get to know a scientist

As you learn about the field of biology, you may or may not stop to wonder who is actually conducting and sharing these observations with the scientific community, and the world at large. It’s really common to think of an old white man in a lab coat when asked to picture a scientist; while this paradigm is shifting, it is still important to recognize that there are many kinds of people who contribute to our understanding of the natural world!

In our class, you will have several opportunities to explore the lives and work of real, current scientists. In this series of “Get to Know a Scientist” assignments, we will feature scientists that perform work related to what you are learning in the course.

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Meet Dr. Mya Roberson

In this week’s module, you’ve been learning all about how cells divide, and what happens when cell division gets out of control. Cancer is a disease that has touched many of our lives in one way or another, and as a result, there are many, many researchers whose careers are devoted to curing it. However, thinking back to previous Get To Know A Scientist features, and perhaps your own lived experiences, it is not surprising that structural inequities extend to whether cancer patients receive adequate healthcare.

Dr. Mya L. Roberson attended Brown University for her B.A. in public health and earned a combined M.S. in Public Health and Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She became a social epidemiologist and cancer care delivery researcher in part because she personally witnessed racial disparities in healthcare between her white and Black grandmothers, who had the same disease but experienced very different outcomes. In learning more about her, you will hear several stories about the people who fuel her passion for studying her area of expertise: evaluating health outcomes for Black breast cancer patients in the U.S. South.

Dr. Roberson graduated with her Ph.D. in 2021, after winning several graduate student awards for her work in cancer outcomes, epidemiology, and diversity. She is currently an assistant professor in the department of health policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. You can follow Dr. Roberson on Twitter @MyaLRoberson.

Learn More!

Below, you will find a list of resources to learn more about Dr. Roberson’s life and research. You will pick at least two of the resources about Dr. Roberson’s work to complete a writing assignment that asks you to reflect on what you’ve learned about Dr. Roberson and structural inequities in cancer care.

Read: Finding Myself in Research
Read: Critical race theory in cancer research: Ask yourself ‘who is missing’
Watch: The immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks – Robin Bulleri by TED-Ed (~5 min, transcript available)
Journal article: Structural Racism and Cancer: Calls to Action for Cancer Researchers to Address Racial/Ethnic Cancer Inequity in the United States
Read: Mya Roberson talks epidemiology, health equity and life during a pandemic
Read: On supporting early-career Black scholars
Listen: From the Front Row: Exploring racial disparities in cancer care and treatment with Dr. Mya Roberson (podcast, ~37 mins; transcript in link)

University of Iowa College of Public Health · Exploring racial disparities in cancer care and treatment with Dr. Mya Roberson
Assignment Details

After reviewing the video, podcast and/or articles, write a reflection with your responses to what you saw. To receive full credit, your reflection should be a minimum of 300 words and should incorporate and reflect on at least two of the sources from the list above. Please use a direct quotation only if the exact phrasing of the original material is essential to your point. Otherwise, put the information from the sources into your own words rather than quoting the sources directly. Some topics you might wish to discuss include, but are not limited to:

What was most interesting to you in reviewing these resources?
How do these resources connect to your experiences or understanding of cancer treatment?
What new questions do you have after reviewing these resources?
What do these resources tell you about the types of people that do science?
Grading

This assignment will be graded using Turnitin. To see how this assignment will be graded, scroll down to view the grading rubric on this page or go to the text version of the rubric.

Grading

This assignment will be submitted to Turnitin. To see how this assignment will be graded, scroll down to view the grading rubric. If you’re reviewing this assignment using the Canvas mobile app, the rubric is included in the Grade tab.

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