David Sirbasku celebrated thirty years of teaching in 2002 at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston within the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. This was an amazing accomplishment in his life and felt as if the time had gone very quickly. He watched the world, the university and his own personal and professional life change over and over again during the course of those thirty years.

“I remember when I began teaching in 1972 as if it were yesterday. I was not much older than the students and we were all charged with excitement at all the development in the biomedical world,” said David Sirbasku. Rapid growth in experimental medicine and procedures were lining the pages of the academic journals. Sometimes David Sirbasku would need to use his short vacation time just to get caught up on all the changes that were happening.

He was always amazed at how time was marching on, but the type of student who was coming through the graduate school was essentially the same. David Sirbasku always commented on how fortunate he felt to have had the opportunity to teach such a fine caliber of students during his tenure. “The majority of the students that I met and worked with were ones who had the huge dreams of curing cancer and other diseases. They were the ultimate over-achievers who clung to every word you said to them as if it were law,” recalls David Sirbasku. He really enjoyed those graduate classes as compared to the undergraduate ones he taught.

David Sirbasku taught in other departments in the college during this time as well as worked on his own research. He received a few fellowships which helped fund his efforts and granted him access to the resources he needed at the time. David Sirbasku was not one to get comfortable teaching and let his own research goals take a back seat. Instead he used that time and momentum to keep himself moving in the direction of his ultimate goals. David Sirbasku would eventually open his own company, Signe BioPharma in 2005 and is still working on expanding its reach today.