Richard Cyr

College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University Alums

Class of 1987 Saint John's University Alumni

Quality Control Technologist, Endocrine Lab, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN

Richard Cyr writes:

I am currently employed with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN where I have worked for the Endocrine Lab as a Lab Technologist for 7 years and as the Quality Control Tech. the past year. My current position involves overseeing all aspects of the lab's quality control, implementing a competency assessment program, and evaluating new commercially available assays. Our lab has a variety of instrumentation, HP spectrophtometer, HP 5890 GC, numerous HPLC instruments, gamma counters, beta counters, luminometers. The current trend for new assays coming onboard has been HPLC, however, there is a push to convert RIA assays to nonradioactive assays. Many of these are being looked at on highly automated instruments such as the ACS 180 and the DPC IMMULITE, both of which use chemiluminescent enzyme immunoassays.

After graduating from St. John's I applied to the University of Minnesota for graduate school in Chemical Engineering but did not get accepted. After interviewing with the chair of the department who told me that in my recommendations everyone said a lot of nice things about me but no one said I was one of the "top 5 students to have graduated from St. John's in the last few years", I decided to look for a job.

As far as my personal life, I have been married for 5 years to Nancy who is an exercise specialist at Mayo and we have a 2 year old son Matthew. We are also expecting our second child in January, so life continues to be very busy but exciting and challenging as well.

I lived in an apartment building which I purchased shortly after moving to Rochester and Nancy and I bought a house 4 years ago. I recently started an EXCEL business which has been very exciting and really feel will be a big part of my future plans. If you or anyone is interested in a great business opportunity you can call me at 507-288-1366 or if you want to read about it EXCEL's home page is http://www.exceltel.com/.

I have been an avid fly fisherman and have made a few trips to Montana to fish on the Bighorn river near Fort Smith. There are many excellent trout streams in Southeastern Minnesota, so it is only the lack of time which keeps me from fishing more.

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