds. She also explored her innate love of the outdoors by studying biology. Eventually, she earned two bachelor’s degrees from Lakehead: one in natural sciences and one in honors biology.
As an undergraduate, Donis-Keller began doing research for various professors. She loved the scholarly pursuits, but she knew that to create her own projects, she would need a PhD. She went to Harvard and studied biochemistry and molecular biology under Walter Gilbert, who would eventually go on to receive the Nobel Prize for his work on developing a DNA sequencing method.
While at Harvard, Donis-Keller developed a method for RNA sequencing before starting her post-doc in virology at Harvard Medical School. Soon after, she received a call from her former mentor.
“Wally [Gilbert] was now a scientific advisor for Biogen, which was just getting started,” says Donis-Keller. “I loved the idea of working for a start-up, so I became their third employee as the assistant research director of molecular biology in the Cambridge branch of the company.”
After working at Biogen for a few years, Donis-Keller moved to Collaborative Research, Inc. to have more strategic control over her projects. Here, she began to map the human genome.
“My team and I spent five years on a genetic linkage map, and we eventually developed predictive tests for genetic diseases based on what we discovered,” says Donis-Keller. “We were the first group to identify the location of the gene that causes cystic fibrosis and ended up on front page of The New York Times for our human genome map.”
After almost a decade at Collaborative Research, funding for her genetic mapping project ran out, and Donis-Keller was offered a role at Washington University in St. Louis to continue her research.
“Working in higher education gave me the independence and intellectual freedom I’d been looking for,” says Donis-Keller.
Here, she continued identifying the genetic locations of other inherited disorders, such as multiple endocrine neoplasia; the diagnostic tests she developed became the standard of care to assess a particular kind of thyroid cancer.
But despite her scientific successes, Donis-Keller never stopped being interested in art and photography, working on this passion in her spare time, even as she traveled the world to speak at conferences.
“I had a sabbatical coming up, but I couldn’t leave campus because of the big lab I was running at the time, so I decided to stay and take drawing and print-making courses through the art department,” says Donis-Keller. “I realized I found so much joy in art that I couldn’t give it up ever again.”
Donis-Keller decided to make a change, so she got jobs for all her employees, then closed her lab and started an MFA program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She learned to work with different mediums and began experimenting with integrating art and science together, such as Genotype : Phenotype, which is a work of self-portraiture as a visual metaphor for the relationship between nature and nurture.
“I was finishing up my degree and beginning to wonder who would hire me now; I knew a standard university wouldn’t do a joint appointment in art and science,” says Donis-Keller. “That’s when I heard about Olin. They were looking for a biology professor, and they ended up creating this joint position for me so I could do both.”
One of the first professors at Olin, Donis-Keller teaches everything from digital photography to advanced biogenetics. Her latest course, “The Intersection of Biology, Art, and Technology (IBAT),” is a fluid, project-based class in which students explores the deep connections between these three disciplines together in an interesting, self-determined way—indicative of Olin’s student-centered focus.
Learn more about Donis-Keller’s work on her website.