Dr. Harold “Skip” Garner, chief scientific officer for Orbit Genomics, shared seven professional decisions with Ph.D. graduates of Missouri University of Science and Technology during the Ph.D. commencement ceremony held in the Gale Bullman Building at Missouri S&T on Friday, Dec. 13.

Garner told the graduates he chose to pursue a Ph.D. because he wanted to be a scientist, and he wanted to work on something where the answer is not in the back of the book.

“A Ph.D. is documentation that you have done independent research at least once in your life,” he said. “It is a license to be an innovator and leader of teams throughout your life.” Garner applied to several graduate schools and was accepted to all of them.

After earning his Ph.D., Garner chose a job at General Atomics in San Diego because of the likelihood he would be sent to Japan for work.

“Sometimes a decision is actually the worst one financially, but the coolest job ever,” Garner said. “In graduate school I became a martial artist, studying Japanese Karate and a bit of Aikido and Judo. The job also took me to the UK, France, Germany, the USSR and other places around the world to work.”

While at General Atomics, the company vice president for fusion issued a challenge — fill out a daily diary with one idea a day for 90 days. Garner was one of four who completed the challenge out of 3,000 employees. 

“I did not win the challenge,” Garner said. “But this led to being a founding member of The Institute, an internal think tank where I worked on numerous interesting things – the first UAV Predator at General Atomics, stealth submarines, and other projects I cannot mention. Sometimes you decide to do something not knowing where it will lead.”

Finding projects like submarine vibration dampers boring, Garner says he chose to work on biology.

“This cascaded into a new research direction, a new collaborator, Dr. Glen Evans at the Salk Institute, and a jump from a scientist at an energy-defense company to a full professor with an endowed chair at a top medical school,” he said. “Sometimes a decision can have an immense impact on your life.”

Ultimately, Garner left academia to focus on his own company, Orbit Genomics. He will soon start clinicals trials on a new series of cancer diagnostics, and he’s currently developing approaches for companion diagnostics, diagnostics that accompany every therapy.

“I am working on ways to break through the limits that set the human lifetime,” he said. “But I am transitioning once again, this time to give back. I am now giving back to Missouri S&T, especially to advise them in their efforts to expand the university presence in biological and medical research and instruction. 

“If there is one thing I hope my brief statements have shown you, it’s that you have only just begun your journey, and it can take you in many different directions. Let life take you in different directions.”

Garner sits on numerous corporate advisory boards and advises several governmental agencies. He earned a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Missouri S&T in 1976 and a Ph.D. in plasma physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982. He worked for 12 years at General Atomics, conducting experimental and theoretical fusion research, before transitioning to medicine.

Garner has held faculty positions at University of Texas Southwestern, Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, and the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, and has supervised over 75 students pursing their Ph.D., M.D., or D.O.

More information about commencement, including recordings of the ceremonies, is available at commencement.mst.edu.