Beginning his journey in biomedical research as a high school student, Nick Pasternack secured a summer research internship position at the University of Wisconsin Department of Chemistry with Prof. Robert Hamers. He learned laboratory basics, igniting a passion for using science to better people’s lives. After high school, Nick attended the University of Florida (UF) for his undergraduate degree majoring in psychology and continued developing his research skills as a research assistant in the laboratory of Dr. Dennis Steindler (now of Tufts University) where he worked closely with Dr. Florian Siebzehnrubl (now of Cardiff University) and Dr. Loic Deleyrolle. The subject of his undergraduate project was utilizing cellular models of glioblastoma, the most common and lethal form of brain cancer, to determine potential treatments for the disease.
After graduating from UF, Nick was awarded a Frost Scholarship to complete an MSc in neuroscience at Exeter College, University of Oxford. Over the course of the MSc, Nick completed two research projects. Nick worked with Dr. Tommas Ellender and utilized light-based techniques (i.e. optogenetics) to determine properties of specific brain networks. For the second project, he worked with Prof. Stephanie Cragg and studied a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease. Based on his experiences during the MSc, Nick decided to embark on the physician-scientist pathway by pursuing his MD/PhD. After completing his first two years of medical school at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Nick started his PhD as an NIH-Cambridge Scholar in the Class of 2019. He identified Prof. Ole Paulsen of Cambridge University and Dr. Avindra Nath of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) as his co-supervisors. The goal of Nick’s thesis project is to utilize RNA sequencing technologies to identify specific, druggable targets in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) patient samples and then test these functionally in a mouse model of ALS. Nick’s future career goal is to become a physician-scientist specializing in caring for and developing treatments for patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
Concomitant with his research training, Nick developed his skills and passion for the performance of magic. Nick began pursuing magic in high school while he was recovering from a sports injury and preparing for a school presentation. He included some magic effects in his presentation and has been hooked ever since. When Nick moved to UF, he was surprised to learn that there was no magic club, so he started one. Nick founded UF’s Student Magicians Club (SMC) with the goal of improving the lives of the local community through magic performance. He led and organized two important events towards this goal: biweekly magic performances at the local children’s hospital and the Annual Magic Extravaganza event. The biweekly performances gave SMC members the opportunity to hone their performance skills and provided much needed joy and hope to patients in stressful medical situations. The Magic Extravaganza Event also raised money for pediatric cancer research. Given the importance of these events to UF and the community, the SMC was awarded the 2015 Outstanding Performance Organization of the Year Award by UF. Since graduating from UF, Nick has performed for patients at hospitals around the US and UK and is an active member of the Cambridge University Magic Society. In addition to performing, Nick has also created over 100 original magical effects and routines.
Nick believes that creating magic shares many similarities with scientific research. For example, when a magician is creating a particular effect, they often look at similar effects other magicians have done previously. Likewise, when developing a hypothesis, scientists first look at previously published research to refine their research question. Additionally, when performing magic, many magicians become so focused on performing technically challenging or methodologically interesting effects that they fail to present the effect in an engaging manner for their audience. Similarly, with the new technologies and vast scientific literature available now, it is easy for scientists to design overly complicated experiments utilizing the latest technologies without sufficient consideration as to how the experiment relates to the advancement of patient care or scientific knowledge.
In science, like in magic, Nick believes it is important to avoid “the dark arts” by ensuring your work is always motivated by your audience/patients. Nick believes magic is not only a great way to connect with patients, but also provides key insight into practicing good science and patient care.
In the midst of a global pandemic, the NIH Oxford-Cambridge (OxCam)/Wellcome Trust (WT) Scholars rallied together to execute the Annual NIH Global Doctoral Partnerships Research Workshop (Workshop). The student-led Workshop Planning Committee (Committee) researched venues, engaged keynote speakers, invited guests, and arranged student talks and team competitions intended to be hosted at American University. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the Committee had to quickly pivot from an in-person event to hosting on a virtual platform. While months of planning went into the in-person Workshop, the Committee took on the challenges of creating not only the first student-run event, but also the first virtual event, finding creative ways to engage the student body and allowing Scholars to present their research.
Opening the 2020 Workshop, Committee Chair and ’19 NIH-Oxford Scholar, Marya Sabir, introduced NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and welcomed the Scholars and participants. Dr. Collins addressed global cooperation in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and importance of global collaboration. “Science is necessary for the future of the world,” stated Dr. Collins.
Following Dr. Collins’ welcome address, Keynote Speaker Madhukar Pai discussed “Reimagining Global Health in the Post-Pandemic World.” Key take-aways included the ability to “reflect on our privilege and spend the privilege to serve as allies in the quest for a more diverse and equitable global health.” He also stated, “we need to address health inequities within high-income countries. GLOBAL health is also and just as much LOCAL health.” This discussion prompted the audience to zoom out and discuss diversity and inclusion within their institutions and research partnerships.
Scholars Lynda Truong, Hannah Mason, and Marya Sabir served as moderators for concurrent sessions featuring Scholar oral presentations spanning Cellular and Molecular Biology, Immunology and Neuroscience respectively. For the first- and second-year Scholars, the Workshop Planning Committee took a unique spin on traditional “elevator pitches” and created a team competition. Four teams, consisting of 6-7 students and led by a Scholar and an OxCam Executive Committee Captains, battled for bragging rights in executing condensed research talks. The much-anticipated team competition yielded spirited research presentations, woven into creative formats, geared toward engaging the audience – all in an effort to hone science communication skills.
On day two of the Workshop, ’18 NIH-Oxford Scholar Lauren Wedekind welcomed back Workshop attendees and introduced Keynote Speaker Ms. Krystal Tsosie. Ms. Tsosie, a PhD Candidate at Vanderbilt University, presented “Our Genomes, Our Health: Empowering Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Precision Medicine for US Tribes.” In her talk, she surveyed her work in bioethics as an Indigenous scientist, training of young Indigenous scientists with the Summer internship for Indigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) Consortium and discussed the problems of institutions’ engagement with tribal communities. Ms. Tsosie recommended the audience to read a perspective published in Nature called “A framework for enhancing ethical genomic research with Indigenous communities.”
Scholars Audrey Winkelsas, Lauren Wedekind and Katherine Masih served as moderators for consecutive Scholar oral presentations around Neuroscience and Neuroimmunology, Cancer and Genetics, and Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research.
To welcome the Class of 2020, Student Leadership Board member Boya Wang stitched together a video of the new Scholars introducing themselves and sharing fun facts. We learned that there are three sets of twins among the new class and heard that a newly married Scholar is hiking thousands of miles across the US prior to orientation week!
Due to time constraints in transitioning from an in person event to a virtual event, the Committee decided to reorganize alumni presentations via a bi-monthly Alumni Social Hour as part of a new initiative called the Career Development Seminar Series. They designed these webinars to engage with alumni of the NIH OxCam/WT Program. Hosted on the Alliance’s Zoom Platform, the Committee invited Program Alumni to talk about their careers in industry, consulting, academia, medicine, start-ups, and more and “met” alumni from around the world. The Committee has scheduled these webinars until mid-September and are looking forward to continuing this series.
Keynote Speaker Drs. L. Michelle Bennett and Michele Hu graciously agreed to serve as presenters for the Zoom Career Development Seminar Series. Dr. Bennett presented “Collaboration and Team Science for Research Success” on July 13, 2020 and shared insights on Disciplinary Continuum, the Three Pillars (Trust, Vision and Setting Expectations) and Stages of Team Development. Dr. Michele Hu, a Professor of Clinical Neuroscience and Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the University of Oxford, will present on July 29, 2020. Dr. Hu leads the clinical research program on the Oxford Parkinson’s Disease Centre Discovery cohort and her team facilitates translational research in the field of longitudinal cohort studies and biomarkers for early and prodromal Parkinson’s disease, with particular focus on REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD), and how sleep affects neurodegeneration.
Dr. L. Michelle BennettDr. Michele Hu
To conclude the Workshop, the Annual Research Awards Ceremony announced eight Alliance Sponsored Awards, along with, Outstanding Speaker Presentation Awards and Honorable Mentions for each class year, and winning team for the Elevator Pitch Competition. Details on the winners can be found in a separate article on this page. To learn more about the Workshop, the Program Agenda can be found here.
The Board of Directors of the International Biomedical Alliance would like to acknowledge the following individuals and organizations whose steadfast support makes a meaningful difference for the next generation of scientists: Arsenal Capital Partners, AuerbachSchrot, LLC, BioHealth Innovation, Certara, Cozzi Family Clinical Case Conferences/Mrs. Margaret Cozzi-Hamilton, Emergent BioSolutions, Institute for the Future of Medical Education, Lasker Foundation, MacroGenics, Margaret Bearn, Michael Lenardo, M.D., National Institutes of Health, NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars/Wellcome Trust Alumni, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Richard Siegel, M.D. and Vera Siegel, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and WCG.
Agriculture farmers will tell you that a successful season is built upon patience, risk taking, hard work and favorable conditions. The similarities to successful research are obvious. Boya Wang is a modern-day farmer in biomedical research where her current work focuses on the development of tests to better diagnose solid and liquid cancers. When cancer cells die, they release free floating DNA into the blood. Boya is working to develop tests to sequence DNA from patient’s blood samples. This would allow her to detect DNA released by cancer cells. “Many times, the cancer DNA is very low and so you come across the problem of trying to find a needle in a haystack – where the needle is the cancer DNA.” Boya explained. Her excitement to work in this field stems from the potential she sees in industry and in public-private partnerships. “This field is an example of successful translational research. There are many academic labs and private companies who are developing these blood tests. There have been promising clinical trial results and even more ongoing trials. Ultimately, I hope to contribute as much as possible during my current training and in the future with my goal of being a physician scientist.”
After completing her degree in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill(UNC), Boya decided to pursue an MD/PhD. This decision was inspired by her mentors at the at UNC Cystic Fibrosis Center who taught her how research could benefit patients and how patients could influence research. Throughout her undergraduate, Boya led a nonprofit organization to establish a medical lab in Lawra, Ghana. After graduation, she worked in the lab of Dr. Camille Ehre at UNC. Boya used primary human epithelial cell models to investigate new compounds which break down mucus in patients with obstructive lung disease. This work was published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. In total, Boya’s research experience motivated her to address questions with clinical relevance and learn bioinformatic skills applicable to a range of topics. She could not imagine a more exciting career and was enthusiastic to become an MD/PhD Scholar through NIH OxCam and UNC. After completing two years of medical school, Boya started her PhD in 2019 collaborating between Dr. Louis Staudt (NIH – National Cancer Institute) and Drs. Nitzan Rosenfeld/Carlos Caldas (University of Cambridge – Cancer Research UK).
Due to COVID-19, Boya left the UK and returned to the NIH. Her mentors and the NIH-OxCam Scholars Program provided significant support and flexibility to adapt to unusual circumstances. Boya’s mentors helped shape her project to include both lab work and data analysis to better adapt to changing circumstances. Outside of the lab, she is a member of the student leadership board (SLB) and works in concert with fellow students to help welcome the incoming NIH-OxCam class.
Congratulations to all of the winners of the 2020 Lasker Essay Contest. This year, the Lasker Foundation’s annual Essay Contest invited scientists to describe how a notable scientist has inspired them – through the scientist’s personality, life experiences, and/or through their scientific contributions. With hundreds of essays submitted from contestants around the world, the Lasker Foundation awarded eleven essays write by Emily Ashkin, David Basta, Avash Das, William Dunn, Safwan Elkhatib, Laurel Gabler, Kwabena Kusi-Mensah, Lisa Learman, Olivia Lucero, Hannah Mason, and Samantha Wong, respectively. To learn about the winners and read their essays, visit the Lasker Foundation.
One name may look familiar, as NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholar Hannah Mason has been named a winner of the 2020 Lasker Essay Contest. Hannah is a fourth year NIH-Cambridge Scholar pursuing her PhD in the laboratories of Dorian McGavern at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and Ole Paulsen at the University of Cambridge. She studies how the brain’s immune system responds to and is shaped by repetitive head injury and degenerative processes. After Hannah completes her PhD, she will return to her home state of Georgia to attend medical school at Emory University. She hopes one day to be physician-scientist designing therapies and treating people with neurodegenerative diseases. Here is the winning essay from Scholar Hannah Mason:
My Gym Genie: Gathering Inspiration from Dr. John Schiller
I remember the first time I met Dr. John Schiller. I was interviewing for a PhD program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The morning’s interview hadn’t gone well, and I just knew I wouldn’t get into the program. I had dreamed of training at the NIH, of discovering a druggable target for neurodegenerative diseases, but now I had to go back in and pretend that those dreams weren’t slipping away. Sitting down for the interview lunch, I never expected to be across the table from someone who had effectively cured a disease that plagued my childhood, someone who would one day become a mentor to me. I sat down across from Dr. John Schiller and was immediately thrown back in time.
I was back in elementary school, sitting on Mrs. Gazeley’s waterbed on my tenth birthday playing Sorry and watching The Ellen DeGeneres Show. I knew she did not have much time left. I just did not know how little.
I do not remember when I first learned of HPV. Trying to pinpoint the date is like trying to figure out the first time I read a chapter book. I can ballpark a period of time, but the exact date seems inconsequential because once I learned, it just became part of everyday life – a chapter a day. In my memory, Mrs. Gazeley, my mom’s best friend and a constant in my childhood, had always had cervical cancer. She had had it in college, and it was back. At the time, I did not understand how she got it, but I knew it was not something she wanted to have. It meant days spent getting chemotherapy at the Oregon Health and Science University. It meant losing her hair. It meant dying.
Until it did not. Two years after Mrs. Gazeley’s death, Gardasil became FDA approved as a preventative measure for HPV and therefore cervical cancer. My mom, usually someone to stay away from any medicine that is not tried and true, had my sister and me first in line at our pediatrician’s office for the vaccine. We were not going to experience what her friend had gone through, not if she could help it. I remember the three shots making my arm sore for days, but each time we went, I knew I was preventing a disease that had both broken me and made me committed to helping people suffering from incurable diseases.
So, as I returned to lunch that day, I realized that I was meeting a great. I was meeting John Schiller, the man who had helped discover and develop the vaccine that protected me from a similar fate to Mrs. Gazeley. I was meeting someone that had accomplished the purest goal in biomedical science – bringing a discovery to people and preventing disease.
Despite my earlier fears, a few months later I found myself a graduate student at the NIH. I was constantly seeing legends of science around campus from Tony Fauci to Steven Rosenberg. No scientist, however, inspired me quite like John Schiller. Occasionally, I would see him at the tiny, windowless campus gym. He always had a smile on his face. Perhaps it was the endorphins, but I liked to think it was just his disposition. Dr. Schiller would ask me how the science was going. As
a first year PhD student, the science was going about how trudging through half melted snow goes – difficult and sloppy. Dr. Schiller, though, would always take a minute and offer his thoughts on whatever idea or hypothesis I was toying with that day. He was my gym genie but instead of offering wishes, he was giving me ideas and advice on how to be a good scientist.
Like any PhD, mine has been fraught with obstacles – mentors lost, projects scooped. Many days I find myself thinking is it all worth it? Will my science ever help people, or is it destined to sit in PubMed for eternity, occasionally cited, but mostly forgotten? I did not start an 8-year path to become a physician-scientist for this, I think to myself. Then I remember John Schiller. I remember his gym words of wisdom on selecting problems that really matter, coming up with a solution, and knowing when to hand a discovery off to the next person in the pipeline to develop. I remember that the goal is always to help patients, not our own egos. I remember John Schiller, who is to me, everything that a scientist should be. He recognizes that science is a team sport. He is focused on improving human health. He is a mentor. I remember John Schiller, and I remember that I, too, can achieve my dreams of making a difference in people’s lives through science.
Dr. Matt Maciejewski, an Associate Director at Pfizer, Alliance Alumni Director, and the first alumnus of the Wellcome Trust – NIH PhD program recently took it upon himself to implement a few of the available methods for correcting the Covid-19 underreporting, and created a simple web-app that can be freely used to visualize the true case number estimates. An accompanying writeup is available on Medium. For those interested in the code behind the app, Matt made it available on GitHub.
