Dr. Eugene Seymour (1958)

Dr. Eugene Seymour is the recipient of the Catalina High School Foundation’s first outstanding alumnus award. Dr. Seymour is a physician and entrepreneur who is leading an effort to create anti-viral drugs against a wide range of viral diseases.

Gene was selected in 2007 to receive the award after he was nominated by Sandy Tanner Elers (’58) and Suzanne Rowe Van Ort (’58). He received the Alumnus of the Year Award from Foundation President Emily Kittle Morrison on January 18, 2008, at a gathering in his honor.

Gene is the CEO of NanoViricides, a biopharma-ceutical research company based in New Haven, Conn. The company is seeking to develop drugs to treat such human diseases as HIV/AIDS, Hepatitus B and C, Herpes, Influenza, Rabies, Asian Bird Flu, and Dengue Fever, which affects 100 million people yearly.

“The key to the system is a broad spectrum of nanoviricide which should work against 90 percent of all viruses with minor modifications,” he said.

Gene graduated from Catalina in 1958 and from the University of Arizona. He was trained at Baylor Medical College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He did post doctoral training at UCLA and he was on the medical faculties of USC and UCLA. During the Vietnam War he was a major in the Medical Corps.

In the 1980s he created an AIDS testing lab to serve the large Hispanic population of Los Angeles. Later he founded a company that developed a rapid HIV blood test and he has conducted HIV research worldwide. He consults for the United Nations.

Gene admits he was hardly a good student at CHS. He says he owes his success to some U of A professors who took an interest in him and inspired him to achieve. Gene found that character and persistence count. CMHS students can benefit from Gene’s example.

Ford Burkhart (’59)