What is a typical day like? What is the most interesting or inspiring aspect about your job?

A typical day might begin with a virtual meeting with my writing colleagues in which we discuss clinical trial, manuscript, and regulatory updates from the past week and agree on priorities and responsibilities for the coming week. After that, I have a lot of freedom in deciding how to divide my time between communicating with clinical and scientific collaborators and writing clinical trial documents or journal articles.

Often, there will be an afternoon meeting for which I prepare a slide deck in advance or write meeting minutes afterward. I really enjoy days when I have the opportunity to pour over medical data (from the "bedside") and scientific data (from the "bench top") and integrate them into a meaningful figure or section of a manuscript. Hearing about patients whose advanced cancer has been cured through their participation in a clinical trial that I helped design is definitely the most inspiring part of my job.

If someone is interested in this career path, how would you recommend they pursue it?

I have found that, while clinical research and medical writing are integral pieces of the medical field and scientific industry, they are rarely discussed in undergraduate or graduate training programs. Don’t let this stop you!  Explore basic explanations of these topics online (e.g., amwa.org), seek out opportunities to gain experience generating and interpreting experimental results, and lean into any opportunities to illustrate, write up, or speak about science, even in informal settings. Graduate school offers many of those opportunities (though you may have to pursue them) and a PhD in the biological or physical sciences is a requirement for many medical writing positions.

If you could go back to your time in graduate school or your undergraduate years and give yourself advice, what would you say?

I would encourage myself (and any undergraduate or graduate student) to work hard and smart. As a new student, I was ready to work hard but had a lot to learn from instructors and mentors about how to work smart! I would also say, “Be a sponge!” Soak up as much as you can about your class content and about what career opportunities exist in your field.

What was a defining moment for you as a student here?

During my last year of graduate school, I had the opportunity to submit a journal cover image for consideration. I possess little-to-no graphic arts or fancy microscopy  skills, but thought maybe I could capture the essence of our experimental findings with a well-known analogy and a publicly available image. I had so much fun mulling over different options until I landed on T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone. I thought it was a fun and fitting way to represent our findings—evidently, the journal editors agreed! That exercise underscored for me that my favorite part of doing science is finding creative ways to communicate it.

What people or opportunities at Illinois, the school or department helped you get to where you are today?

Several! The mentorship of my PhD advisor, Dr. Jie Chen; opportunities to conduct, interpret, and present my own research to various audiences; chances to interpret, critique, and edit my peers’ written and oral work; and multiple teaching assistant appointments all helped shaped my ability to assess and communicate a broad range of scientific research topics.