How rising stars in science and medicine think about mentorship and bouncing back from rejection

At the age of 26, Lauren Ghazal was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma just months into her Ph.D. program in nursing theory at New York University. She experienced firsthand how the financial burden of undergoing cancer treatment, along with the emotional and physical toll of the disease itself, can lead to overwhelming distress in patients. Now, as an assistant professor at the University of Rochester in the School of Nursing, she researches health and quality of life outcomes among younger cancer survivors.

“If there’s anyone to be studying the unmet needs and economic needs of young cancer survivors, it’s someone that’s lived through it,” Ghazal, who is also a nurse practitioner, said at the 2023 STAT Summit in Boston on Wednesday.

Ghazal was speaking alongside two fellow members of the 2023 class of STAT Wunderkinds, which highlights rising stars in science and medicine. The trio, including Brenda Cabrera-Mendoza, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, and Zhi Yu, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, shared details about their respective careers and goals for the future.

While doing rotations of various medical specialties in medical school, Cabrera-Mendoza was most fascinated by psychiatry. She later went on to get her M.D. and Ph.D. at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she studied genomic alterations associated with suicidal behavior.

“Even in the very early stages, we can recognize the biological mechanisms of psychiatric disorders. But we still have a lot of work to do in that area,” Cabrera-Mendoza said.

For instance, much of the existing research on genetics in mental health disorders has focused on populations of European descent. “I would like to improve the diversity of psychiatric studies, and that’s why I decided to focus my current research on genetics,” Cabrera-Mendoza said.

Many of Yu’s research projects, meanwhile, involve a multiomics approach, in which she analyzes DNA, RNA, and protein data together, to opening up new pathways in precision medicine. In her current work as a postdoctoral fellow, she is trying to identify the mechanisms that cause cardiovascular disease in different patients in order to guide more tailored treatments.

From a young age, Yu was captivated by the field of biology as well as mathematics. Over the years, she learned advanced computational modeling using medical data to study human diseases. When asked what advice she would give to her younger self, she said, “Even though my background is in statistical genetics, I wish I had learned machine learning techniques five to ten years ago. Machine learning uses statistical modeling to help us better understand large-scale data.”

The panelists also spoke about the importance of mentorship in their career trajectories. “The most important thing a mentor can give to you is trust. You [should] be able to tell him or her something is wrong and find solutions together,” Cabrera-Mendoza said.

The trio also discussed the common experience of rejection in scientific research, whether when submitting work to journals or applying to present at conferences and other opportunities. “When you have a lot of rejections, the first one is the hardest, and gradually you get OK with it,” Yu said. Her own best practice: “What I do is I close my laptop for the day; tomorrow is another day.”

Looking ahead to the future of her research field, Ghazal said that she is hopeful that the responsibility for helping cancer patients deal with costs will move beyond individual solutions like crowdfunding and involve more focus on insurance companies working alongside hospitals.  “I’m really excited to be working across different disciplines, and really looking at what we can do to really improve the economic well-being of these younger cancer survivors throughout the rest of their life,” she said.

Read more about STAT Wunderkinds and follow along virtually with the STAT Summit.