First Annual Fellows’ Training Symposium

February marked the First Annual DCEG Fellows’ Training Symposium, titled “Building scientific and social networks.” The event was sponsored by the Office of Education and organized by a group of DCEG fellows, including committee cochairs Melissa Rotunno, Ph.D., Genetic Epidemiology Branch (GEB), and Sara Schonfeld, M.P.H., Radiation Epidemiology Branch; and Michael B. Cook, Ph.D., Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch (HREB); Linda Dong, Ph.D., Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch; Jill Koshiol, Ph.D., Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch; Tram Kim Lam, Ph.D. (GEB); Rayna Matsuno Weise, M.P.H., Biostatistics Branch; Joanne L. Watters, Ph.D., M.P.H., Nutritional Epidemiology Branch; and Hannah P. Yang, Ph.D., Sc.M. (HREB). The aims of the symposium were to bring fellows together to expand their networks, establish new collaborations, and gain valuable insight from DCEG leaders and former fellows. More than 60 pre-and postdoctoral fellows, representing all the DCEG branches and laboratories, participated in the event.

Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr., M.D., Division Director, began the symposium with “DCEG: An evolutionary history in the year of Darwin.” Dr. Fraumeni spoke on the history of the Division, reviewing the innovative ideas and challenging decisions that have shaped DCEG and advanced scientific research. In “Networks, safety nets, and balance beams,” Shelia Hoar Zahm, Sc.D., DCEG Deputy Director, talked about her career path to and within DCEG, addressing such topics as maintaining a balance between work and life and how to select projects and mentors. Two former DCEG fellows—Dr. Ulrike Peters, Assistant Professor, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Dr. Anand Chokkalingam, Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley—spoke about their experiences in transitioning from fellows to extramural investigators. Dr. Peters, in “Transition from a postdoc to an independent investigator: How to prepare for grant writing,” talked about how she learned to select the best grant mechanisms and balance the writing of grants with other academic and research commitments. Dr. Chokkalingam, in “A (limited) tour of epidemiology outside of DCEG,” drew on his experiences to compare and contrast working in industry with working in academia. The morning concluded with a lively panel discussion in which the speakers answered questions from participants.

The afternoon consisted of a poster session that featured the work of nearly 30 fellows. The session provided the attendees with an opportunity to learn about fellows’ research projects and to talk about scientific findings. The day concluded with oral presentations by three postdoctoral fellows, Shahinaz Gadalla, M.D., Ph.D., Clinical Genetics Branch (CGB), on “Cancer risk in patients with myotonic dystrophy: A population-based study”; Gretchen L. Gierach, Ph.D., M.P.H. (HREB), on “Mammographic density does not differ between unaffected BRCA1/2 mutation carriers and women at low-to-average risk of breast cancer”; and Lisa Mirabello, Ph.D. (CGB), on “Ovarian cancer risk is associated with leukocyte telomere length in the population-based Polish Ovarian Cancer Study.”

—Melissa Rotunno, Ph.D., and Sara Schonfeld, M.P.H.

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