As a child, Sue Holzmer was always drawn to animals. “I was the little kid doctoring the cat,” she said, reflecting on her childhood in the suburbs of NYC. “I ended up getting a horse when I was ten. I found a friend who had a barn in the backyard, and we kept her there for a few years. Bless my parents, I just had to have her!” 

Her love for animals naturally drove her towards a career in veterinary medicine. Sue majored in Animal Science at the University of Connecticut and went on to become a Clinical Research Associate at Zoetis, an animal health company that specializes in vaccines, drugs, and other medical technologies for companion animals and livestock.  

Sue’s career at Zoetis eventually led her to working with Dr. Dwight Bowman in 2011, who was on the verge of founding a one-of-a-kind degree program at Cornell. She was excited to collaborate with him, having been impressed by his distinguished career and contributions to parasitology globally.  

“He came into a lab with us, and we hit it off immediately, chatting all day while he picked through worms. At the end of that very first day, I wished I could take some of his classes,” she said. 

She’d soon have an opportunity to fulfill that wish. By working with people like Sue, Dr. Bowman sensed an unmet need for graduate education in parasitology, and in 2016 he established such a program at Cornell—the Master of Professional Studies in Veterinary Parasitology.  

Sue remembered the exact moment she first heard about the program. “I was in an airport when I got an email announcing the MPS. I read the first five words and knew I had to do it! I started making my application in the airport that day.”  

She would soon be accepted into the first class of the MPS in Veterinary Parasitology. The program’s coursework was designed with busy professionals like Sue in mind: flexible online coursework paired with comprehensive in-person laboratories. This format turned out to be a perfect fit for her, allowing her to maintain her full-time career while furthering her education.

 

“I appreciated the hybrid format very much. It would have been impossible for me to take the classes otherwise,” Sue said. “The online courses are incredibly useful resources, even now. I still look through the slides to refresh my memory. I had an incredibly positive experience.” 

Parasitology, in general, is an underserved field. Even though parasites live all around us, making serious impacts on human and animal welfare, relatively few scientists stop to study them. As Sue progressed through the program, she realized her specialized knowledge in parasitology was beginning to set her apart from her colleagues. 

“I was able to become a much more substantial team member on the projects I worked on. It was at a time where there weren’t many parasitologists in our company, I suddenly became a resource,” Sue recounted. 

Eventually, Sue was promoted to Clinical Research Manager at Zoetis, bringing her expertise to teams developing antiparasitic drugs that have since been distributed nationwide. She’s worked on Simparica, a flea and tick oral medication for dogs, and Simparica Trio for internal and external parasites and heartworm prevention. She’s also contributed to Revolution and Revolution Plus for cats, a topical medication that prevents fleas, ticks, heartworms, and intestinal parasites in cats, and ProHeart 6 and ProHeart 12, long-acting heartworm preventatives for dogs.  

To get these products through the arduous FDA approval process, Sue designed and led clinical trials to prove their efficacy. She designed screens to test target parasites, and used trials to discover molecules like sarolaner, the active ingredient in Simparica. Many of the skills she uses for her clinical work were gained in the MPS program, including necropsy, worm recovery/identification and parasite biology, which is something she “uses every day”. 

Drug developers need to clear several hurdles to prove their medication does what it purports to do, and getting it approved can take years of diligent research. Some of Sue’s proudest professional achievements were shepherding these products from discovery of active molecules through regulatory approvals and onto shelves. 

“It’s amazing to be blessed with that opportunity. Most scientists don’t even get the chance to do that once, and I have done it twice. When you read the label and it says in tiny little print: this kills deer ticks… that was me!”