Nobel laureate Mary Brunkow, St. Mary’s Academy class of 1979.
“Listen to your gut, your heart, or wherever you get hit when you think you’re really interested in something.” Mary Brunkow shared that advice with students at St. Mary’s Academy, her alma mater (class of ’79). It’s good advice from anyone, but coming from a Nobel laureate, you might listen extra hard. Now students are more excited than ever about their science studies after the news of Brunkow’s 2025 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Brunkow is currently a molecular biologist at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and shares the Nobel with Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi. The group was collectively awarded for their work discovering a class of immune cells that help to prevent the body from attacking its own tissues, providing fundamental knowledge of how the immune system is regulated. Brunkow called the work “an amazing team effort.”
Since the opening of the SNJM allgirls school in 1859, each generation of St. Mary’s students has been surrounded by supportive women, from the caring faculty and staff who nurture the community to the driven alumni who pioneer new paths. For students in the midst of their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, Brunkow achieving the highest award in her field is huge news. As the St. Mary’s community celebrated news of Brunkow’s Nobel, senior Tuula remarked, “It goes to show that anyone here can go on to do anything. As someone who wants to go into STEM, it’s really inspiring.”
Brunkow has commended the high school community that helped her cultivate her academic growth, including her teachers Sister Mollie Reavis and Sister Rosemary Anne Parker. She has also acknowledged the role models, career mentors and women in science who gave her “the courage and incentive to persevere.” Now it’s Brunkow’s turn to inspire the next generation. In her Nobel acceptance speech, she shared, “My hope is that I, in turn, can be that role model for my own daughters, as well as for the other young women who are excited about science.”