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Alumni spotlight: Aileen Mooney, C’11

Alumni spotlight: Aileen Mooney, C’11

by Public Relations | December 20, 2024

LATROBE, PA – A bachelor’s degree in biology can be a great pathway to medical school, but that’s not the only door it opens.

Aileen Mooney, C’11, used her biology degree from Saint Vincent College to launch a career in public health research and management. Mooney was hired last August as a supervisory epidemiologist and program manager at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine.

Mooney is part of a project team that is studying the domestic production of medicines and supply chain resiliency. “We're looking at how well our drug supply chain, especially generics, can withstand any type of shock—everything from a trade war with China to a pandemic or a natural disaster that dismantles manufacturing,” Mooney said.

In October, Mooney and the project team briefed federal officials—including representatives and staffers from the National Economic Council, Veterans Health Administration, Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense—at the White House. The project team’s research is vital, timely and has strong bipartisan support, and it will continue after the new administration moves into the White House in January 2025.

“There is never a dull moment,” Mooney said. “We’re always busy. There are always last-minute questions that come down from our leadership or from Congress or some other part of the federal government, like, ‘I want to know what you’re doing right now.’ I have to be a good communicator. I have to take questions about very complex health systems and the supply chain and synthesize the answers for somebody who is very high up in the military but probably has no background in public health.”

Mooney’s success is no surprise to Dr. Matt Fisher, a professor of chemistry in the Herbert W. Boyer School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Computing.

“What I remember about Aileen is her genuine interest in biomedical research and how much she enjoyed the public health focus of the biochemistry course I teach,” Fisher said. “For years, I’ve used public health issues as the context for various sections of the course. Although I had the impression she was considering medical school as one possibility, she always was interested in biomedical research. That is often not true of many of my students who are focused on attending medical school after Saint Vincent.”

Becoming a doctor was Mooney’s goal when she first arrived at Saint Vincent, but that plan soon changed. “I decided I wanted to do research, and it was the professors at Saint Vincent who kept me going,” she said.

Mooney was inspired by Dr. Bruce Bethke, associate professor of biology and director of biotechnology. “When I wanted to do an immunology project for my undergraduate research project, he was really the only one that could mentor me,” Mooney said.

Before he joined the faculty at Saint Vincent, Bethke was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He was impressed by Mooney’s work ethic as an undergrad.

“I would describe Aileen as both highly engaged and highly enthusiastic,” Bethke said. “Her senior research project was a highly aggressive and contemporary scientific undertaking for an undergraduate project.”

After graduating from Saint Vincent, Mooney conducted research as an immunologist at the University of North Carolina and George Washington University. “I was lab manager for a research lab that studied autoimmune blistering diseases, and I also ran the clinical diagnostics lab for those diseases.” she said. “I did that for three years, then decided to jump to trauma surgery clinical trials at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center while working on my master’s and fell in love with epidemiology.”

In 2015, Mooney joined Noblis, a nonprofit science and technology organization in Reston, Virginia, as an assistant program manager for biosurveillance. Mooney earned a Master of Public Health, Epidemiology from George Mason University in 2016. Recently, she spent three years as a public health epidemiologist and biosurveillance specialist for the Department of Defense.

Mooney is working toward a PhD in Public Health (epidemiology), focusing on causal inference and the intersection of COVID-19, diabetes, obesity and inflammation from Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. She expects to complete her degree in winter 2025.

To maintain her ties to Saint Vincent, Mooney has kept in touch with her professors. She’s also recruited two interns from the College, including one who went with her to Haiti to help conduct research while Mooney was earning her master’s degree.

“I'm always happy to work with students,” Mooney said. “If anyone want to be in public health, reach out and we can talk. My message to students is to be open to opportunities, but you don't have to say yes to everything. Stay on your path without getting distracted—be open, but also very intentional.”

 

 A group of seven professionals poses for a photo in a formal setting, surrounded by the U.S. flag and an official seal.

(From left) Stephen Colvill of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Dr. Marta Wosinska of the Brookings Institution, Dr. Robert Handfield of North Carolina State University, Aileen Mooney of Uniformed Services University, Dr. Irwin Lucki of Uniformed Services University, Dr. Tracey Perez Koehlmoos of Uniformed Services University and Dr. Jeromie Ballreich of Johns Hopkins University

 

 

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