Young, Scrappy, and Hungry

If the Rhodes Scholarship is the gold standard of graduate awards, the Knight-Hennessy is the Bitcoin. Nike co-founder Phil Knight started the program with a $400 million gift in 2016, making it the largest fully endowed scholarship program. In March, Hayley Raquer ’16 was named one of 49 scholars. As an immunologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Raquer studies the body on a subcellular level, examining how the immune system fights bacteria and viruses, with a focus on primary immunodeficiency diseases (PID). Patients with PID have variants or mutations in their genomes that cause their immune system to fail. Raquer started her research career at SCU, working with Leilani Miller, associate professor in the Department of Biology. She is the only immunologist in this year’s class, but was excited to join the community of learners: “Maybe I’m young and naïve, but I really do think that we can solve a lot of the world’s problems if we put our minds to it.”