In this episode, we hear from Dr. Yamini Dalal, Senior Investigator and Senior Advisor for Faculty Development, and Dr. Sweta Sikder, Postdoctoral Fellow in NCI Center for Cancer Research. They discuss their experiences of moving to the US for their scientific careers, including the challenges they faced and the opportunities and benefits of working in the US. They also share their paths to biology, passion for their research, and much more! 

Show Notes 

• Yamini Dalal, Ph.D. 

• Sweta Sikder, Ph.D. 

• NCI Center for Cancer Research (CCR) 

• Biochemistry by Donald Voet and Judith Voet 

• NCI K99/R00 - Pathway to Independence Award 

• NCI Intramural Research Program 

Ad: Interagency Oncology Task Force Fellowship (IOTF) 

Your Turn Recommendations: 

• The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li (book) 

• Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami (book) 

• Behind Her Eyes (Netflix series) 

• Poor Things (movie) 

• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (book) & 3 Body Problem (Netflix series) 

• The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science by Michael Strevens (book) 

 TRANSCRIPT

Oliver Bogler

Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI's Center for Cancer Training. May is Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month and is dedicated to celebrating the contributions members of these communities make to the United States. One of the things I love about science is that it is an international enterprise, bringing people from all over the world together to focus on shared goals like ending cancer as we know it. As a result, many scientists leave their homes and live and work in another country.  

Today, we're talking to two scientists originally from India who have made the NCI's Intramural Research Program their scientific home. And we'll be talking to them about what it was like to come to the US to pursue their science and how it's going and their careers. Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to take your turn. 

So it's a pleasure to welcome Dr. Yamini Dalal, senior investigator in the Laboratory of Receptor Biology and Gene Expression in NCI’s Center for Cancer Research. Welcome. 

Yamini Dalal 

Thank you all of you. 

Oliver Bogler  

Welcome also to Dr. Sweta Sikder. She is a visiting postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Yamini's research group. Welcome. 

Sweta Sikder  

Thank you. 

Oliver Bogler 

So you both came to America during your early careers. Yamini, you came to pursue graduate work at Purdue and Sweta, you came for your postdoc at the NCI. We'll talk about your careers later, but I wanted to start by asking you what it was like to move to another country for your science. 

Yamini Dalal  

All right. Well, thank you, Oliver, for hosting us on this fantastic show. I've listened to the blogs in the past and I really find it a great way to disseminate what we're doing here at the NCI and share our perspectives. I came to the US when I was, I think, 22 or 23 and I left India on Independence Day, which was sort of a bittersweet feeling. And I moved to the Midwest to pursue graduate school. And the first thing that was the biggest challenge for me was the weather because I grew up in Bombay, which is subtropical, and it's never cold. And the very first thing I discovered about the Midwest is that it gets really, really, really cold in the winter. And then in a way, I suppose that spurred my scientific studies because I didn't want to leave Lily Hall, which is nice and warm all winter round. Sweta? 

Sweta Sikder 

Yes, so for me, it was a very unique kind of an experience. I came to US for the first time to join Yamini’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow. And incidentally, I landed or my flight landed exactly the day before the government shut down. That is in 2020, where the whole world shut down to say.  

Yamini Dalal 

On the Ides of March very appropriately. 

Sweta Sikder 

I just had a day to come to NIH to get registered here. And then we were all like doing the pandemic shutdown and at home. So when I was pursuing my career, there was always this thing that you should, if you are in science, you should always have that US exposure of science. But for me, when I landed finally in the US, it was a very, it was a very different kind of experience. 

Things started changing slowly. But what I faced for a long time is like being in a society which is so open, but where you cannot really access people because of the pandemic shutdown. So now I'm more glad that we have like a very vibrant campus. We meet lots of people and, but it was all not accessible when I came to US. 

Oliver Bogler 

So making a connection with people that may be at the same career stage as you are, and maybe who have some shared background, maybe also coming from the country you were coming from, is that an important element? And obviously, the pandemic made that super hard, right? 

Sweta Sikder 

Yes, and also when I came to US, I had this open kind of a, I wanted to have an open mind and wanted to get an exposure of other culture, the other society as well. Obviously, you want people coming from the same country like me from India, you want to connect with them and then share your things, but I wanted to have a different kind of an experience. I wanted to mix, see other people, talk to them, have kind of a unique experience, which was kind of difficult. We all met through Zooms and online meetings. And even when we used to see people, when I used to go around for a walk or something, I used to see people walking, but we all maintained that social distancing thing. And it was super, super difficult at that point of time, but now looking back, I feel that it kind of mentored me that the pandemic time when we were all shut down, it also helped me in my inner and my personal growth as well.  

Yamini Dalal 

I think there's a resilience, right, that we had to reach into during the pandemic. And I think you did a really great job reaching inside yourself to survive those first six months completely alone. 

Sweta Sikder 

Yes, and also at this point, I would like to mention this, that this lab was super helpful, like all of my lab colleagues, because I haven't met them ever. Like it was the first time meeting them, but they were very, very helpful reaching out because when I came for the first time, I had to figure out like many logistic things, right? Like doing your social security number, having a bank account, like all those minute things. 

But I'm grateful in the sense that I got very supportive colleagues, my mentor, Yamini here. And they were always like a text away to help me at any time despite the pandemic. 

Oliver Bogler 

You mentioned also that I guess the United States is kind of a draw for scientists from across the world. And that's certainly been true over the last many decades. Um, tell me more about that. What, what specifically were you both, uh, hoping to accomplish by moving to the United States? 

Yamini Dalal 

Yeah, I think, you know, my feeling, Oliver, was when I was growing up in Bombay, I grew up in a very specific, very privileged class of people that all had similar exposures. And it really comes down to, I had no exposure to people that were outside of that little bubble. And we all went to really great schools. Our parents were professionals with advanced degrees. You know, we got exposed to like the best science, the best art, but it was all in this bubble of not knowing really even anything about India when I was growing up. I felt like I didn't know what it meant to be really Indian. I knew what it meant to be a Bombayite, in South Bombay, which is sort of like Manhattan, but I didn't know what it really meant to be from a different social class or from a different culture from what I had been exposed to.  

The beautiful thing about going to Purdue, especially, was that it's an extremely international school. I still have friends I've made there from all over the world. They're faculty now in New Zealand and Australia and England and Europe. And