Raquel

Postdoctoral at Georgetown University Medical Center, Lombardi Cancer Center.

Instagram: @science.rach

Article written by Kylie Cameron

Introduction

For this article, we have decided to take a different writing approach. We asked Raquel to discuss her High School career, College career, and her current work career.

“My name is Raquel. I from Brazil where I earned a doctoral degree in Food Science at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Currently, I am doing my postdoctoral at Georgetown University Medical Center, Lombardi Cancer Center. Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is one of only 41 institutions in the nation designated by the NCI as a comprehensive cancer center and is the only comprehensive cancer center in the Washington, DC area. Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is comprised of 4 research programs: Cancer Prevention and Control Program, Experimental Therapeutics, Molecular Oncology, and Breast Cancer.”

“Throughout my research experiences, I was given hands-on in vitro (cell culture) and in vivo (mouse) experiments to study cancer biology, molecular biology techniques such as gene expression analysis through PCR, including primer design, RNA extraction, evaluation of RNA quality; DNA methylation analysis, including DNA extraction; Western blot, including protein extraction and quantification. Also, I worked in collaboration with many graduate students assisting them in their project design and supervised undergraduate students. Part of my responsibilities included designing and scheduling a project plan for these students to execute. In addition, I have done volunteer at the Washington English Center school, where I have accomplished one hour per day teaching English as a foreign language to help underrepresented minorities and promoting diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts to support international students.”

High School

“Science has been one of my passions for as long as I can remember. Science is about life and give to us a systematic way of understanding the life of millions of things around the world. I just wanted to watch and know about many different forms of life on Earth. Also, the introduction to the laboratory environment during high school consolidated my interest in the STEM career and set me off to become a Biologist. Furthermore, even in high school, taking jazz and ballet classes became purifying for me because the dance classes help me express myself and improve my well-being. Through dance classes, I developed the ability to concentrate intensely, listen introspectively, solve problems creatively, collaboratively develop a project, and maintain composure when faced with unexpected. Dance presentation let me have visibility and this visibility help me engage in a community. The dance flourished many helpful skills to the science career path, such as self-discipline, patience, perseverance, flexibility, teamwork, and be prepared to face the anxiety of routine or rejections.”

College

“To get in a scientific career I started the course of Biology in an institution based on philanthropic doctrines. The University has a mission to promote the development of its students, transmitting values such as Ethics and humanization. Most of the courses are structured in two axes — a) the specific, which is made up of subjects exclusively to the training area; b) the interprofessional one, made up of classes common to the different areas of training, subdivided into exact sciences, human and social, and biological sciences (health). I attended the University because I was awarded a full scholarship to pursue my bachelor’s degree in Biology. Be awarded a full scholarship helped me remove financial barriers to earn a college and become an independent and international researcher in the non-genetic inheritance of cancer predisposition. The Plant Physiology, a subdiscipline of botany, was one of the toughest courses I have ever taken. I will never forget. I tried to record the lecture, but the test was too short no multiple choice. It was hurtful. However, cell biology, anatomy and physiology, and immunology were the most important and favorite classes. These classes helped me in my career path and personal life. Losing my aunt to esophageal cancer was the first time I faced an incurable disease. Two years later, my cousin was diagnosed with breast cancer at a younger age. Then, I just wanted to understand everything about everything cancer-related. Not beyond, I started my first internships in cancer research, where I was involved in a joint research project on the effect of an adequate nutritional therapy could attenuate inflammatory mediators after surgical trauma, which is a critical step for avoiding post-operative immune dysfunction and multiple organ failure. In my second internship, I worked with the development of drugs also known as growth factor. This has been used after chemotherapy to help patient white blood cells recover after treatment. I would say to the next generation, pursue a career that brings life, passion, and happiness. If you choose a career in STEM, pursue your dreams, and do not give up.”

Current Job

“The laboratory I have been working on having a collaborative environment. I enjoy the fact that I have a great degree of freedom to produce high-quality work and results. I love the challenges the job provides as most projects require a problem-solving approach, promote the dissemination of scientific content. Further, I enjoy meeting a wide variety of students. And, I love how my supervisor constantly believes in me, and how she cares about me and my professional development.”

Projects she has worked on

“My current work makes me look back at things that most of my teachers and colleagues did not entirely agree, like the environment giving rise to changes in organisms during their lifetime and could be transmitted to their offspring through germline from Mister Jean Baptiste Lamarck, but I thought as an interesting and amusing aspect of evolution. Afterward, I met my Ph.D. supervisor and heard from him about how maternal diet could affect the offspring breast cancer risk. I remembered that I could not stop thinking about this topic. How amazing it is. Then, epigenetics came into my life and I started to study more about evolution and life itself. It was a wonderful new world of possibilities. Then, I started to study whether maternal diet influences the offspring’s health outcome. When I started my postdoctoral training, I was invited to study the father’s side. So I began to study more and saw that few people were starting to question themselves about that, and I decided to join them. That is how I ended up studying how paternal nutritional status or lifestyle at conception time can influence female offspring susceptibility to breast cancer.”

What she hopes to accomplish in the future

“I want to understand the intricate details of life and help humans understand that take care of themselves properly is important to have quality of life and stay healthy.”

Why she loves her jobs in STEM

I enjoy the freedom and autonomy to develop my ideas for projects, write grants, learn new and sophisticated techniques, the excitement to finish the project and submit the paper.

You can find Raquel on Instagram: @science.rach