For Mike Hunnicutt, professor emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), creating a memorable footprint in the field of chemistry has involved a multitude of serendipitous encounters with individuals, all of whom had one thing in common: their show of enduring interest in him beginning with his schooling as a first-generation college student.
That university portal changed the course of Hunnicutt’s life and led him to a doctorate degree, careers at the multi-national corporations and a return to higher education at VCU.
The son of a U.S. Army Master Sergeant and Japanese mother who met during the US occupation of Japan, Hunnicutt grew up in Miami Springs, Florida. A high school teacher Mrs. Blatt turned him on to chemistry early on. Ironically, he found himself an undergraduate at Duke University in Durham where his father, unbeknownst to Hunnicutt, had grown up as an adopted child “on the wrong side of the tracks” where he keenly felt the barrier between his life as a union laborer and educational opportunity.
“The one shining spot for me throughout that whole time [at Duke],” says Hunnicutt, was chemistry. …The laboratory was my fix. I could go there, and I could just totally immerse myself in it. And, you know, I would walk out with just a smile every time.”
Hunnicutt met organic phosphorus chemist Louis Quinn whose spectroscopy class centered on problem solving and the resources a chemist has in “the tool bag” to elucidate the chemical composition and structure of organic molecules. This deepened Hunnicutt’s interest in organic chemistry and instrumentation used by scientist for structural characterization and quantitative analysis.
For Hunnicutt it was about the questions that were raised: “If you see this type of data, what does it mean, where does it lead you to, and how do you use that to figure out what the structure was?” As an undergraduate, he learned to use several applied tools to help interpret the data and, in turn, discover something.
Prior to his senior year, he got his first job as a chemist at Environmental Analysis & Design. He did water and solids analysis and was able to experience the practical application of science and quantitative analysis. Hunnicutt returned to Duke his senior year with a new sense of passion and desire to get deeper into chemistry. Fortunately for him he met his future graduate school mentor, Dr. Charles Lochmüller, while searching for an independent study position in the Department of Chemistry. While completing his independent study research project, Dr. Lochmüller helped him secure a part-time job at the Research Triangle Institute doing research on the analysis of priority pollutants in the atmosphere.
Nearing graduation, Hunnicutt was encouraged by Lochmüller to go to graduate school, an opportunity that had not occurred to the “first-generation” college student. “The reality is, I knew nothing about what it meant to go to graduate school. I knew nothing about the university paying my tuition and fees … All that was blind to me, and it was also blind to my parents, too, in terms of how to help me while I was an undergraduate and what post graduate education was all about. Dr. Lochmüller took a personal interest in me and coached me through the steps I needed to complete to apply to Duke’s Graduate School.” Hunnicutt is forever grateful for Lochmüller’s guidance and encouragement. “He gave me a vision of what could be in my future; something I had never envisioned.”
During graduate school Hunnicutt met Joel Harris from the University of Utah who had preceded Hunnicutt as a Duke undergraduate chemistry major and was Lochmüller’s first independent study student. Harris was visiting Lochmüller and Hunnicutt and had an opportunity to share what his research was focused on: the use of luminescent probe molecules bound to chemically modified solid surfaces with the objective of characterizing the molecule’s microenvironment under a range of different conditions. Harris introduced him to a well-studied compound with unique photo physics called pyrene.
Hunnicutt quickly proposed a synthetic pathway that would enable them to immobilize alkyl pyrene silane compounds having different alkyl chain lengths onto the surface of microparticulate silica gels used in high performance liquid chromatography. They could then study the surface in a way that had never been studied. “That initial encounter with Harris was the beginning of a long and lasting mentorship that helped shape my life in industry and academia,” says Hunnicutt.
The bond with Harris wasn’t the only one Hunnicutt formed. At Duke, where he would go on to earn a doctorate in 1984, he had earlier met his future wife Sally, focusing on a degree in chemistry and education. In fact, Hunnicutt was a teaching assistant in of one of Sally’s labs.
Harris recruited Hunnicutt to Utah as his first post-doctoral researcher and they worked together on various spectroscopy techniques, including photo acoustic and x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. Hunnicutt set up an organic chemistry surface laboratory with Harris nd published several articles with other collaborators. It was a stint that netted Hunnicutt a distinguished alumni award this year from the U’s Department of Chemistry, an honor Hunnicutt is deeply humbled by.
Following the U, in 1986, Hunnicutt, now married to Sally, began a career in industry at Proctor and Gamble where he rose through the ranks to lead a group called Research Analytical. Hunnicutt cites it as one of the highlights of his industrial career based on the quality of science and scientific colleagues he worked with which provided all types of analytical support essential to drug discovery and early-stage drug formulations to elucidate the pharmacokinetics and metabolism of new chemical entities.
In 1996, he transitioned his career from a consumer goods company (P&G) to a global pharmaceuticals company (Wyeth) in Richmond, Virginia. He eventually became Senior Director for the Analytical Sciences department of Wyeth Consumer Healthcare. As his career progressed, he held several different positions as an Assistant Vice President for R&D Quality and Compliance, R&D Regulatory Compliance before transitioning back into a scientific leadership role in the manufacturing organization focusing on Products Chemistry and Analytical Sciences.
Along the way, he and Sally, the couple, became a quartet with the birth of their two sons, Patrick and Nathan.
Hunnicutt left the industry in 2011 following Pfizer’s purchase of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Hunnicutt shared that he had a goal of retiring from the private sector in his 50s to teach chemistry and mentor students in academia. He saw this “as a way of giving back and paying forward for his good fortune and in recognition of the impact his mentors, Lochmüller and Harris, had on his life’s trajectory and career.
Hunnicutt served as an Adjunct Faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) prior to being hired as a Teaching Faculty member. Hunnicutt served as an Adjunct Faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) prior to being hired as a Teaching Faculty member.
VCU “wanted me to teach the lectures, but I wanted to teach the labs,” he says of his time as a professor, “because that was where I got my energy from at Duke and my happiness with Joel.” It was that energized happy place that Hunnicutt was able to foster in students as a way of paying it forward, helping young people learn tools by “doing research and by getting to know them.” I wanted to provide that same nurturing environment and challenging environment that Lochmüller and Harris provided him to help them be all they could be. “And so that's why I stuck with the lab stuff until I … decided to retire.”
While at VCU and into his retirement, Hunnicutt continues to contribute to higher education through his service to Duke University, as a member of the Graduate School Board of Visitors and the Global Alumni Board of Directors. He also volunteers and serves at a number of local non-profits in the Greater Richmond area. Whenever he’s at Duke or serving Duke, he’s never far from the memory of that day his father drove him to Duke for his first year of college. “The very first stop we made when we got to Durham is we went by this bank… So we went to the bank, and … and the teller gives me something to sign. And so all of a sudden, my dad reveals to me for the first time, [that] he grew up in Durham…[and] the parents who adopted him, they left me some money for school.”
“That was the big reveal.”
