Cancer program co-leader says lean into clinical research, stay persistent, seek mentors
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Key takeaways:
- It is important for women in oncology to have a strong network of mentors and sponsors.
- Utilize flexibility inherent in academia and away from the traditional 9-to-5 work schedule to maintain work-life balance.
Priyamvada Rai, PhD, has been named co-leader of Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Tumor Biology Research Program.
Rai — professor of radiation oncology and director of the Medical School Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program — will work to increase interactions and collaborations among researchers to better understand the mechanisms by which cancers grow, spread and evade treatment. Since 2015, Rai has also served as ad hoc member, and is current standing member, of the NIH cancer biology section. Her research efforts have largely focused on the fundamentals of various cancer types.
“In some sense, my research is relevant to cancer as a phenomenon but not necessarily restricted to a specific cancer,” Rai said in a press release. “My lab has worked on a number of cancers with the aim of tying together oxidative stress response, DNA repair, oncogenic signaling and tumor suppression, which are key hallmarks driving a lot of different tumors.”
Rai spoke with Healio about how her career has prepared her for this new role, what she seeks to accomplish, and advice for other female researchers in the field.
Healio: How has your career so far prepared you for this new role?
Rai: The Tumor Biology Program co-leadership role is meant to drive a key mandate of this program, which is to understand mechanisms of tumor initiation and progression and to leverage the basic science all the way through the pipeline to therapeutic intervention and community benefit. This requires mainly two things. The first is having a broad understanding of cancer biology so we can appreciate the many facets of research represented in the program, and the other is being able to work well with different kinds of people and understand where they are coming from, what their needs are and how individual lab goals can be connected to our programmatic goals.
I have always enjoyed thinking very broadly about science. I was a biology major as an undergrad at California Institute of Technology, but the core curriculum there required all undergrads to take advanced math, physics and chemistry. I did research in biology labs but ended up taking upper-level classes in physical chemistry, quantum chemistry and statistical mechanics, which taught me to be fearless when it comes to understanding different types of science.
I then did my PhD in the biophysics of oxidative DNA damage, which involved spectroscopy and chemical analysis. In fact, my first experience in cancer biology was as a postdoc at the Whitehead Institute in Massachusetts, where I learned a lot about different areas of cancer biology as well as the cutting-edge technology being developed at the time. All of this training has helped me appreciate why collaborative, integrative approaches to cancer biology are so important.
I then started my independent career at the University of Miami in 2008, where I became involved in university-wide committees and initiatives at an early stage. This helped me build relationships with faculty and administrators across different schools and departments. I have known and worked with several of the people I interact with in my new role for a long time. My broad scientific training and interests as well as my ability to work effectively with different groups of people across the university and the medical school have helped to prepare me for this new role.
Healio: What are some of your short- and long-term research goals with the program?
Rai: Short term, we need to put in a successful application for NCI redesignation. This process started last year so I’m having to hit the ground running. I’m lucky to have great program co-leaders, who’ve helped me get up to speed, and we work really well as a team. A lot of our day-to-day job entails making sure that we are on top of all the data and benchmarks that demonstrate we are a thriving, productive program that contributes to the mission of the cancer center.
Our overall approach is to get to know the science of our program members as well as the themes being developed in other programs, so we can ensure we are working towards the success of our crossover initiatives and fostering impactful scientific collaboration. We also provide bridge funding to our faculty who need more time to bring their best ideas to fruition. In the end, that is what we are limited by — we all have great ideas, but really to do what we do, we need money and hands to do it all. As a program co-leader, I am fortunate to be able to help mitigate some of these practical challenges for my colleagues who are doing truly world-class research.
As for our long-term goals, we want to maximize the research potential of our faculty, promote venues where we can discuss our science productively and ultimately develop collaborations across our institution, which we’ve been doing very successfully. All of these aspects are meant to translate our basic cancer biology findings into clinical trials and out into the community.
Healio: What mentorship advice would you offer other female researchers in the field?
Rai: When I was a junior faculty member, navigating the challenges of setting up a lab while also starting a family, the phrase that many of my female colleagues and I adopted was “lean in,” popularized by Sheryl Sandberg. The term itself is no longer as popular these days for various reasons, but what I learned was to be persistent and not give up, to just keep going through the hard times. Believe in yourself, your ideas, your abilities and don’t let others discourage or push you out. Persistence and self-belief are very important.
It is also very important for female faculty to have a strong network of mentors, both women and men, who are willing to actively create opportunities for you to move forward in your career.
The other thing to keep in mind is that academic research doesn’t rely on a traditional work schedule. Work-life integration that leverages this flexibility can often be more helpful than trying to find that elusive work-life balance. I remember the year when I had my first child and was beyond exhausted from trying to do it all and one of my female mentors advised me to not try to make every meeting but to restructure my day to be home with my baby whenever I could, and to focus on my papers and grants during off-hours.
Women are still shockingly underrepresented in the sciences and the number of women who are full professors, department chairs or in leadership roles is very low. Women scientists need to represent and be visible — it’s important to say “yes” to the right opportunities, but it’s also important to learn how to say “no” when necessary. I’m not sure there’s any one-size-fits-all advice, but these are some things that worked for me.
There are many studies showing that during the COVID-19 pandemic, disproportionately more women dropped out of academic biomedicine than men. So, right now it’s more important than ever that we all do whatever we can to raise up our female colleagues and trainees whenever the opportunity arises.
Healio: What is the SURF fellowship program about and how have you played role in its development?
Rai: SURF is very close to my heart and a chance to really contribute to training and diversifying the next generation of physician-scientists. It is a pipeline research training program for undergraduates that was developed in partnership between Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Office of Education and Training and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Office of Graduate Studies.
The program brings in undergrads from diverse backgrounds and from schools all over the country, including the University of Miami, to conduct research with medical school faculty mentors for 10 weeks every summer. Our cohorts typically end up being more than 50% women and between 40% and 60% underrepresented minorities. The applicant pool is so extraordinary — our review committee members always complain how hard it is to rank the applicants. My SURF team and I then connect the “SURFers” with appropriate faculty and peer mentors, and provide a comprehensive schedule of career and academic development sessions.
At the end of the summer, they present their research in poster and oral presentation formats. We put the students up in our beautiful Coral Gables campus lakeside dorm, and in addition to the formal program, make sure they receive plenty of perks like peer networking social events, monogrammed lab coats, professional headshots, and so on.
In 2017, when I first joined SURF as its Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center director, there were only three students in the program. Last summer, thanks in part to a 5-year NCI R25 grant I received in 2021, we hosted 30 students from all over the country.
Still, we have had our challenges along the way. After a great program in 2019, my first as director, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and threw our 2020 program into a tailspin. But with the help of my amazing and dedicated SURF team, we recruited faculty mentors with dataset-based projects and kept the program running virtually, one of the very few such programs that operated during that uncertain year. It was tough, but we wanted to make sure our SURF students didn’t lose that crucial experience towards their subsequent post-baccalaureate applications. Several of our 2020 SURFers are now here at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in advanced training programs.
The success of SURF is really due to how invested the University of Miami community is in the program — everyone is so willing to engage with our SURF cohorts, including our vice provost, cancer center director, and the dean of the medical school, to name a few.
SURF mentors include department chairs, division chiefs, cancer center program leaders and graduate program directors. Our SURFers are such a consistently wonderful group of young people — diverse, talented, enthusiastic, and looking for opportunities to change the world. Running this program gives me so much hope for the future of science.
Healio: Is there anything else that you would like to mention?
Rai: There is a lot of frustration in biomedical research because federal funding levels have not changed significantly in years, whereas the scope and costs of cutting-edge science continue to go up. About 90% of submitted cancer grants are not funded in any given application cycle. As scientists, we are essentially running small businesses, so loss of funding can mean the sudden end of research programs.
At the same time, we are trying to mentor the next generation and make progress towards our goals of curing cancer. We get to witness unexpected discoveries, which sometimes come from our own trainees, who we get to see evolve into insightful and mature scientists. That’s one of the joys of this job.
With that being said, we are losing a lot of young people in our field who decide academic science is not a good place to be, and we have to address that. This is a business that thrives on new ideas and innovation. It will be a tragedy if we allow our best and brightest minds to fall by the wayside. As with anything, biomedical research is not perfect, but it’s truly a rewarding career with many opportunities to make a positive difference in the world. We need to do more to nurture discovery, mentoring and collegiality, and push for local and national initiatives to better support scientific research. We all need to work towards making academic science more inclusive, more equitable and more stable as a career choice.
For more information:
Priyamvada Rai, PhD, can be reached at prai@med.miami.edu.
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