Season 2 - Episode 17: Empowering the Next Generation of Women Scientists: The Sallie Rosen Kaplan Fellowship Program - Part 1

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Episode Guests

Jeffrey Rosen, Ph.D.

Jeffrey Rosen studied chemistry at Williams College where he received a BA degree in 1966.  His Ph.D. research at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute helped elucidate the mechanisms for glucocorticoid resistance in lymphomas.  His postdoctoral studies at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine under the supervision of Dr. Bert W. O’Malley were concerned with the mechanism of action of estrogen in the chick oviduct.  His postdoctoral studies involved the isolation of ovalbumin mRNA and the first demonstration of steroid hormone induction of a specific mRNA. 

He joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine in 1973 and was a founder member of the first Department of Cell Biology in the USA.  In 1987-88 he spent a sabbatical leave in the laboratories of Drs. George Stark and Ian Kerr at the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratories funded by an American Cancer Society Scholar Grant, where he participated in early studies to elucidate the mechanisms of interferon action that helped lead to the discovery of the Jak/Stat pathway.  Dr. Rosen is currently a Distinguished Service Professor, the Vice Chair and the C.C. Bell Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology and Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. 

He was the recipient of two MERIT awards from the National Cancer Institute on a grant entitled, “Hormonal Regulation of Breast Cancer” which recently ended after forty-sixth years of consecutive funding.  His laboratory has authored 322 publications and book chapters. He is the PI on the CPRIT BCM Comprehensive Cancer Training Program.    Dr. Rosen has trained 40 graduate students and 51 postdoctoral fellows many of whom are now faculty at major academic institutions in the USA and abroad.  He has received the Marc Dresden Excellence in Graduate Education Award, the Barbara & Corbin J. Robertson, Jr. Presidential Award for Excellence in Education at BCM, the Endocrine Society Edwin B. Astwood Lecture Award, the Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Excellence in Research Award, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Brinker Basic Science Award, the AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research, the SABCS William A McGuire Memorial Lecture Award and the Arthur L. Beaudet Award for Outstanding Mentorship.  He is also an AAAS Fellow.   Dr. Rosen is a Susan G. Komen Scholar, and was the co-leader of Breast Program of the Dan. L. Duncan NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

Erika Ginsburg, M.A.

Ms. Erika Ginsburg serves as Branch Director of NCI’s Center for Cancer Training (CCT) Office of Training and Education (OTE). She uses her passion for training and mentorship to direct career development opportunities for fellows by working closely and collaboratively with staff to develop workshops, courses, and programs in the CCT. In her current role, Erika advocates for fellows, and continue to facilitate and promote training opportunities by working closely with trainees, PIs, and senior leadership.

Before joining CCT, Erika had a long career in NCI’s intramural program as a Technical Laboratory Manager in CCR’s Mammary Biology and Tumorigenesis Laboratory where she studied prolactin’s action on breast cancer. Prolactin is an important hormone responsible for the development of the breast and may be positively associated with breast cancer risk. Together with Dr. Barbara Vonderhaar, she was the first to demonstrate that human breast cancer cells synthesize and secrete significant amounts of biologically active prolactin. She mentored over 150 trainees in the laboratory and has over 50 publications in the fields of drug metabolism, and hormone regulation of the normal and cancerous breast.

Erika received her undergraduate training in Biophysics and Microbiology from the University of Pittsburgh, her master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in Science/Medical Writing, and holds a master’s certificate in Biotechnology Management from the University of Maryland Global Campus.

Show Notes

• Jeffrey M. Rosen, Ph.D.
• Erika Ginsburg, M.A.
• Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH)
• Sallie Rosen Kaplan(SRK) Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women Scientists
• A Coaching-Based Leadership Program for Women Postdoctoral Fellows at the National Cancer Institute that Cultivates Self-confidence and Persistence in STEMM

Ad: NanCI – Connecting Scientists mobile app

• Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award
• Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia

Your Turn Recommendations:

• Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee or PBS series with Ken Burns
• Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus
• Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions by Richard Harris

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.

Embarking on a career in cancer research requires a deep understanding of the science, and acquiring the skills necessary to perform research. But there's a lot more that is needed. Like many institutions, the NCI provides career development opportunities to our fellows. And today we're focusing on one such program, the Sallie Rosen Kaplan (SRK) Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women Scientists. Next episode, we will talk to two alums of the SRK program. But today we have two of the leaders of that fellowship as guests.

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. Jeff Rosen, the C.C. Bell Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Distinguished Service Professor at Baylor College of Medicine. Welcome, Dr. Rosen.

Jeffrey Rosen:

Thank you, Oliver.

Oliver Bogler:

Also with us is my colleague, Erika Ginsburg, Director of the Office of Training and Education in the Center for Cancer Training. Welcome, Erika.

Erika Ginsburg:

Thank you.

Oliver Bogler:

Dr. Rosen, I think the name gives it away. Are you somehow personally connected to the Sallie Rosen Kaplan program?

Jeffrey Rosen:

Yes, I am. She was my aunt. When I was six years old, my sister unfortunately had polio back in the era when people still had polio. And my parents sent me to live with my grandmother and my aunt for six months. So I became close with her. And then of course, over the years, I'd moved away from the Northeast and hadn't seen her very much. But every time I went to the National Institutes of Health to serve on a review panel, I would try to go to New York and visit her. She was in a nursing home at that point.

And so I didn't realize, but I became the executor of her estate. She had never had children and she worked in New York City for many years and she actually had accumulated a nice estate and stock portfolio. So after she passed on, a lawyer that I knew called me up and said, well, what would you like to do with her estate? And she wants to leave it to the National Institutes of Health. And having had grants for many years, I didn't think that was such a good idea, since the government doesn't really need the money as an estate. But I was told at that time that they had just started something called the Foundation for the NIH. I emailed actually Harold Varmus, who I knew quite well.

And so then my wife and I sat down and said, well, all right, this is a good opportunity. What should we do with this? And my aunt had always lamented. She was married but then had taken care of her grandmother and never went to college. I believe she got into University of Michigan but was never able to go because she stayed home to take care of her mother while her two brothers went off to be successful attorneys, including a US district attorney.

So at that point, my wife said, well, she really lamented that she didn't have the opportunity to get a higher education. Why don't we do something which will help women in science, and in particular, underserved women in science. My wife had been a medical technician and worked at Roswell Park where we met. So this was really her idea. And I said, that's a fantastic idea. And we had a very nice association with the people at the Foundation for the NIH, and they were able to set that up. So that's how this was initiated to start with.

Oliver Bogler:

So the endowment that you made to the foundation funds the program even to this day.

Jeffrey Rosen:

Yes, and originally it was set up primarily just to supplement stipends and recruit people into the program. But then, of course, Erika has made wonderful additions to the program, which I'm sure she'll discuss.

Oliver Bogler:

Thank you very much. Perfect segue. Erika, what are those additions?

Erika Ginsburg:

Yeah, so as Jeff mentioned, the program started as a recruitment tool to bring postdoctoral fellows to NCI to do their research training. Around the time that I joined the Center for Cancer Training, there was a lot of literature at the time about the drop-off of women in science and that it was not during their graduate work or during their postdoctoral training, but at that transition to independence. So, we talked it over internally and then wrote a memo to Jeff and FNIH, the foundation for NIH, to revise the program to be a retention tool instead of a recruitment. And the idea was to support women in biomedical research while they were at the NCI and to provide them with additional leadership and career building skills.

Oliver Bogler:

So what are the components of the modern day SRK program at this time?

Erika Ginsburg:

So as I mentioned, the largest component is the leadership coaching. It is a 30-week component where they meet individually and as a cohort with a coach that we bring in, a life coach. And they talk about a variety of things, the relationship to themselves, lot about work-life balance. What their career path would look like and their relationship to their peers and with their supervisor. But also there's a very large mentoring component. We pair them up with a more senior woman scientist, either from academia, industry or government positions. So these volunteer scientists serve as their second mentor during the program and many of them remain and retain that relationship even once the program is completed.

In addition to that, they also have a strong peer support system. We pair them up with each other during the program, so they serve as each other's accountability buddy. And then we also provide skill building on communication and presentation skills, on grant writing, and other things like knowing yourself through a behavioral assessment called DiSC on emotional intelligence, and then things like managing people and managing change and transition.

Oliver Bogler:

That's a lot of a lot of different things going on there, but it sounds like it really surrounds the fellow in the program with relationships and opportunities in all different angles, right? Mentors, peer mentors and so on.

Erika Ginsburg:

Exactly.

Oliver Bogler:

How long did it take to sort of evolve this model from the initial recruitment intention?

Erika Ginsburg:

I would say it took probably a good year. It took some research to look at what sort of skills we wanted to develop, reaching out to the community, getting their feedback, of course getting Jeff's input on the information that we were exploring, and even reaching out to the alumni of the earlier version of the SRK program to see the kinds of things that they would have wanted to have that were not provided to

Oliver Bogler:

Dr. Rosen, you're of course a very experienced mentor yourself. What kind of insights that you've gathered through your years of experience there have been sort of incorporated into the SRK program?

Jeffrey Rosen:

I've had probably 100 trainees and many women. Many have had children. In fact, we have a bulletin board with pictures of the children that have been born in my laboratory, outside the lab. And again, I think it's this peer group support, especially in my lab having their fellow peers really be a support group. And many of them have actually continued even as professors to collaborate with some of the people that they trained with who are at different institutions. One of them has joint R01 from Minnesota with someone at Tulane. I think those relationships were really key.

I have to mention one more thing that should say is very important in this whole evolution. In the small world of science, Erika worked for Barbara Vonderhaar, and we worked on mammary gland development. And so we had published some papers with Barbara, and we knew each other from mammary gland Gordon Conferences way before this whole program started. This allowed us to have a very nice relationship and really, I think, work together to really help build the program.

Oliver Bogler:

Yeah, I think that really emphasizes an important point, which is that the relationships that you form as you go through your scientific career can be really important in ways that you don't anticipate necessarily.

Jeffrey Rosen:

That's very true.

Oliver Bogler:

So it's always good to, you know, after the conference part, go to the bar and talk to some people, right? So Erika, you recently published a paper on the outcomes of the SRK fellowship program in the Journal of Cancer Education. Can you tell us what you found and what you discussed in that paper.

Erika Ginsburg:

Yes, it would be my pleasure. So this was a long time coming. I know Jeff was always very, very interested and curious to know what the outcomes from the program were. And we were finally able to collect 10 years’ worth of data. We are now in the 11th year of the revised SRK program. So we finally had 10 years’ worth of data. And what we do is we survey the fellows before they enter into the program and then once they complete the program. So we were able to compare their pre and post program survey data. And what we found was that in their self-reported outcomes that they have increased self-confidence, they have stronger time management skills and work-life balance, and that they have improved communication and relationship building skills that they have learned and honed during this year of their fellowship. So these were all of the things that we were hoping to gain and I think the program really strongly shows that we achieved the goals that we set out to do.

Oliver Bogler:

Fantastic. Of course, we'll put a link to the paper in the show notes. Dr. Rosen, when you read the paper and hear these outcomes now in evidence in this manuscript, what are your thoughts?

Jeffrey Rosen:

Well, I think the retention and the ability of these women to succeed after they graduated has really been remarkable. And it shows the benefit of this kind of program during training. And as Erika mentioned, I think it's not just getting the education, but it's the retention of people in academics, especially. It's difficult, think, especially in academics, to succeed. So I was very pleased with that.

As Erika mentioned, having done training programs, one of the things we're always asked is what are the outcomes? What are the people doing? What are their positions? Do they have grants? We have to keep ten-year data, as you know, for all T32 grants. So it's really important. And to me, this was the icing on the cake to really show that it's been successful.

Oliver Bogler:

That's fantastic. having done the research, are there any adjustments that you're planning for the SRK program? What's the future look like?

Jeffrey Rosen:

You know, I think it's been quite successful in terms of the diversity of applicants and the positions that they've taken in both academics and industry and population science, as well as, you know, wet bench research. So I think to me, there's very little that needs to be changed there at this point.

Erika Ginsburg:

Yeah, and I would agree. We, as I said, we do survey the fellows afterwards, not only about the satisfaction about the program itself, but also if they have suggestions going forward in the future. And most of the comments we receive are very positive. In fact, they say they would just like more of the same and wish they had known about it earlier. So yeah, I don't think there's anything to change at this point, but we're always open to feedback.

But I do also want to, if you don't mind, mention about where they go afterwards. As Jeff said, they have been very successful. The fellows who are in the program, of course, they come from the intramural NCI fellows, postdoctoral fellows. And some of them are still here at the NCI as postdocs. So we are tracking where they go when they leave NCI. But to date 78 % of them have gone on to their next career stage already. And all of those have remained in the biomedical workforce. 35 % of them have gone on to academic positions and 33 % are in government research and 26 % have transitioned to industry. So they have all successfully transitioned to their next career stage.

Oliver Bogler:

That's fantastic. I mean that's what it's all about, right

Erika Ginsburg:

Exactly.

Oliver Bogler:

Great. Well, thanks very much. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about how our guests got into science and the career paths they took.

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All right, we're back. Dr. Rosen, what first got you into science?

Jeffrey Rosen:

I think I was one of those children growing up and kids who had the science projects in the basements that their mothers were worried would blow up the house. I actually worked in two chemistry labs in the summers for companies. And then I went to Williams College where I was a liberal arts college, but I majored in chemistry. There were eight of us who were heavy chem majors.

But I realized I didn't want to stay in chemistry as a discipline. And I wanted to do something in more environmental research. I saw an article on the front page of the New York Times about the first cures of acute leukemia in children, where they were living more than five years. It's a guy named James Holland, who was one of those early pioneers. And he was at Roswell Park. And at Williams, they didn't have really people that were doing medical school or chemistry. Nobody was in biochemistry, but I applied to Roswell Park to do a biochemistry degree. And there I actually got to work on how the steroid prednisone and glucocorticoids affected leukemias.

But probably the most, I think, impactful thing I did is I actually put on scrubs and went into surgery and got some samples from a six -year-old who was being treated. And that really changed my perspective in terms of translational medicine and the importance of it. You couldn't be at Roswell Park… my wife was a medical technician there. And every day we had lunch, we were surrounded by patients. So it was a place where you knew the impact of cancer on people.

And so, that experience led me to want to continue. I had done a qualifying exam on hormone-dependent breast cancer with a surgeon named Tom Dow who had worked at Ben May with a Nobel Prize winner. So after I finished my postdoctoral fellowship and I was able to start my own lab, I said, that's an area that I think is ripe for study. We can apply molecular biology techniques to this. And there's some wonderful biological systems that had been developed in the mammary gland already. And so I started studying first normal mammary gland development. And that actually was important because the NIH and NCI had a program review group, about 100 very well-known people. And they came out with a statement saying we needed to understand more about normal development in order to understand breast cancer. So the timing was very good.

And I should mention that the timing when I started my career was also very good because Sputnik had gone up. And there was a lot of support for science in the United States. So it was excellent time to start my career. So I wrote a grant at that time and got funded, which I had for 46 consecutive years. And the research evolved over the years from normal development to looking at genetics and finally, most recently, to several projects that now we have as clinical trials that are being translated into the clinic. So it's been a really wonderful sort of transition. The support I had with these two MERIT awards from the NIH gave the flexibility to change directions. And that was really important.

Oliver Bogler:

Maybe tell us a little bit about what a MERIT award is.

Jeffrey Rosen:

A merit award was a tenure award where the first five years you had specific aims. The second five years, if you've done well, you didn't have to rewrite the whole grant. You could just propose your aims for the next five years. And there was a lot of flexibility. So we had enough flexibility to start new projects. And again, my trainees really drove that. I mean, they would come in and say, we want to study stem cells. And I thought, we've never done that. But go ahead. And so we would be able to start new projects.

Oliver Bogler:

And that gives you a little bit more of a runway, right? One of the challenges with the typical five-year grant cycle is just sort of having to achieve something significant in a short period of time, which makes it harder to do more complicated things.

Jeffrey Rosen:

Yeah, and so I think we were fortunate. We had that flexibility to do this. And we could move into new technologies. I mean, from making transgenic mice, knockout mice, and things that were brand new at the time to actually eventually developing preclinical models for both breast and prostate cancer.

And then following that to use those for therapeutics to actually look at treatment response. And more recently, even moving into the immunotherapy area and understanding aspects of immunology.

Oliver Bogler:

All the way from basic science all the way through into the clinic. That's very impressive. Erika, same question to you. What first piqued your interest in science?

Erika Ginsburg:

Well, I was a very nerdy, studious person from a young age and really liked how things worked and I was really good in science and math and that kind of just drove my interest in high school and then as an undergraduate. I was a biophysics major so it was all about how things worked and I really liked using my hands. I started out as a phlebotomist, if you can believe, in a clinical lab at a hospital in Pittsburgh. And that's kind of what drove my love of science and touching much on the same things that Jeff was talking about, you know, working with patients and, you know, meeting the people where they are that really helped my interest in science.

Oliver Bogler:

So in addition to your science, you've also been active in publishing. Your first master's was in scientific writing, correct?

Erika Ginsburg:

Yeah, that's correct. I have a master's in science and medical writing from Hopkins. And yeah, that was one of these non-traditional paths that we all talk about in science careers. Yes, I have this love of science. I had given thought to going to medical school, but then realized that really wasn't my passion. And science writing was a good way to tap into my interest in communicating science clearly and effectively, not only to knowledgeable scientists, but also to a more lay audience, especially those who have a love of science as much as I did. And it was really valuable when I was in the laboratory. So just using those clear writing skills in developing standard protocols and procedures that could be easy to follow because that rigor in science and the ability to reproduce experiments that's really a skill that is necessary in the laboratory setting.

Oliver Bogler:

And you've also done some work in publishing, right? You've been a managing editor of a journal for quite a number of years now.

Erika Ginsburg:

I have, and this is another funny coincidence where Jeff and I have crossed paths. Jeff, for many years, was a member of the editorial board on the same journal where I serve as managing editor. It is the Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia, the field that I worked in as well. So yeah, I was able to, again, use those writing and organizational skills and serving as managing editor. And again, that ability to communicate clearly with the authors, reviewers, guest editors, and the editorial board.

Oliver Bogler:

So the journal focused on the area that Dr. Rosen was just talking about, about understanding normal mammary development in biology and connecting that to cancer.

Erika Ginsburg:

Development, correct.

Oliver Bogler:

But we have a unique opportunity here. We have a managing editor and a member of the editorial board. So help our audience understand what are the differences in those roles? Erika, what's a managing editor? Sounds like you make the process work.

Erika Ginsburg:

Yeah, pretty much so. Much as the title describes, it's kind of the person behind the scenes, you know, following the journal submission portal, checking to see what manuscripts come in, working very closely with the editor-in-chief to see if it is a submission that is suitable to the journal, finding reviewers for that article. And then working closely with the authors and the reviewers to make sure that the paper comes to publication.

Oliver Bogler:

And Dr. Rosen, what does an editorial board member do?

Jeffrey Rosen:

Well, think initially when the journal was started by Peggy Neville, a number of us decided to see if we could identify areas that were of interest, that we could solicit people to write reviews initially to give the journal some, I think, publicity. And then basically reviewing, it was mostly a review journal for the first, I would say, a decade or more, rather than publishing new research articles. So we would look at the field, see what was possibly a new area. I think I edited something on transgenics, for example, which was brand new at the time, you know, to try to get other people to submit reviews in that area. And back then, of course, there was a fraction of the number of journals that there are today. So it played a pretty important role, I think, in the field as a way of disseminating, I think, these new advances that were going on.

Oliver Bogler:

So Dr. Rosen, you've spent the majority of your career at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, right? Over 50 years, is that right?

Jeffrey Rosen:

That's correct.

Oliver Bogler:

And you were recently honored with a special mentorship award from Baylor College of Medicine. Congratulations.

Jeffrey Rosen:

Ah, you saw that. Yes, that was very special. Dr. Huda Zoghbi, who's a member of National Academy of Sciences, that Baylor endowed this very nice award in honor of her mentor, Art Beaudet, who she trained with. In fact, she came from Lebanon to medical school in the United States and then came to Baylor to do a fellowship and really, if you follow her career path, it's, a remarkable story of success, not starting out with the usual advantages that people have.

Oliver Bogler:

Yes. But I'm curious, the environment at Baylor must be, must have held you for a long time. What's special about it? What…

Jeffrey Rosen:

Well, I think there were several things. We're in the Texas Medical Center and we're surrounded by other institutions, MD Anderson, University of Texas. So within walking distance, we have a hundred thousand people every day in the medical center. And over the years, the quality of research and the diversity really improved. We have Rice University across the street as well.

So I've looked at positions elsewhere and in fact, I found that the research environment at Baylor was really better. And, it's a very collegial place. So there's a lot of very good colleagues that I could interact with. So although I looked at jobs at other places in the United States, we actually like living in a city that has culture and other things. Houston is a very diverse city. It's changed remarkably over the period of time we've been here. Except for the lack of mountains and the weather, it's a nice place to live.

Oliver Bogler:

Yeah, yeah, no, indeed. An amazing environment. Erika, you transitioned from your laboratory work, right, to come to the Center for Cancer Training where you are now. You're serving as a Branch Director for the Office of Training and Education. I'm curious, what prompted that move and how has that transition been?

Erika Ginsburg:

Yeah, well, prompted the move. Yeah, it's much like, you know, life throws you a curve ball. I thought I would stay in and bench research forever, but I was working with my lab chief and PI, principal investigator for nearly my entire career at the Center for Cancer Research, Barbara Vonderhaar, Jeff mentioned her earlier, and she retired.

So it was an opportunity for me to kind of look at that fork in the road. Did I want to continue doing bench work or did I want to use my talents elsewhere? And I always wanted to stay at NCI. It's been my home for a very long time. And I had conversations at the time with several senior leaders. This was 12, no, more than 14 years ago now. And I made the decision to apply for a position that was just announced in the Center for Cancer Training (CCT), which was expanding at the time. And I was the third hire for the center. And it was a great way for me to use my administrative and technical and analytical skills that I had developed during my time in the lab. Combine it with my passion for mentoring trainees and that it was really the perfect fit for me to join CCT at that time.

Oliver Bogler:

Yeah, I mean, think it's often underappreciated how transferable many of the skills are that people acquire when they're engaged in research, like you just described, and including, of course, mentoring, which is particularly relevant to your role in the Office of Training and Education and to your leadership of the SRK program.

Erika Ginsburg:

Yes, that's true. Thank you.

Oliver Bogler:

So I wonder what advice you might give to our listeners, both of you having had such interesting and varied careers and having seen the field of cancer research for a good part of its existence. If someone's listening and is thinking, you know, is this for me? What can I do in there? What would you say to them?

Jeffrey Rosen:

So I always tell the people in my life, I think that this is a really a rewarding career because it really does impact so many people. You can go to medical school, you can treat individuals. But if you do this research, you may have an impact on hundreds of people.

And in the breast cancer field, which I've been in as a Komen Scholar, I've really seen that impact. I've seen the treatments change from the first discovery, use of tamoxifen to the current day with a lot of new drugs. And it really has, I think, been important to see that kind of transition. And so that's why I think this is such a rewarding career.

The people ask you, would you have ever done anything else? I can't imagine having done anything else.

Oliver Bogler:

It's a strong endorsement. Erika, what about you? What advice would you have?

Erika Ginsburg:

Yeah, I would say that a career, much like life itself, is never a straight path. Be open to opportunities and be willing to explore things outside of your comfort zone. I think these are the things that I learned myself. And you learn something from every experience, whether it's a positive or a negative one. There's always something you can take from it. And look to expand your network. This is something that I share with the fellows and trainees that I counsel in my job every day. Be willing to, again, be open to opportunities, especially in unexpected places.

Oliver Bogler:

Thank you both so much for describing your career paths and giving us advice. To our listeners, next episode we will be talking to two alums of the SRK program. So that's a chance for you to learn what it was like to be in that program and have these two excellent mentors who were our guests today support you.

[music]

Oliver Bogler:

Now it's time for a segment we call Your Turn because it's a chance for our listeners to send in a recommendation that they would like to share. If you're listening, then you're invited to take your turn. Send us a tip for a book, a video, a podcast or a talk that you found inspirational or amusing or interesting. You can send those to us at NCIICC@nih.gov. Record a voice memo and send it along and we may just play it on an upcoming episode. Now I'd like to invite our guests to take their turn. Let's start with you, Dr. Rosen.  

Jeffrey Rosen:

So I would read the book of the Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, which I think is a wonderfully written sort of history of the evolution of cancer up to maybe a decade ago. And I think that gives you a sense of the kind of discovery and how things moved along and the excitement and then the kinds of unexpected breakthroughs that happened.

And if they don't want to read the whole book, they can watch Ken Burns' documentary series on PBS, which was six hours. It was really well done as well.

Oliver Bogler:

And Erika, what's your recommendation?

Erika Ginsburg:

Yes, I'd like to share a podcast that I've been listening to recently called Wiser Than Me. It is a podcast hosted by Julia Louis-Dreyfus where she interviews women from a variety of walks of life, particularly, know, creative persons like authors, actors, writers, but also sports figures and some other prominent women. They have a lighthearted, conversation about their life experiences and the lessons they learned from those. As I mentioned, it has a light touch, but I always take away some nugget of wisdom from listening to it.

Oliver Bogler:

Sounds great. I'm going to check it out myself. I'd like to make a recommendation as well. It's a book I recently read. It's called Rigor Mortis by Richard Harris. And the subtitle is, How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions. It's a bit dramatic, perhaps. But the book actually presents a really interesting history and set of perspectives that I think biomedical researchers would be well served to be aware of.

It summarizes the recent reproducibility crisis in biomedical research very well and identifies a series of pitfalls that weaken many key studies that can lead to expensive clinical studies and engender hope among the public that is then not borne out. The book also gives some good advice on how one might improve research and build back the trust with the public that is essential to our work. It's well written and it's a quick read, though perhaps not a pleasant one. Nevertheless, I recommend it.

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