Several West Virginians recently were generous enough to share their personal stories and perspectives with Create WV. Such profiles are great tools for illustrating what we mean by a new economy for our state — who populates this workforce and how they see the world and West Virginia’s place in it.
Look for more profiles on the blog coming soon, and please feel free to nominate your own ideas for profiles as well!
Jamie L. Miller, 30 years old, Fairmont, WV
Creative Economy Factor: Dr. Miller has a PhD in microbiology and immunology from the West Virginia University (WVU) School of Medicine. During her college studies, she spent a summer working on the AIDS vaccine evaluation group at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, and also spent a semester studying at the National Institutes of Health, where she investigated the mechanism by which HIV kills infected cells. Dr. Miller is presently a scientist with the Institute for Scientific Research/WV High Technology Consortium Foundation; she is also the Director of Life Sciences for the Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research & Innovation Center (MATRIC), and Adjunct Faculty for the Department of Medicine at WVU. She and her husband Brad, a medical doctor, live in Fairmont, WV, with their cat and parrot.
On West Virginia in the New Economy: My overall goal is to work to develop a life sciences endeavor in West Virginia that not only improves the quality of life for those around us (through the development of biotechnology) but also creates jobs in West Virginia for people with skill sets similar to mine. I enjoy being in north central West Virginia where I am only a few hours away from the larger cities and attractions of places such as Pittsburgh and the Washington, D.C. area but still have the advantage of calling a small city home. In what should be West Virginia’s highest priority for improvement and growth, I think we should work very hard to offer competitive (technical) education opportunities and build an employment infrastructure that supports the retention of such talent, in turn benefitting our state and those who are fortunate enough to call it home.
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