SCIENTIST PROFILES
CLASSROOM ACTIVITY
The following profiles are excerpts from the Jim Allison: Breakthrough companion book, This is What a Hero Looks Like. This companion photography book expands on the film’s portrait of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Jim Allison, and celebrates cancer scientists from all over the world at different stages in their career – all united by their passion to defeat one of the world’s deadliest diseases.
Read through the backgrounds of each scientist and choose THREE to learn more about. Click READ MORE to read their expanded biographies. Once you have finished, complete this worksheet.
Luisel Ricks-Santi MD
BORN: PUERTO RICO
CURRENTLY: HAMPTON UNIVERSITY,
HAMPTON, VA
Today, I'm a cancer geneticist and founder of the Hampton University Cancer Research Center - where we're looking at incidence rates of cancer in ethnically diverse and underserved populations. That feeling of discovery is something that continues to excite me to this day. When I make a new connection or develop hypotheses - I feel like my heart skips a beat - just like it did as a young girl in Puerto Rico.
Kathleen McCarthy
BORN: MICHIGAN
CURRENTLY: SKYHAWK THERAPEUTICS
BOSTON, MA
For the past 10 years, I have worked in drug development with only a bachelor's degree. I don't mind being the naive one. I can ask the questions no one else wants to ask. I don't mind being wrong because that's usually when I learn the most; sometimes it's the "stupid" question that ends up being the most important part. Now I'm the Chief Scientific Officer at a very innovative biotech.
Elimelech Nesher PhD
BORN: SOVIET UNION
CURRENTLY: ARIEL UNIVERSITY
ARIEL, ISRAEL
First, I pursued a degree in zoology, but I quickly realized that I wanted my scientific research to benefit people. During this time, I was also becoming aware of feeling uneasy in my own country. Being a Jew in Soviet Ukraine, I always felt like a stranger - whether it was at University or on the streets. I moved to Israel and began to study neuroscience and completed my PhD. I finally found my niche in the field of cancer molecular biology.
Olayinka Adebayo MD
BORN: NIGERIA
CURRENTLY: MOREHOUSE SCHOOL OF MEDECINE
ATLANTA, GA
I was born in Nigeria in 1978, November 19th, to be precise. I'm the first girl in the family, I have six brothers and sisters and with my cousins there were 18 of us in the household. I showed an early passion for medicine and health, perhaps because my mother was a nurse and my father was an engineer. When my father asked me what I wanted to do when I was 6 years old, I told him, "I want to be a doctor."
Cristina Zambrano
BORN: ECUADOR
CURRENTLY: HUNTER COLLEGE
NEW YORK, NY
I’ve always been interested in studying human health. Both my mom and my sister were teenage moms, and my high school needed a daycare on site because so many students were having kids. So, I’m inspired to educate women in my community about their options, because so often teenage pregnancies are due to a lack of information.After I finish my education, I will continue to help patients in the US, but I also want to work in Ecuador where the need for medical care is so acute.
Hariprasad Thangavel PhD
BORN: INDIA
CURRENTLY: UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
HOUSTON, TX
I remember a quote I heard from one of my mentors in the early days. He said, “the doctors prescribe medicine, but those medicines were actually discovered by a scientist." This pushed me to continue my studies in science. I got my PhD in Italy and came to America to work at UT Houston. My longterm plan is to return to India and open my own research lab.
Carole Baas PhD
BORN: OKLAHOMA
CURRENTLY: NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE
SOUTHLAKE, TX
I was a biomedical engineer with two young children when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I decided to spend whatever time I had left with my family. While getting treatment, I would come in with a stack of journal articles to review with my doctor at each visit. Some clinicians might not appreciate that approach, but he was wonderful, so we would spend five minutes on my exam and the rest of the appointment time chatting about the latest research.
Francis Barnieh PhD
BORN: GHANA
CURRENTLY: UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD
BRADFORD, UNITED KINGDOM
As a scientist, my work is a bucket full of challenges and achievements, so I have learned to take the “highs” with the “lows” each day on this journey. My research focus is on mitigating the side effects of chemotherapy through tumor targeted approaches. I believe that in the next couple of years this field will present some exciting new contributions to cancer research; I hope I can play some role in this progress!
Kanwal Mahmood
BORN: PAKISTAN
CURRENTLY: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
BALTIMORE, MD
My family moved to the US when I was 18 months old, so essentially I am a first-generation American. It was hard for my parents as immigrants - my father worked four jobs when I was growing up, but education was their focus. No one in my family was in the sciences or had even gotten a secondary education, so I had no direction or help in that area. But I'm a really hard worker; and I'm very focused. I just pushed myself towards it. I don't allow myself to give up.
Ailed M Cruz-Collazo
BORN: PUERTO RICO
CURRENTLY: UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO
SAN JUAN, PR
My mother was a middle school science teacher and my role model. She would take me to her classroom and I watched her teach science, making science fun and understandable. When I decided to study Chemistry, I thought I would end my studies after completing my Bachelor’s degree. No one in my family has an advanced degree. But after getting my first research position, I realized that the research bench is where I belong.
Raymond Hughley MS
BORN: GEORGIA
CURRENTLY: MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL
NEW YORK, NY
My introduction to science came from watching Bill Nye, The Science Guy. Just before finishing my degree in computer science at Tuskegee University, I ended up doing data analysis in a lab that was looking at the genetic connection between African American women and Quadruple Negative Breast Cancer - for which there are limited treatment options. I loved the research.
Matthew Bergens
BORN: LOUISIANA
CURRENTLY: NORTH CAROLINA STATE
DURHAM, NC
I was 25 and a paratrooper in the military when I was diagnosed with cancer. Jumping out of airplanes for a job, you have to face your mortality, but the phrase ‘you have cancer’ rocked my world completely. I was on my heels until a doctor friend asked me what I was going to do with my life. I told him I had no frickin’ clue. He said, ‘well, have you ever thought about medicine?’ Now I’m starting a master’s program at NC State before applying to med school.
Monica Wielgos-Bonvallet PhD
BORN: ILLINOIS
CURRENTLY: NYU LANGONE MEDICAL
NEW YORK, NY
When I was 6, my mom bought me The Way Things Work. There was a chapter on atoms that really fascinated me – I couldn’t envision these atoms in my head and I just wanted a simple picture of them, but my mom said we couldn’t see them because they make up everything. That started my love of science. Today, I work in precision medicine – trying to improve the efficacy of FDA-approved therapies for ovarian cancer.!
Mike Luzzio PhD
BORN: KENTUCKY
CURRENTLY: DRAGONFLY THERAPEUTICS
BOSTON, MA
My dad was my greatest science hero. He and my mother were first-generation Americans. He was a microbiologist and worked for the Surgeon General. I remember going to the lab with him on weekends and tinkering while he worked. My father told me that at the end of the day you need to feel good about what you’ve contributed, was it positive? does it make the world a little better? Science offered me a path to do that.
Zunair Khokhar
BORN: VIRGINIA
CURRENTLY: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA
Growing up, I had a family doctor who was with me from my birth up until high school. Starting at a young age, I would pepper him with questions about his work. When I was in ninth grade, he let me shadow as he saw patients, walking me through his thinking – how he would identify, analyze, and understand the information that allowed him to help his patients. He taught me the science behind his decision-making, which really excited me and got me interested in medicine.
Jean-Marie Cuillerot MD
BORN: FRANCE
CURRENTLY: DRAGONFLY THERAPEUTICS
BOSTON, MA
I grew up in France in a working-class city, with a chemical plant at its center. My grandparents were poor farmers, so I was not expected to succeed. I decided to study science and medicine. People should look at my picture and my profession and believe they can do anything. My grandparents were poor farmers in the middle of nowhere in France, and I was able to find my way in – so you shouldn’t be shy about dreaming, but you should also be prepared to work your ass off!
Alex Taraboletti PhD
BORN: FLORIDA
CURRENTLY: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
WASHINGTON, DC
I am a visual artist and a scientist. I think that there are a lot of scientists that are artists, but for some reason there’s this disconnect between the two. It’s like, “Well, this is an art thing and that’s science.” I used to think that way. I thought I had to choose one or the other. But I had some very passionate science teachers in school and I was able to make the connection between some of the abstract principles of science and the abstract artists I loved, like Dali and other surrealists.
Nikita Sharma, MS
BORN: INDIA
CURRENTLY: UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
MIAMI, FL
My grandfather was the strongest man I knew, and as his only granddaughter, I was immensely loved. I was 7 when he passed away. As a child, I couldn’t understand why he had to go so early. As a 13-year-old, when my parents told me that my grandfather died of gastric cancer, I wanted to know what cancer was. What was this horrible disease that took the most important man in my life away from me?
Laetitia Marzi PhD
BORN: FRANCE
CURRENTLY: NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE
WASHINGTON, DC
Stubbornness is one of the essential qualities of a scientist. I witness it every day in my lab. We just don’t quit until we get the answer. I love unveiling the truth - it’s like turning on the light in a dark room, and leaving it on for all the world to see.
Jim Allison PhD
BORN: TEXAS
CURRENTLY: MD ANDERSON
HOUSTON, TX
To some extent, a band’s almost like the lab. When a lab’s working well, there’s an interplay with your colleagues, where you suggest an idea and they give something in reply and it’s the back and forth. It’s the same way in a band when you get with your friends and colleagues and you finally hit it off, where you get to the point where you could just nod. You finish playing something, and you nod to the person and the next person just picks it up instantly.
Sultan Damgaci PhD
BORN: TURKEY
CURRENTLY: DUKE UNIVERSITY
DURHAM, NC
I received my bachelor's and master’s degrees in Physics from Istanbul University, which is the oldest university in Turkey and dates back to the Ottoman Empire. It was something magical to sit in the classrooms of my ancestors. My worldview expanded beyond the walls of my home country as I moved abroad to do research in Germany. It was there, working on lung cancer, that I first felt I was doing work that contributed to people’s lives.
Emmalyn Chen
BORN: CALIFORNIA
CURRENTLY: UC SAN FRANCISCO
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Hearing Jim Allison’s story was so refreshing. At the time, I was at a really low point. I had been working on the same thing for a while and was getting frustrated and questioning whether my work was even meaningful. Being reminded that other scientists go through their own struggles and relating to their story is very motivating. It gives me conviction and confidence about what I’m doing.
Tanya Panchenko PhD
BORN: SOVIET UNION
CURRENTLY: NYU LANGONE MEDICAL
NEW YORK, NY
I came to the U.S. with my parents when I was 12. My parents were refugees fleeing the Soviet Union. We moved to Brooklyn and it was tough getting integrated. I was an average student, in part because of the language barrier. So, my mom invested a lot of time, sitting down with me, trying to figure out how I could get a passing grade in school. It wasn’t until the end of high school and beginning of college, when my love of science began.
Vesal Yaghoobi PhD
BORN: IRAN
CURRENTLY: YALE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
NEW HAVEN, CT
When I was 11 years old, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. Over summer break, when everybody was on vacation, I stayed home and read our science textbook. I would just sit and read that book until I memorized it. I fell in love with biology and joined the Biology Olympiad program at my school. I got the second-highest score in Iran!
Padmanee Sharma MD PhD
BORN: GUYANA
CURRENTLY: MD ANDERSON
HOUSTON, TX
I come from a family of rebels. That’s how I look at it. My mom is Muslim, and my dad is Hindu, and I was born in Guyana, a very small third-world country in 1970. A Hindu marrying a Muslim broke religious norm; political circumstances in Guyana would not tolerate this, so our family was targeted and threatened. For our own safety, we came to America as immigrants when I was 10 years old.
Nicolai Wagtmann PhD
BORN: DENMARK
CURRENTLY: DRAGONFLY THERAPEUTICS
BOSTON, MA
I grew up in Denmark. I had a very safe and playful childhood. I had the freedom to go out into nature and have little adventures. Science is about exploring, being curious and following that curiosity to new discoveries. I can see a connection between my childhood wanderings in nature and my love of science.
Ozgun Erdogan PhD
BORN: TURKEY
CURRENTLY: DUKE UNIVERSITY
DURHAM, NC
In Turkey, young kids are always asked “What will you be when you grow up?” but I never knew what to say. My dad saw my struggle and suggested science to encourage me to explore more non-traditional career options. The idea opened up new horizons for me. I never thought a career in science was possible, I had never seen a scientist in real life and thought they only existed in science fiction. It was a surreal idea, especially for girls in 1980s Turkey.
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