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Multiples’ choice

Posted on | January 22, 2009 | 841 views |

Identical twin scientists find faculty careers at Ohio State

by Emily Caldwell

So how does a young faculty member play a safe practical joke on his department chair? In the case of Steven Lower, he sends his identical twin brother in to the boss’ office to ask for a raise.

It was a safe prank a few years ago, with a chair who turned out to be a good sport when Lower convinced his visiting twin Brian to play the trick. But now, the two would be less likely to pull such a stunt because they are both faculty members at Ohio State.

Brian joined the School of Environment and Natural Resources in July as an assistant professor, five years after his identical twin Steven, now an associate professor, arrived at Ohio State with a primary appointment in the School of Earth Sciences and a secondary appointment in the same school as Brian.

Though they don’t know for sure, the two suspect the presence of identical twin faculty members at the same institution is rare. The Office of Human Resources confirmed the Lowers are the only faculty twins here.

The shared faculty status makes their scientific collaborations less complicated, but also brings Brian back into the Ohio fold of the extensive Lower family. He spent the previous four years as a senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state.

The two didn’t plan career paths that would land them both at Ohio State, but they’re happy with the result.

Steven knew he wanted to teach and do research at a large, comprehensive university. He spent two years on the University of Maryland faculty before moving to Columbus.

“If you want to be a professor, you can’t really plan to work at a specific school,” Brian said. “But when this opportunity came along, I was really excited.”

The opportunity came along without any help from Steven — in a good way. Even with an appointment in environment and natural resources, Steven declined to vote on the creation of the position or on any of the candidates, all in the name of avoiding any appearance of conflict.

“I thought I might find out about the job offer before Brian, but the chair called him directly instead,” Steven said.

Before Brian’s Washington stint, Steven and Brian spent much of their academic lives together. They attended Kent State University as undergraduates and pursued graduate degrees together at Virginia Tech, both earning their PhDs in 2001.

Defining their areas of research concentration is tricky. Though Brian leans more heavily toward the life sciences, both Lowers have a tendency to blend areas of specialization as varied as mineralogy, biochemistry, microbiology and zoology in their pursuit of new discoveries.

Steven and Brian are both involved in an investigation of how staph bacteria cause infection by bonding to synthetic heart valves and forming what are called biofilms, which resist antibiotic treatment. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, the researchers hope to find a way to prevent those bonds from forming in the first place. The only current solution in the case of these infections is surgery to replace the affected valve.

This project is characteristic of other projects led by Steven, who emphasizes understanding relationships — at the molecular level — between inanimate surfaces and living microorganisms. Meanwhile, Brian is developing expertise on bacteria that generate a substance called nanomagnetite, which enables the organisms to become tiny compasses that use magnetic fields to orient themselves in their environment.

Their personal lives have some interesting parallels, too. Both married young and began families during graduate school. Each has three children, and Brian is dad to identical twin girls.

Neither identifies a specific person or event that drew him to science. Brian and Steven are the oldest of five Lower boys raised outside Canton. The third and fourth Lower brothers are school teachers, in science and social sciences, and the fifth is more in tune with the arts.

But the twins think being boys had something to do with spending a lot of time outdoors, where they enjoyed hiking, exploring nature and bird-watching.

“With five boys, my mother told us to go outside a lot,” Brian said.

Though the Lowers say they could write a book about the twin-oriented ruses of their childhood, the jokes in the professional environment are over, they say. Both see Ohio State as an ideal career destination, so they won’t be punking their colleagues anytime soon.

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