Laurie was born and raised in the Chicago area.  She is part of a large family of seven kids and family life has always been important to her.  Laurie told us she was always a pretty good student and liked school, but it took a dramatic life changing event to set her on her way to higher academic degrees and the opportunities that come with them.  On November 2, 1973, in her senior year of high school, Laurie was almost killed by a drunk driver as she was riding on her boyfriend’s motorcycle.  Even though she was wearing a helmet, the head on collision put her in a coma for a month.  If that was not bad enough, she then endured numerous surgeries including an experimental brain procedure that was new then but more mainstream now.  During all this, the common refrain from everyone to her “you are so lucky to be alive!”  As she recovered, Laurie knew she had been given a second chance to make a difference in this world.  And to all our benefit, she got right to it.

 

Laurie started her college education at Chatham College in Pennsylvania studying Marine Biology.  She really loved visiting the famous Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and longed to be one the divers who ventured into the huge coral reef tank to feed and talk about the large number of fishes including sharks and eels. She got that chance through a Shedd Aquarium internship. That experience ended up teaching her more than just academic knowledge. though.  On one particular dive the day after Christmas in 1974, when the fish were particularly hungry because they did not receive their usual feedings, she got a nasty bite from one of the sharks who was too anxious to eat the shrimp she was offering him. Even though that bloody hand elicited shouts of Jaws from the patrons, it turned out that both the shark and Laurie were fine in the end.  Laurie realized that nature is not to be trifled with, and you have to must pay attention at all times. 

 

While at Chatham, Laurie met her husband Ken Polasko who was a student at nearby University of Pittsburgh.  They both believed in higher education and were very supportive of each other’s desire to continue learning to do more good things in the world.  

Laurie really did work with the legendary oceanographer Jacques Cousteau as we mentioned above.  Between her junior and senior year at Chatham, she applied to his organization for an internship and was accepted.  She was the first American student they had ever taken on as intern.  Cousteau, at that time, was working in the Mediterranean Sea studying the effect of sewage contamination on the ocean environment.  Their effort successfully changed the behavior of the local communities and made their lives better in the end.  But more than that, she knew that this is what she wanted to do with her life.   To get that realization from such a charismatic and brilliant public figure as Jacques Cousteau was amazing.  

After the internship was over, she was accepted into the marine biology program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California in 1978.  This was a pivotal time for her career because she wanted to switch her studies from marine biology to a more environmental focus.  During her first quarter at Stanford, she discovered the environmental engineering program, which encouraged her to apply to graduate school. Within a few months, Laurie was accepted into the civil and environmental engineering program, which served as the foundation and motivation for her career in environmental sustainability. One cool outcome of her studies was that she discovered a novel microbe that could biodegrade and therefore mitigate the effect of the nasty chemical called Methylene Chloride.  Because that microbe had never been isolated and used before, she got to name it.  Laurie named it Pseudomonas LP and it is still in use today.  

 

This all led to her Doctoral studies, which involved her earning a Ph.D in Microbiology from the University of Maryland in 1990 where she studied both environmental contaminants and how a key enzyme in DNA synthesis, thymidylate synthase, could impact the growth of cancer cells. She went on to do a Postdoctoral position at Stanford Medical School. However, soon after arriving in California, the environmental field urgently needed her help.  Nowhere were these skills called upon more than when she was asked to help mitigate the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which occurred on March 24, 1989, in Prince William Sound, Alaska.  In total, 11 million gallons of oil were spilled into the ocean becoming the greatest environment disaster in U. S. History.  For this cleanup, Laurie provided her expertise in bioremediation of oil and what nutrients are critical to the survival of the microbes eating the contaminants.

During all this Laurie and Ken were also starting a family.  Their son, Max, and daughter, Alex, are both accomplished young adults following in their parents’ footsteps by learning and working hard to be the best they can be.  In 1991, Ken was offered a great job at Motorola in Phoenix.  They loved this area and bought a house here.  Even though they have lived and worked all over the world, they knew this was home.