You certainly can get a PhD in Pathology...
PhD student studies keeping beer fresh
By Chris Purdy, THE CANADIAN PRESS
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SASKATOON - Monique Haakensen is not just another university student who claims to have spent her academic years occupied by beer.
The 26-year-old is actually completing her PhD in pathology and laboratory medicine by researching the sudsy beverage at the University of Saskatchewan, home to one of only two labs in the world that studies beer spoilage.
"It's a good conversation starter," Haakensen says from her tiny, cluttered lab on the Saskatoon campus.
"I've gone through so many years of school and I've studied medical microbiology and all this and that - and now I'm saving beer. (People) tease me about it, but they actually find it quite interesting."
Haakensen has helped discover three new methods of detecting beer-spoiling bacteria, including a DNA-based technique, that has big breweries around the globe hoisting pints in celebration.
Breweries usually have to keep batches of beer for two to three months to make sure they haven't spoiled before cases are shipped out on trucks to liquor stores, says Haakensen.
"What we've done here is, by using DNA methods, we can actually figure out in a matter of one to two days if that beer will spoil," Haakensen says.
"It's kind of a bit like making a cookie recipe. It's not hard to follow a recipe from a cookbook, but it's really hard to come up with that recipe and that idea to begin with."
She explains that breweries will be able to get more beer onto the market faster and save on lab costs.
Haakensen, who has won scholarships from several breweries such as Cargill Malt, Coors and Miller, presented some of her lab's beer breakthroughs last summer to an excited crowd at the World Brewing Congress in Hawaii.
Part of her research also includes the discovery of two new genes involved in beer spoilage and three new groups of bacteria that can ruin beer.
The new types of bacteria were found with the unwitting help of her younger brothers a couple years ago while they were also attending the University of Saskatchewan. Too cheap to buy their own beer, the boys made some home brew and offered her a glass.
The beer, smelling like cheese with sludge on the bottom, was too disgusting to drink, Haakensen says.
"So I stole a bunch of bottles of their beer and brought it back here."
Haakensen says the only other lab in the world studying beer spoilage is based out of the Asahi brewery in Japan.
The University of Saskatchewan beer lab, now under the direction of professor Barry Ziola, has made high-profile discoveries before. Its invention of high-gravity fermentation in the 1980s is now used in the creation of biofuels.
Masters student Vanessa Pittet, who works in the lab with Haakensen, has spent countless hours helping to sequence beer spoilage genes.
She is also researching hops and how bacteria can grow in the presence of ethanol. She says the knowledge will also be valuable to the ethanol fuel industry.
Beyond her PhD in beer, Haakensen says there's not much opportunity for her to have a career doing beer research.
She recently landed a job with the university's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization to study how other types of bacteria effect humans
I'd advise you to read the websites and talk to faculty. Maybe someone else will chime in and let you know.
