Turning Passion into Profession
Clinical Research Laboratory Manager, Illinois Tech’s Center for Nutrition Research
A passion for STEM has driven Casey Weisfuss since he was young. Now he’s putting his biochemistry degree to work as a laboratory manager in his alma mater’s Center for Nutrition Research.
Casey Weisfuss (BCHM ’21)Even as a high school student, Casey Weisfuss (BCHM ’21) was always drawn to science and mathematics. That passion for STEM led him to Illinois Tech, where he dove headfirst into studying biochemistry.
“Honestly, I liked all STEM in high school,” says Weisfuss. “My biology and chemistry teachers were my favorites, and I kind of just put it together.”
Fast forward to 2024, and the high schooler who once worked on projects sponsored by Argonne National Laboratory and the Shedd Aquarium is now the lab manager in Illinois Tech’s Center for Nutrition Research. His biochemistry background and hands-on experience with faculty made him the perfect fit for exploring nutrition’s impact on human health.
“It’s interesting to learn the inner mechanisms of the human body,” Weisfuss says. “How things work and come together, how we can run these trials here in the clinic and discover how our diets affect us, even at a cellular level.”
In the lab, Weisfuss takes the biological samples that are collected for the studies conducted in the lab—whether it’s blood, urine, stool, saliva, or even hair and nail samples—and ensures that they get properly processed, stored, analyzed, and shipped to partners. He credits his work as an undergrad for preparing him to step into the lab ready on day one.
“All of the laboratory work that I did as an undergrad directly—almost one-to-one—applied to this job,” says Weisfuss. “There were a couple of learning curves getting going, but for the most part, I had the foundations directly from school here. I was able to apply it and elevate it with a little help from my predecessor.”
The sheer volume of samples collected—the lab contains thousands of samples, some of which require more complex analyses such as DNA and RNA isolations—puts a lot of responsibility on the lab manager’s shoulders. Weisfuss wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I like that I’m accountable for everything that goes on back there,” he says. “At the end of the day, if something goes wrong, it’s my fault. I like having some accountability.”
The transition from biochemistry student to laboratory manager wasn’t an obvious choice at first for Weisfuss. Heading into his final year as an undergraduate, he wasn’t even aware of the existence of the university’s Department of Food Science and Nutrition, whose chair, Britt Burton-Freeman, runs the Center for Nutrition Research.
“I was in Associate Professor [Nick] Menhart’s class. There was an opening here, and he recommended me. I said, ‘Why not?’ I started working as a senior as the assistant,” Weisfuss says. “I didn’t have another job at the time, so I wanted to get experience.”
Four years later, he now runs the lab and looks forward to the near-constant stream of new projects and studies that he gets to contribute to.
“We’re starting a grapeseed extract study,” says Weisfuss. “It’s always interesting [to see] all the different studies we do, the different interventions we give our subjects to see the downstream effects of dietary interventions. It’s cool to see how the study pans out.”
