Impact

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
-Richard Feynman

Backpacking Yosemite during 2020 fire season

Our long-term goal is to leverage tissue immunity for the development of novel immunotherapeutic and cancer detection strategies.

The roadmap toward achieving this goal requires performing rigorous, high impact science. However, how we work and conduct our daily experiments is equally important. Therefore, our team commits to adhering to an approach that strives to tackle the following challenges in academic research:

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Science

Academic science includes pervasive and systemic structural obstacles that limit the potential of historically underrepresented groups to become involved in and succeed at research. In addition, marginalized populations are often disproportionately impacted by health challenges understudied by biomedical science. We strive to help tackle these issues by contributing from the ground up:

  • Our team seeks to create an inclusive and nurturing environment where diversity of thought and experience are celebrated, encouraged, and supported. Our successes and challenges are shared.

  • We focus on fundamental scientific questions of broad human relevance. Wherever possible we apply our expertise to understudied health challenges (i.e., the role of wildfire smoke in tissue immunity and cancer development).

  • We will participate at an institution and community level to help remove systemic roadblocks faced by underrepresented groups.

 Environmental Stewardship

Climate change is an existential threat to human health. Unfortunately, biomedical research and health care is a major contributor to greenhouse gas. As a team we will focus on reducing our impact by:

  • Considering the types and volume of consumable materials used in our research.

  • Planning experiments thoughtfully to maximize efficiency and reduce waste.

  • Recognizing climate change as a key modifier of human health and a driver of biological function. Where possible we will emphasize projects dissecting the intersection of biology and climate.

 Scientific Rigor and Reproducibility

Experimental reproducibility is ongoing issue in biomedical science. We undertake every effort to design and perform experiments that adhere to the strictest ethical and scientific standards.

  • We plan experiments strategically to reduce ambiguous results.

  • We stringently follow animal welfare and human subject research protocols as outlined by institutional requirements.

  • We promote open access, method transparency, and rapid public dissemination of our data.