Dr. Richard J. Deslauriers
BS '90, Mechanical Engineering
Chairman & CEO, Doctors Research Group

Only author Mark Twain knew what his wayward Tom Sawyer would become in adulthood, but if the life of Dr. Richard J. Deslauriers is any indication, waywardness in youth is a sure sign of success later on.

Dr. Deslauriers was a boy who saw school as a yoke around his neck. He threw it off early, choosing instead to ski at Mount Southington and work more hours than his parents had approved at a part-time job in his hometown of Waterbury. "I remember when my parents found out I was absent so many days at school they were convinced I was doing something bad, "he says. "But for the most part I was working or ice skating on the Mad River near our house."

All was not as ingenuous as it seemed. One day when he was about 16 and a student at W.F. Kaynor Technical High School in Waterbury, he stole a pair of skis at Mount Southington. In the doing, he had an epiphany. "I remember turning to my friend and talking about the path we had chosen," he says, "and we agreed that we wanted to make better decisions because at this rate we would end up as garbagemen."

A week later, he returned the skis and started working far more on his studies. He had another realization, helped along by his days at Kaynor Tech: that he wanted to become a mechanical engineer. He entered UNH's mechanical engineering program, where he found the professor-student interaction plentiful. To this day, he talks about the staff's commitment to him and to the other students in the program.

Dr. Deslauriers worked, went to school, and every Thursday in his junior year found time to go skiing at Mount Snow. That’s five hours round-trip. “During those ski days, I would meet absolutely phenomenal people on the slopes: physicians, attorneys out with their families for a mid-week ski trip,” he says. “So I was exposed to a certain sub-population I had not been exposed to previously. Perhaps the University should start a Thursday ski program.” He graduated from UNH and began studying feverishly for the medical school admission test. His family physician, Dr. Mark Kraus, helped him gain entrance to a Yale-sponsored medical-school preparatory program. “I don’t know if I would have been accepted into the University of Toronto’s program without it,” Dr. Deslauriers says.

He entered medical school at the University of Toronto, but once there, immediately thought about dropping out because he already had identified enough projects to require his attention for two lifetimes. The first: an advanced stethoscope and a bone anchor that allows surgeons to reattach soft tissue. Still to come: a stethoscope cover designed to reduce the transmission of viruses, and a disposable vaginal speculum. Dr. Deslauriers is now working on his most significant innovation to date: a calcified triglyceride bone cement. “It will literally glue two pieces of bone back together,” he says. In keeping with his perennial sense of adventure, he named it Kryptonite.

His company, Doctors Research Group, recently moved into a gleaming new facility in Oxford. But he is on the road for days at a time now, fusing spines and sternums after coronary bypass surgery. He feels privileged to work with some of the world’s most prominent surgeons, and still manages to carve out time to spend with his wife, Kristen, and sons Jack, 5, and Eric, 2.

He looks to the past for his motivations for the future, including to his family physician, Dr. Mark Kraus, who helped him get into medical school and who impressed upon him the standard approach to medicine: Show one, do one, teach one. “So it’s a simple process of payback,” Dr. Deslauriers says. Even though he is on the road often, he still skis every chance he gets. He also volunteers at the schools he attended in an effort to motivate promising students.

And he wants to continue to give back, because a clutch of very good people and a lesson learned from a stolen pair of skis made all the difference to him. "I'm very honored that the University has selected me," he says. "Not everyone gets the same chances that I've had. It doesn't get any better than this."