Inside Cancer Careers National Cancer Institute

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

 
 
In this episode of Inside Cancer Careers, Dr. Oliver Bogler interviews two guests, Dr. Itai Yanai, who is a Professor at NYU School of Medicine, and Dr. Martin Lercher, who is a Professor at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. They are also co-founders of Night Science, which is the creative aspect of scientific research. They discuss the importance of scientific creativity and explore why it is often overlooked in scientific training and how it can be nurtured. Drs. Yanai and Lercher then discuss their early inspirations for pursuing science, their career paths, and the importance of interdisciplinary thinking.  

Show Notes 

Dr. Martin Lercher 
Dr. Itai Yanai  
Night Science Workshops 
"It takes two to think" editorial in Nature Biotechnology 
Night Science Episode with Daniel Kahneman  
Night Science Episode with Albert-László Barabási 
The Society of Genes (book) 

Ad: NanCI - Connecting Scientists mobile app 

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins   

Your Turn Recommendations: 

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman 


The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron 
Night Science Podcasts 

 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 Center for Cancer Training. Today, we're talking about scientific creativity, an often overlooked but vital element in a successful research career and how you can take practical steps to nurture it, evoke it and connect with others around it. I'm going to admit I'm really excited about today's conversation. 

Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to Take Your Turrn.  

So it's my pleasure to welcome two very special guests, Dr. Itai Yanai, professor at the Institute for Systems Genetics and in Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Welcome, Itai. 

 

Itai Yanai 

Thank you, Oliver. It's fantastic to be here. 

 

Oliver Bogler 

And Dr. Martin Lercher, professor and head of the Institute of Computational Cell Biology at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. Welcome, Martin. 

 

Martin Lercher 

Well, thanks. Thank you so much for inviting us. 

 

Oliver Bogler 

So it seems obvious that scientists need to be creative, of course, as well as rigorous and thorough, ethical and informed and probably many other things. But we rarely ever talk about creativity, let alone teach it to early career scientists. Why is that? And what are you doing to change that? 

 

Martin Lercher 

Well, we think it's a disaster that it is like that. And we want to make our contribution to change that. Why that is? I think it's partly historical that, you know, it seemed more important to distinguish science from non-science, from philosophy, for example, which is great at generating ideas, but not good at throwing out wrong ideas. So historically, scientists training has focused on what we call the day science part, on the testing of ideas, and not so much on the generation of ideas. So I think that's at least part of the explanation. Itai, what do yobu think? 

 

Itai Yanai 

Yeah, well, it may also be that it's more straightforward to teach the day science. We can have a kind of control over the day science part because what is day science? Day science is you have a hypothesis and you're going to test it. You're going to design an experiment. You're going to build in controls. You really are calling the shots in day science and it's harder relatively to sort of wrap our minds around the notion that we cannot control the creative process like that. 

 

Oliver Bogler 

In this episode, host Oliver Bogler speaks with NCI fellows live at the American Association for Cancer Researchers (AACR) Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. They share their science, career path, and thoughts on attending the AACR annual meeting.
 
Show Notes:
 
·      American Association for Cancer Researchers (AACR) Annual Meeting 2024
 
Wayne Lawrence, Dr.P.H.,M.P.H. , Research Fellow, Metabolic Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: "Severe housing cost burden and premature cancer mortality by state Medicaid expansion status"  
Sonam Tulsyan, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Laboratory of Translational Genomics, Michael Dean Research Laboratory, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: "A high rate of episomal HPV16 is present in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma tumors by long-read whole genome sequencing"  
Patricia Erickson, M.P.H., Predoctoral Fellow, Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: "Carbaryl use and cancer incidence in the agricultural health study - An updated analysis"  
Katrina Jia, Postbaccalaureate Fellow, Oncogenomics Section, Center for Cancer Research, NCI Abstract Title: "Endogenous HiBiT-tagging of PAX3-FOXO1 reveals downregulation of the fusion oncogene by CDK inhibitors and has synergy with vincristine"  
Jazmyn Bess, M.S., Postbaccalaureate Fellow and iCURE Scholar, Clinical Genetics Branch, Trans-Divisional Research Program, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: "Impact of delayed processing on cfDNA quantity and quality using STRECK cfDNA tubes: Connect Pilot Study" Connect for Cancer Prevention Study Intramural Continuing Umbrella of Research Excellence (iCURE)Program  
Deborah Tadesse, B.S., Postbaccalaureate Fellow, Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI Abstract Title: "Interaction between solvent exposure and genetic susceptibility and risk for bladder cancer"  
Ad: NanCI - Connecting Scientists mobile application
 
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.
Today, we're doing something a bit different – we are talking to people at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. This meeting is one of the high-points of the calendar for people working to end cancer as we know it for all, and it is truly big tent – at the April 2024 conference in San Diego, over 22,000 people registered to attend.
AACR is a strong community of over 55,000 people and 53% are Associate Members who, according to the AACR website, are young laboratory scientists and physicians-in-training (graduate students, medical students and residents, and clinical and postdoctoral fellows). I’ve been a member since my postdoc days – and I am proud of the way AACR welcomes and supports early career individuals.
There is a lot going on at the AACR annual meeting – far too much to cover in this episode – check out AACR.org to learn more. We are going to focus in on one of the most important elements of a scientific conference – the opportunity it gives to scientists to present their work to their peers. And specifically, we will visit with NCI fellows at their poster sessions.
Because of this format we won’t have a Your Turn segment – Your Turn will be back next time.
Let’s start by meeting some of our fellows and hearing about their science.
So I'm speaking with Wayne Lawrence, who's here presenting his poster. You are a research fellow at NCI. Right, Wayne?
 
Wayne Lawrence
Yes, I am a research fellow.
 
Oli

In this episode, we hear from Dr. Khadijah Mitchell, an Assistant Professor of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center and a former NCI fellow. Dr. Mitchell discusses her research on lung cancer and health disparities. She highlights the importance of the menthol cigarette ban in reducing health disparities and shares her experience in advocacy work. Dr. Mitchell shares details on books she has co-authored that emphasize the significance of inclusive instruction and mentoring in science.  She provides advice for those interested in careers in cancer health disparities and more.
 
Show Notes:
 
Khadijah A. Mitchell, Ph.D. Fox Chase Cancer Center Office of Community Outreach What Inclusive Instructors Do? Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching (book) Enhancing Inclusive Instruction (book)  
Ad: NCI Data Science Training
 
NCI Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis
NCI Sallie Rosen Kaplan Program
 
Your Turn Recommendations:
LEGO for Adults
For All Mankind TV series on Apple TV
 
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 we hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI’s Center for Cancer Training. Today we're talking to Dr. Khadijah Mitchell, Assistant Professor in the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center and Temple University in Philadelphia about her work, her professional engagement and launching a research program in an academic setting. Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make an interesting recommendation and where we invite you to take your turn.
Dr. Mitchell, welcome.
 
Khadijah A. Mitchell
So thank you so much, Dr. Bogler, for the invitation.
 
Oliver Bogler
So you joined Fox Chase in July, 2023 to pursue your research on cancer health disparities. What prompted the move?
 
Khadijah A. Mitchell
Well, previously I was an assistant professor at a small liberal arts college and there I balanced my time with research as well as teaching. And it was just the natural evolution as my research program grew, I knew I had to shift to a research institution that would accommodate future directions that my research was going in. And so here, I'm really fortunate that we, because I'm at a comprehensive cancer center, designated by the NCI. We have an Office of Outreach and Engagement, and a lot of what I do engages underrepresented populations. And so to have that research and infrastructure to allow my work to go in any direction was really appealing to me.
 
Oliver Bogler
Please tell us more about your research.
 
Khadijah A. Mitchell
Oh, sure. So recently, I've focused my energy on lung cancer because I think a lot that we can consider lung cancer an underdog of the cancer community. We have a lot of stigma associated with this particular cancer type. So I think that there's not as large of a survivor advocate community as you may see with breast or prostate cancer. So more people actually pass away unfortunately from this type of cancer than some of those other ones can bind and we know a huge risk factor is smoking and so I have an interest in that particular type of environmental exposure but also radon which is odorless colorless gas that causes lung cancer and so right now I'm really interested in the environmental exposome and how that impacts our genome so thinking about these interactions. And, you know, I think that one powerful thing about the radon is we see that that is actually the leading cause of lung cancer in never smokers. And so I hope that these projects will help us to find either new smoking-related or radon-related biomarkers that could be risk factors and that we can change, for example, lung cancer screening guidelines and policies that will help a lot of people.
 
Oliver Bo

In this episode, we get insights from three guests - Dr. Brigitte Widemann, Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch (POB) and Special Advisor to the NCI Director for Childhood Cancer, Dr. Andrea Gross, an Assistant Research Physician, and Sneh Patel, a Postbac Fellow in the Pediatric Oncology Branch within NCI’s Center for Cancer Research. They share their perspectives on the unique challenges faced in treating pediatric cancers and why research on pediatric oncology is crucial for the overall treatment of the patient. They also emphasize the importance of collaboration and the role of patients and advocacy groups. They also share their career journey and advice for aspiring physician-scientists, and much more!
 
Show Notes:
 
·      Brigitte C. Widemann, M.D.
·      Andrea M. Gross, M.D.
·      Sneh Patel
·      NCI Pediatric Oncology Branch (POB)
·      NIH Clinical Center
·      My Pediatric and Adult Rare Tumor (MyPART) Network
·      Cancer Moonshot
·      Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI)
 
Ad: NCI Rising Scholars: Cancer Research Seminar Series
 
Your Turn Recommendations
·      Ologies: Ask Smart People Stupid Questions
·      The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness by Dr. Jerome Groopman
·      OncoDaily.com
 
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. Today, we're talking about research on pediatric cancers and about combining medicine and research to make advances against these devastating diseases. 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 my pleasure to welcome Dr. Brigitte Widemann, Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch in the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute. She's also the head of the Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Section and serves as special advisor to the NCI Director for Childhood Cancer. Welcome.
 
Brigitte Widemann
Thank you. It's great to be here.
 
Oliver Bogler
I'm also very excited to welcome two members of Dr. Wiedemann's research team, Dr. Andrea Gross, former heme/onc fellow, now assistant research physician in the Pediatric Oncology Branch. Welcome.
 
Andrea Gross
Thank you.
 
Oliver Bogler
And Sneh Patel, who is currently doing a post-bac and is also on the research team in pediatric oncology. Welcome.
 
Sneh Patel
Thank you for having me.
 
Oliver Bogler
Dr. Widemann. Brigitte, what are some of the unique challenges in treating pediatric cancers compared to adult cancers and how does your team address these challenges?
 
Brigitte Widemann
Thank you. I think the challenges are multiple -fold, but we also have made a lot of progress. One of the challenges is it's a very small patient population. It's about 1% of adult cancers. There are only around 15,000 or so cancers that occur in children and adolescents per year. Biologically, cancers in children are very different from adult cancers, but pharmaceutical companies focus on the common cancers and that makes drug development and new clinical trial sometimes very, very difficult. There are many different types of pediatric cancers, some where the progress has been tremendous and we have very high cure rates, but others where unfortunately the progress has been really lagging for the last two or three decades even, and in particular for pediatric and young adult cancer patients that have metastatic disease that has spread or that have disease that has come back after frontline treatment.
At the NIH, we work in a space where we focus on areas that may not be done by the big cooperative groups. We want to complemen

In this episode, we hear from Dr. Jennifer Couch, Chief of the Biophysics, Bioengineering, and Computational Sciences Branch in NCI's Division of Cancer Biology, and Dr. Manu Platt, Director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. They discuss the importance of integrating physical sciences, biology, and engineering in research. They highlight the benefits of collaboration and the formation of transdisciplinary teams. Drs. Couch and Platt also offer advice to those interested in pursuing a career in science and those who are early in their research careers. You can expect to learn all this and much more!
 
Show Notes:
 
Jennifer Couch, Ph.D. Biophysics, Bioengineering, and Computational Sciences Branch NCI Division of Cancer Biology Manu Platt, Ph.D. Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration (BETA Center) National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NBIB) Physical Sciences - Oncology Network (PS-ON) NIH Clinical Center NIH Peer Review NIH Intramural Research Program Forum to Advance Minorities in Engineering, Inc. (FAME Inc.)  
Ad - NanCI by NCI mobile application
 
You Turn Recommendations:
·      NCI Cancer AI Conversations
·      The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research by Martin A. Schwartz
·      Do It Now by Steve Pavlina
·      The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
 
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. There's ample evidence in the history of science that connecting across fields can stimulate innovation and produce advances. One fruitful connection has been between biology and the physical sciences and engineering. And today we are talking to two leaders at NIH involved in this work.
 
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.
 
With us is Dr. Jennifer Couch, Chief of the Biophysics, Bioengineering, and Computational Sciences Branch in the Division of Cancer Biology at NCI. Welcome.
 
Jennifer Couch
Hi Oliver, thanks for inviting me.
 
Oliver Bogler
I'd also like to welcome Dr. Manu Platt, Director of the Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration or BETA Center at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Welcome.
 
Manu Platt
Great to be here with you.
 
Oliver Bogler
Let me start with the question of why and how different disciplines in STEMM can be brought together to accelerate progress. Jennifer, what are the strategies and goals of your branch and how do you accomplish them?
 
Jennifer Couch
Well, I think, you know, one of the key things about cancer is that it's complicated, it's multi -scale, it's impacted in many different ways and it has impacts on the body at many different levels. And so for that reason, I think cancer researchers are often adopters of new technologies and collaborate broadly. And we've seen over the past, you know, many decades that bringing physical sciences approaches and tools and  thinking into the cancer research space can really enhance the way that we address and develop ways to understand the basic mechanisms that underlie cancer initiation and progression and the way that it responds to therapies.
 
Oliver Bogler
So one of the programs in your branch is called the Physical Sciences Oncology Network, or PSON, I think people call it. Tell us about that.
 
Jennifer Couch
Yup.
 
Oliver Bogler
What does it do?
 
Jennifer Couch
So the Physical Sciences and Oncology Network has been around for about 15 years now, and it brings together explicitly partnerships between physical scientists, people with physi