Hayat Sindi

Hayat Sindi is a Saudi Arabian medical researcher merging biotechnology with humanitarian initiatives. She completed her undergraduate studies at King's College London for Pharmacology studying allergy, and went on to pursue her PhD in Biotechnology at Cambridge University. Working in conjunction with other researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sindi has co-founded multiple companies, including Diagnostics for All, which aims to address diagnostic difficulties in medically under-served areas of the world. She now serves as a visiting scholar at Harvard, member of the Shura Council (highest body in Saudi Arabia to advise the king), member of the UN Scientific Advisory Board, and Goodwill Ambassador for Sciences at UNESCO. She has been named an Explorer by the National Geographic Society and one of BBC's Top 100 Most Influential Women for both her scientific and humanitarian work.
 
 
-Daaniya

Marie Maynard Daly

Marie Maynard Daly was a biochemist who made important contributions to the scientific community such as understanding the chemistry of histones, protein synthesis, and the relationship between cholesterol and hypertension. Histones are proteins that bundle our DNA and are very important for gene expression. Daly isolated histones from different animals to determine their properties and composition. She also determined the distribution of different nitrogenous bases within nucleic acids. She also provided direct evidence that signified RNA was involved in protein synthesis. Another area of research involved understanding the causes of atherosclerosis (buildup of fats, cholesterol, fatty material in arteries). She examined the cholesterol levels and blood pressure in multiple rat studies to see how damaged or clogged their arteries were. She found a strong correlation between high blood pressure and high cholesterol – a groundbreaking discovery that encouraged future research into the causes of atherosclerosis.
 
Outside of scientific research she made remarkable impact. After graduating college with a degree in chemistry, she obtained her Master's degree at New York University. Then, she made history as the first black woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry (in just three years). Daly organized training programs to prepare minority undergraduates for medical school and graduate science programs. Additionally, to honor her father who could not finish college, she started a scholarship fund to assist minority students majoring in physical sciences. Marie serves as an inspiration to all within the scientific community.
 
 
-Vanessa

Bonnie Bassler

Dr. Bassler currently teaches at Princeton, and she's known for her groundbreaking discoveries in cell-to-cell communication in bacteria (specifically, quorum sensing). Quorum sensing helps a population of bacteria to collectively regulate gene expression, so different genes are expressed when the population is at different densities. So basically, she looks at how bacteria can 1) realize that they aren't "alone" and 2) execute some task together as one. Understanding quorum sensing could potentially help us better understand things like infection, or help us develop new kinds of therapies against bacteria. I found her inspiring because along with her amazing research, she also puts in a lot of efforts towards educating others, making science accessible, and encouraging younger scientists. 
 
 
-Jacqueline

Alexander Fleming

from Fleming, 1929
Alexander Fleming was a physician-scientist from Scotland who discovered the first antibiotic, penicillin, actually by accident. He was studying a bacteria called Staphylococcus, and unintentionally left it out in the open in his lab. When he came back to it, he found that there was a fungus that grew in the dish, but that there were no colonies near the fungus, only ones further away. The fungus was Penicillium, and it was the "juice" secreted by the fungus that killed the bacteria, which he called penicillin. Initially, he and penicillin didn't get much recognition, but Fleming would continue to research and study it. Although he was ultimately unable to stabilize and purify it to be used clinically, this was eventually done by many scientists working together, including Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. They, along with Fleming, would win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945. The drug is estimated to have saved over 500 million lives, and that if penicillin was not discovered, over 75% of the people alive today would not be alive because at least one of their parents/grandparents/etc. would have died to an infection. I think it is incredible how Fleming, along with many other scientists, were able to revolutionize the field of medicine and how disease is treated. 


-Nihith

Zinaida Yermolyeva

The scientist I picked for this discussion is Zinaida Yermolyeva, also known as “Mrs. Penicillin”, one of the founders of Russian microbiology. In 1922, her town was facing a cholera epidemic and she chose to perform experiments on herself. She purposely drank contaminated water and fell ill, and as a result of this experiment modern water chlorination standards were created. Later in life, she worked in Afghanistan where she helped create better methods for diagnosing cholera and created drugs for this and many other illnesses. During WW2, her bacteriophage and water chlorination efforts stopped the epidemic in Stalingrad that was introduced by German troops. Zinaida Yermolyeva is most known for the creation of the first Russian antibiotic, as a result, she was given the nickname “Mrs. Penicillin” by Howard Florey, the creator of penicillin. 
 
 
-Morgan

Viktor Ambartsumian

Viktor Ambartsumian was an Armenian scientist born in 1908. He pioneered the field of theoretical astrophysics in the Soviet Union, and founded the Armenian Academy of Sciences. After founding the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, he discovered stellar associations, which are loose star clusters that are gravitationally unbound yet still come from common origin. At the time, it was unknown whether all the stars in the galaxy were formed or whether it was an ongoing process, and his discoveries helped confirm the latter. He also discovered and conceptualized  Active Galactic Nuclei, the idea that galactic centers are volatile, explosive, and dynamic. He is the most renowned Armenian scientist and the first Soviet scientist to be given honorary membership to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
 
 
-Stephen



Gertrude Elion

A scientist I chose was Gertrude B. Elion. Not only did Elion have a tremendous amount of individual discoveries (with 45 patents for life-saving drugs), but she received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1988 for revolutionizing the way in which drugs were developed. Her initial big discovery was a compound that hindered development of leukemia cells. Yet, it had only temporary effects, and Elion was determined to inhibit diseases in a more prolonged way. Soon after, she unearthed Imuran, which suppresses the immune response, to facilitate organ transplants (previously impossible). Then, she discovered allopurinol, which decreases uric acid production. High levels of uric acid can be fatal to cancer patients. Her pivotal discovery came in 1977 when the antiviral drug acyclovir was approved. At the time, scientists believed drugs that targeted viruses would be too powerful for the body to handle, but Elion did not allow this to undermine her driving purpose to alleviate suffering by disrupting the proliferation of bacteria. She and her team developed a drug against Herpes, Epstein-Barr, chickenpox and shingles and set the stage for further antiviral treatments, such as AZT to treat AIDS.
 
Likewise, Elion’s youth displayed an admirable pattern of perseverance and ambition. At 15, her grandfather died from stomach cancer, serving as motivation for her to cure the disease. Her family’s livelihood took a tremendous toll after the stock market crash of 1929. She was only able to attend Huntington college with her high grades for free, receiving a degree in chemistry and graduating at 19. After, she neither had the money to go to grad school nor pursue a fellowship due to her gender, both the traditional routes for a scientist. She took limited jobs she could find — a secretary, a chemistry teacher, and an unpaid worker in a lab — until World War II opened positions formerly restricted to men.
 
Though the Nobel Prize is a treasured award, Elion said what was worth more were letters from patients or relatives who had benefited from her work, whether a recipient of a transplant, the parents of a child treated for leukemia, or someone with shingles whose eyesight was preserved. 
 
 
-Alexis
 

Eric Kandel

Dr. Kandel is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who studied memory at Columbia University before recently retiring in 2022. His interest in studying the brain was sparked by his childhood in Vienna, where he became fascinated by how the rhetoric of the Nazi Party could transform people in terrifying ways. In hopes of better understanding why people act the way they do, he studied psychiatry, and then shifted to studying the biological basis of behavior, specifically memory. What I find inspiring about his work is that he pioneered the study of memory at a time where even less was known about the brain, and innovatively sought out new model organisms for understanding how neurons operate. His model of choice was a marine snail called Aplysia with relatively few, large neurons, making them easier to analyze. By observing what happened in neurons when they learned to associate a poke with a shock, he and his team found that synapses in the brain can be modified by learning. This work won him the Nobel Prize in 2000, and has served as a substantial contribution to understanding brain disease and memory disorders.
 

-Verina

Zhaosong Chu

Since I've grown up in Asian culture, I deeply admire the work of Asian scientists, particularly psychologists and psychiatrists who navigate the cultural stigmas surrounding neuropsychology and mental health discussions. Dr. Zhaosong Chu, a psychiatrist at Kunming Medical School in China, caught my attention with his recent research exploring the impact of childhood trauma on subcortical neural mechanisms and personality traits. I am inspired by Dr. Chu's work on transcending cultural biases that often portray individuals grappling with neuropsychiatric and mental disorders as weak or fragile, instead choosing to explore the intricate neurobiological underpinnings of such conditions. Moreover, I am particularly drawn to Dr. Chu's focus on subcortical structures in his research endeavors, as it aligns closely with my own independent projects that center on exploring the morphology of these structures and their implications for neuropsychiatric disorders.
 
 
-Royal

Ada Yonath

The scientist I chose for our discussion is Dr. Ada E. Yonath, a 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner for successfully mapping out the bacterial ribosome in three dimensions. Dr. Yonath’s parents emigrated from Poland, and they had very little money. Despite Ada’s very difficult upbringing, her curiosity and love for science drove her to earning a PhD. She received her bachelor's degree in chemistry, her master's in biochemistry, and her Ph.D. at Weizmann Institute of Science. She also completed a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT. Dr. Yonath's research dealt with protein synthesis in cells. No one had yet determined the molecular structure of a ribosome, as X-ray crystallography did not have the capacity to visualize the ribosome due to its size and symmetry. Dr. Yonath successfully crystallized a thermophile bacteria called Geobacillus stearothermophilus, and she published groundbreaking research on how numerous antibiotics function, bringing to light potential antibiotic compounds based on their attachment to the ribosome. As an Israeli woman (and the first Israeli woman to receive a Nobel), Dr. Yonath continues to be a role model for countless underrepresented women pursuing science.


-Ryley

Katalin Karikó

Katalin Karikó is known for her research regarding mRNA and nucleoside base modifications that led to the development of effective COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. She was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine alongside Drew Weismann for their research in developing the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine that has now been effectively administered to billions worldwide. The aspiring scientist was born and raised in Kisujszallas, Hungary, and received a Ph.D. at the University of Szeged. She moved to the USA in her 20s to work as a postdoc at Temple University, and eventually with cardiologist Dr. Elliot Barnathan at the University of Pennsylvania to show that mRNA could direct production of new proteins when injected into cells. Although Karikó did not receive many grants and was unable to find a permanent faculty position, she did not let these numerous setbacks deter her from her passion for mRNA research. After coincidentally meeting Dr. Drew Weissman when the pair were photocopying papers, they soon discovered that adding pseudouridine to mRNA allowed it to evade the body’s immune response. This meant that the mRNA could be used to alter protein production without being attacked by the body. Under Kariko and Weissman’s findings, mRNA that would instruct the body to make copies of the coronavirus spike proteins could be injected to defend against COVID-19 instead of using a piece of the virus itself. Furthermore, their findings about the nucleoside would prevent the mRNA from being immediately attacked and degraded by the human body. Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech would soon turn their attention to this research to create the vaccine we are familiar with today, all thanks to Kariko’s unbelievable resilience and true love for mRNA.


-Darshini

Tu Youyou

Professor (not Dr. – she did this without a doctorate) Tu Youyou and her group re-discovered artemisinin, a drug type that revolutionized anti-malarial treatment, totally in secret. Mao's "cultural revolution" effectively halted scientific progress, as bourgeoisie-western trained scientists were seen as anticommunist, but this turned out to be counter-productive when their ally, North Korea, needed a way to minimize malarial deaths in the army. So, Mao asked hundreds of scientists, including Prof. Tu Youyou, to secretly work on the "523 project," tasked with finding another anti-malarial drug. 

Professor Tu discovered the drug after pouring over 6000 Chinese herb recipes for treating fever. They found the Artemisia annua plant appeared frequently and had antimalarial properties, but due to differences in harvesting the plant (seasonal variation, leaves vs stem, etc) the effectiveness varied. So, Professor Tu also used historical clues to guide her purification and extraction strategy, and came up with a process that yielded 95% efficacy in the first clinical trial of artemisinin (which she conducted). She won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for the countless lives she saved and for sparking the transition from chloroquine to artemisinin in anti-malarial care.


-Sophia

Ernest Rutherford





Ernest Rutherford is considered the father of nuclear physics. He lived from 1871-1937, a few years shy of the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb. However, his work set the grounds for the creation of atomic weapons. He was the first scientist to determine that it was theoretically possible to split an atom, causing a great amount of energy to be released. Ernest was also known to have a very loud voice. It was said that when he spoke, it was as if he thought he was on stage. Some of his colleagues claimed that Rutherford was not a good experimenter, but that he had more grit and determination than anyone else.


-Jackson

Werner Forssmann

Werner Forssmann's scientific contributions made him lose his job twice and left him effectively banished from practicing cardiology, until 27 years later, when he won a Nobel Prize for them. In 1927, against the approval of his department chief, he worked with a nurse who volunteered to try to enact his idea – to stick a catheter down her vein to the heart. However, unbeknownst to her, while Forssmann was ‘preparing’ the experiment, he had decided instead to push the catheter into his own body. The nurse led him down to the X-Ray department, and Forssmann literally had to fight his way into the room. Under the X-Ray machine, Forssmann was able to shove the catheter all the way until he reached the ventricular cavity. While publishing the results initially tarnished his reputation as a cardiac surgeon, his efforts have been valuable for cardiac diagnosis and many cardiac interventions such as pacemakers, internal defibrillators, and valve replacement. Forssmann’s actions may be considered wrong medical practice, but they also exemplify the ethical principle of not performing a life-risking experiment unless the physician themselves would be willing to do so.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002914996008338

 -Swarup

Ubadah Sabbagh

Ubadah Sabbagh, a postdoc at MIT's McGovern Institute, is a young leader in neuroscience research who is also paving the road for making science more equitable and inclusive. As an immigrant from Syria, his exposure to war sparked his interest in human behavior, i.e. what biological mechanisms influence people to do things. He researched the connections between the brain and eye, mapping the landscape of neurons in the region of the thalamus essential to visual processing. As a result, he was recognized in Forbes "30 under 30" list, the first Syrian to be selected for the science category, and was awarded the NIH F99/K00. Ubadah used this increased visibility to advocate for the betterment of science through multiple initiatives such as co-founding Black in Neuro, empowering Black scholars in neuroscience. Additionally, he serves on the advisory committee for both the SfN (Society for Neuroscience) and NIH, addressing ways to improve post doctoral training and make the work of scientists more accessible to public. One thing Ubadah hopes for in the future is building infrastructure in local c
ommunities and local minds, instead of having to leave countries like his own, to get advanced scientific training. 
 
 
-Aliha

Svante Arrhenius

 Svante Arrhenius was a Swedish physicist and chemist and Nobel Prize for chemistry recipient who helped found the field of physical chemistry. He is commonly known for the Arrhenius equation (temperature dependence of reaction rates) and Arrhenius acids/bases, both of which are taught in gen chem. Less well known is his estimation of how much an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide contributes to global surface temperature warming of the Earth, the first to exist using principles of physical chemistry. He concluded, and was the first to do so, that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions from combustion/burning processes are significant enough to cause faster global warming than typical rates. His work was the basis for a lot of modern climate science and inspired many others to link carbon dioxide/greenhouse gas levels and global warming.
 

-Heather


 

Frances Kelsey

https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/static/img/portraits/182.jpg Dr. Kelsey played a key role in preventing thalidomide from being sold to pregnant mothers in the United States. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago, and then became a doctor of medicine at the same institution. Later, Kelsey worked for the FDA reviewing applications for new drugs coming in, one of which was thalidomide. Thalidomide is a drug that was said to help with nausea, so the manufacturers felt a good target audience would be pregnant women, even though they did not complete thorough experiments to determine if the drug would affect a developing fetus. Kelsey noticed this, and refused to approve the drug without further research, despite intense pressure from the drug makers' company and from her bosses. It was later found that thalidomide caused 2,000 children to die, and caused 10,000 children to be born with deformities. Thanks to Dr. Frances Kelsey, there were only 17 of the babies born with deformities were born in the US. 
 
 
-Natalie

Barry Marshall

Barry Marshall, an Australian scientist born in 1951, was best known for drinking a broth containing Helicobacter pylori, a type of bacteria, in order to prove that they are the primary cause of stomach ulcers. Previously, many scientists had believed that bacteria could not live in the acidic environment of the stomach, and instead attributed their prevalence to other factors such as stress. While Marshall did become ill after consuming the bacteria, he took antibiotics, which lowered the symptoms of his illness and suggested that H. pylori bacteria were the cause of stomach ulcers. Marshall proved that stomach ulcers were of a bacterial origin, and won the Nobel Prize in 2005 for his work regarding the subject. 


-Akash

Carol Greider

Carol Greider is mainly a biology researcher, where she has studied many topics within her field but is most known for her discovery of the enzyme telomerase (which rebuilds and protects the ends of chromosomes). Her mother died when she was 6 years old, teaching her to be independent, and she struggled with dyslexia, often belittling her own intelligence since she couldn't read like her classmates and had poor grades. She thus taught herself how to memorize words (instead of read the letters), and her great memorizing skill helped her greatly when she reached future biology classes, eventually leading her to pursue a degree in biology. She eventually went on to research chloroplast, circadian rhythms, and microtubule dynamics, but her groundbreaking discovery on the role of shortened telomeres and their association to disease and cancer earned her a Nobel Prize. Today, she continues researching telomere shortening and encourages young woman to pursue careers in the scientific field, because she is concerned with the “under-representation of the 50% of the brain power of this world" (Greider).

Link: https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/carol-greider

-Angelica

Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson's major contribution to the scientific community was a book called "Silent Spring" in which she detailed how DDT, which became available as a commercial pesticide starting in 1945, accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals and could cause cancer and genetic damage. Her foundation for this work lay in her career as a renowned nature author and a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Despite several bestselling books, such as "The Sea Around Us", Carson could not get a magazine to assign her to write about DDT, so she instead wrote about DDT in a book, with the ultimate conclusion that DDT and other pesticides harmed animals and contaminated the food supply. After "Silent Spring" was published in 1962, the book was met with a lot of backlash and attacks on its validity, but due to the meticulous research and vetting process Carson had included in her book, the issues DDT caused could not be denied. As a result, DDT was banned and the public started to become aware of how vulnerable nature is to human intervention. 
 
 
-Nehal


Francis Collins

Dr. Francis Collins is a physician-geneticist whose research has played a pivotal role in the both the discovery, and developing an understanding of, genes responsible for numerous diseases. Some of these diseases include cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease, and type 2 diabetes. Apart from his lab research Collins served as one of the major leaders of the international Human Genome Project, which was one of the largest scientific collaborations in history. Completed in 2003, the project produced the first sequence of the human genome and gave remarkable insights into the blueprint for Humans. In 2009 Collins was appointed as the Director of the National Institutes of Health. He served in this position for twelve years, which is the longest of anyone in the past fifty years. He made enormous strides in gaining funding for a variety of public health and scientific initiatives aimed at improving the health of the entire nation. 

Link: https://irp.nih.gov/pi/francis-collins

-Caroline

TS Kanaka

TS Kanaka was a neurosurgeon from Madras, India, who was Asia's first female neurosurgeon and the third in the world. She was also the first person in India to perform chronic electrode implants in the brain and deep brain stimulation, and she published many groundbreaking papers on stereotactic surgery and cerebral implant surgery. More than just her academic work, however, she dedicated her life to serving the poor and the needy, often performing surgeries for free or at minimal cost. She set up a research foundation after retirement with her life savings to provide care in less-served parts of South India, and her foundation still exists today. Additionally, she trained many female neurosurgeons under her belt, breaking the gender barriers and social norms that existed in a Western, male-dominated field. She serves as an inspiration to me because she is from the same town in South India as me, and proved one's background shouldn't be a barrier when pursuing a prestigious field such as neurosurgery. 
 
 
-Anish
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