22 ACUMEN • SPRING 2024 EMILY HALNON CHRISTINE KRESCHOLLEK From the Bottling Line to the Biochemistry Lab Chemistry Ph.D. student receives an NSF award to help others take a less-traveled path to the sciences Dane Santa didn’t follow a conventional path to a Ph.D. program in biochemistry. Santa had no real aspirations of going to graduate school six years ago. He was working on the packaging team at Samuel Adams Brewery in the Lehigh Valley, and part of his job included participating in quality assurance panels. This involved tasting and smelling beer to help identify any off-flavors or odors, like the flavor compound diacetyl, which gives beer the scent of movie theatre popcorn. As Santa sipped and sniffed the beer, he discovered he had a taste for science. “Those panels introduced me to the molecules of beer,” he said. “I got really interested and always stayed after to talk with the sensory scientists to learn as much as possible.” “The more I learned about the science of beer,” he said, “the more I realized I didn’t want to bottle beer anymore.” Santa enrolled in community college classes at the age of 27 to pursue his interest in the physical sciences and was admitted to the honors
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