TheoryLab

Treating patients at the St. Louis Veterans Affairs Medical Center led Ken Carson, MD, PhD, to investigate questions about racial disparities in treatment of patients with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.

He still sees patients once a week, and his success as a researcher has led him to Flatiron Health, where he serves as senior medical director and focuses on real-world evidence generation.

1:15 – On his ACS-funded research on “racial disparities in outcomes among patients who have a common form of lymphoma”

4:50 – On transitioning to doing big data work and his work at Flatiron Health – “The ultimate objective is having every patient’s experience help inform the next patient’s experience.”

11:10 – Advice for his younger self – “You don’t have to follow the traditional academic mold”

13:20 – What he’s most excited about – “As we better understand how to capture adverse events and treatment toxicities with big data, we’ll be able to explore that further with the ultimate goal of improving—not just response, progression-free survival, and overall survival—but also patient quality of life during treatment.”

Four-time American Cancer Society grantee Dr. Pam Kreeger, Associate Professor in the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talked about she's leveraging ACS funding to bring her research on metastasis in ovarian cancer closer to benefiting patients.

2:10 – On her four different ACS grants (a Postdoctoral Fellowship, Institutional Research Grant pilot award, Research Scholar Grant, and Mission Boost Grant) – “I’m not exaggerating when I say to people that I probably owe my career to ACS”

4:53 – On the science behind her Mission Boost Grant – “It builds from the Research Scholar Grant, where after about three years of work we decoded this mechanism where the macrophages in the ovarian cancer microenvironment can actually change the behavior of the mesothelial cells.”

6:10 – On why the Mission Boost Grant is a good fit “This isn’t a great R01 project. It wouldn’t be a great R01 project until you find the mechanism. You can’t really propose to do all this pre-clinical and clinical modeling until you have a good mechanism, but then once that’s where you’re at that’s not really enough to be an R01. And yet to propose a full clinical trial – we’re not there yet either.”

9:20 – On curiosity and taking research to the next step – “(If you) find something interesting as a basic scientist, it’s not like there are people just waiting out there to take your idea to the next step. They have their own projects and their own favorite children to work on. So unless you are really willing to keep going with it, it’s very easy for stuff to just fall off.”

13:20 – Advice she would give to someone applying for a Mission Boost Grant – “What was incredibly helpful to me was having discussions with clinical collaborators, because in my mind I didn’t see the steps between preclinical mouse study and full-blown trial in human patients that would mimic exactly that mouse study.”

15:45 – On how cancer touches everyone and how people can give back – “I know as a researcher I benefit greatly from all the patients who consent to donate tissue…It seems like a small thing…but that’s really what’s going to allow us to move forward.”

Four-time American Cancer Society grantee Dr. Pam Kreeger, Associate Professor in the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talked about she's leveraging ACS funding to bring her research on metastasis in ovarian cancer closer to benefiting patients.

2:10 – On her four different ACS grants (a Postdoctoral Fellowship, Institutional Research Grant pilot award, Research Scholar Grant, and Mission Boost Grant) – “I’m not exaggerating when I say to people that I probably owe my career to ACS”

4:53 – On the science behind her Mission Boost Grant – “It builds from the Research Scholar Grant, where after about three years of work we decoded this mechanism where the macrophages in the ovarian cancer microenvironment can actually change the behavior of the mesothelial cells.”

6:10 – On why the Mission Boost Grant is a good fit “This isn’t a great R01 project. It wouldn’t be a great R01 project until you find the mechanism. You can’t really propose to do all this pre-clinical and clinical modeling until you have a good mechanism, but then once that’s where you’re at that’s not really enough to be an R01. And yet to propose a full clinical trial – we’re not there yet either.”

9:20 – On curiosity and taking research to the next step – “(If you) find something interesting as a basic scientist, it’s not like there are people just waiting out there to take your idea to the next step. They have their own projects and their own favorite children to work on. So unless you are really willing to keep going with it, it’s very easy for stuff to just fall off.”

13:20 – Advice she would give to someone applying for a Mission Boost Grant – “What was incredibly helpful to me was having discussions with clinical collaborators, because in my mind I didn’t see the steps between preclinical mouse study and full-blown trial in human patients that would mimic exactly that mouse study.”

15:45 – On how cancer touches everyone and how people can give back – “I know as a researcher I benefit greatly from all the patients who consent to donate tissue…It seems like a small thing…but that’s really what’s going to allow us to move forward.”

Jo Handelsman is director of the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, and that's just the latest step in research career that began with an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship in 1984.

She's a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, co-founder of the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute, and founder of the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching.

She was the associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and President Obama awarded her the Presidential Award for Science Mentoring.

And she's nationally recognized for her work on understanding implicit biases.

ACS talked with her about:

4:38 - On her book, Entering Mentoring: A Seminar to Train a New Generation of Scientists – “We started interviewing faculty that we thought were great mentors, and all of them said, ‘I don’t know anything about mentoring; I just make a lot of mistakes.’ So we thought, ‘You know maybe we could do a little better than this,’ and that’s how we developed the course. It really evolved from what the mentors and mentees told us.”

8:58 – “I always tell junior faculty, if you can’t get other people to run the seminar, just run it yourself. I guarantee you’ll have people who want to take it, and you’ll learn so much from teaching it. And of course, you don’t really have to ‘teach’ it. I’ve taught it dozens of times now and I think I still learn almost as much the 20th time as I did the 1st time.”

10:35 – The story behind her landmark 2012 paper, "Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students" – “If you imagine the hundreds of interactions that a given faculty member will have or that a student will have with all their faculty…If you imagine the males are getting just a little more time, or they’re being encouraged to try for slightly more ambitious internships, research experiences or jobs…You can see why men and women end up in very different places.”

13:05 – On why the study’s results didn’t surprise her – “This is an old story in the field of psychology, but when I would talk about studies like this (and there are hundreds of them, if not thousands, out there), scientists would always say, ‘But we’re trained to be objective, so we don’t do that.’ And of course, that shows a certain lack of understanding of what implicit or unconscious bias is. Science trains us in our cognitive minds to be objective but that doesn’t influence our biases. Frankly if it did, then we wouldn’t have to run blind experiments.”

15:45 – On the video interventions she’s developed to address the issue – “We think there are ways to address these implicit biases even if they’re kind of stuck in our deep brains and can’t be rooted out. We can certainly deal with their impact.”

19:20 – Advice she’d give to a young scientist on how to address implicit gender bias – “It’s not an accusation against white men. It’s not a plot to keep women and minorities out of academic science. This is just something all people do. And I think when you present it that way and say that becoming aware of it is a way to be more fair, get better people hired, better grants funded, and better papers accepted, it becomes a lot less threatening to people.”

23:20 – On her 3-year term under President Obama as the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – “He really did seem to have a special respect for, appreciation for, and just kind of nerdy enjoyment of science. So it was always exciting to talk science with him and to develop policy for him and with him. That was probably one of the greatest privileges of my life—working for him.”

29:13 – On the impact of ACS funding at the start of her career – “Well I think the ACS postdoctoral fellowship made me very aware of the unity of biology very early on…biology is biology and what we learn in one aspect is probably going to have some relevance to other aspects of biology.”

Jo Handelsman is director of the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, and that's just the latest step in research career that began with an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship in 1984.

She's a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, co-founder of the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute, and founder of the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching.

She was the associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and President Obama awarded her the Presidential Award for Science Mentoring.

And she's nationally recognized for her work on understanding implicit biases.

ACS talked with her about:

4:38 - On her book, Entering Mentoring: A Seminar to Train a New Generation of Scientists – “We started interviewing faculty that we thought were great mentors, and all of them said, ‘I don’t know anything about mentoring; I just make a lot of mistakes.’ So we thought, ‘You know maybe we could do a little better than this,’ and that’s how we developed the course. It really evolved from what the mentors and mentees told us.”

8:58 – “I always tell junior faculty, if you can’t get other people to run the seminar, just run it yourself. I guarantee you’ll have people who want to take it, and you’ll learn so much from teaching it. And of course, you don’t really have to ‘teach’ it. I’ve taught it dozens of times now and I think I still learn almost as much the 20th time as I did the 1st time.”

10:35 – The story behind her landmark 2012 paper, "Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students" – “If you imagine the hundreds of interactions that a given faculty member will have or that a student will have with all their faculty…If you imagine the males are getting just a little more time, or they’re being encouraged to try for slightly more ambitious internships, research experiences or jobs…You can see why men and women end up in very different places.”

13:05 – On why the study’s results didn’t surprise her – “This is an old story in the field of psychology, but when I would talk about studies like this (and there are hundreds of them, if not thousands, out there), scientists would always say, ‘But we’re trained to be objective, so we don’t do that.’ And of course, that shows a certain lack of understanding of what implicit or unconscious bias is. Science trains us in our cognitive minds to be objective but that doesn’t influence our biases. Frankly if it did, then we wouldn’t have to run blind experiments.”

15:45 – On the video interventions she’s developed to address the issue – “We think there are ways to address these implicit biases even if they’re kind of stuck in our deep brains and can’t be rooted out. We can certainly deal with their impact.”

19:20 – Advice she’d give to a young scientist on how to address implicit gender bias – “It’s not an accusation against white men. It’s not a plot to keep women and minorities out of academic science. This is just something all people do. And I think when you present it that way and say that becoming aware of it is a way to be more fair, get better people hired, better grants funded, and better papers accepted, it becomes a lot less threatening to people.”

23:20 – On her 3-year term under President Obama as the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – “He really did seem to have a special respect for, appreciation for, and just kind of nerdy enjoyment of science. So it was always exciting to talk science with him and to develop policy for him and with him. That was probably one of the greatest privileges of my life—working for him.”

29:13 – On the impact of ACS funding at the start of her career – “Well I think the ACS postdoctoral fellowship made me very aware of the unity of biology very early on…biology is biology and what we learn in one aspect is probably going to have some relevance to other aspects of biology.”

Karen Freund, MD, MPH, an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor at Tufts University, discusses the rewards of being a mentor, her approach to mentoring, and how she would explain to a patient or survivor why it's so important to devote time to mentoring.

Karen Freund, MD, MPH, an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor at Tufts University, discusses the rewards of being a mentor, her approach to mentoring, and how she would explain to a patient or survivor why it's so important to devote time to mentoring.

Former American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow Shin-Yi Lin talks with the American Cancer Society about:

1:38 – Her work on nematodes – creating new model organisms beyond C. elegans

5:50 – Next steps after her postdoctoral fellowship ends

7:35 – On how the phrase “work-life balance” understates the challenges faced by young scientists

11:00 – On the ACS-Jiler Professors and Postdocs conference and the benefits of attending earlier in the fellowship

19:17 – On her outreach experiences and the interaction between science and serving the communities we live in

23:30 – How funders could support young scientists raising families

25:45 – On building connections with other Fellows

Former American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow Shin-Yi Lin talks with the American Cancer Society about:

1:38 – Her work on nematodes – creating new model organisms beyond C. elegans

5:50 – Next steps after her postdoctoral fellowship ends

7:35 – On how the phrase “work-life balance” understates the challenges faced by young scientists

11:00 – On the ACS-Jiler Professors and Postdocs conference and the benefits of attending earlier in the fellowship

19:17 – On her outreach experiences and the interaction between science and serving the communities we live in

23:30 – How funders could support young scientists raising families

25:45 – On building connections with other Fellows

Drs. Matthew Meyerson and Alison Taylor of Dana-Farber Cancer Center talk with the American Cancer Society about:

2:30 – Challenges of being a mentor

4:27 – One of the most important things in science

6:08 – On mentoring a scientifically diverse group

8:52 – What’s the one thing you would change about being a postdoc?

11:08 – On learning to manage people and be a mentor as a postdoc

20:04 – How to be the best mentee/mentor you can be