Suzanne O'Neill Featured by NIH
Dear friends of women in science,
Today, I feature Suzanne O'Neill here, following the interesting article about her in the NIH women's update available here. Dr. O'Neill is a tenure track Assistant Professor at Georgetown University in Oncology at the Lombardi Comprehensive Center. Following the awarding of her PhD in 2004, focused on behavioral issues involved in BRCA1/2 testing, she spent her postdoctoral training preparing for the kind of interdisciplinary career she now has. About her PhD work, she said, ""I became very interested with how individuals would interpret, apply and cope with the individualized risk information that genetic susceptibility test results provide and how this translates to health behavior decisions."
During work in NC, she found that women eagerly sought genomics-based information but how they used it depending on emotional factors, not just understanding the facts. She also worked at the National Human Genome Research Institute. The NIH report said "at NHGRI, she trained with Dr. Colleen McBride, continuing her interest in investigating clinical applications of genomic advances. Dr. McBride expressed pride in her former fellow, saying "Suzanne's work is essential to inform best practices in applying genomics-informed treatments for cancer patients.""
She has published 29 research articles and a book chapter to date. But she also feels spending time with her husband and her young daughter is very important, and says, "I've had to improve my time management, ability to delegate, flexibility and ability to prioritize, which benefits my work now that I've been at it for a few years." It surely is hard to attain balance at times, but Dr. O'Neill has been quite successful with it and her success should encourage other promising young women in science.
cheers,
Laura
Oh, yes, actually where I am it's pretty good but my friends from grad school are suffering, wondering how to eat and pay the rent and get child care. National standards would be a big help.
I worry about postdocs and grad students; we do need some kind of NIH/NSF standards for what they should get in the way of support for childbirth and access to child care they can afford. But I like Small Science Woman's view. I hope it's true a lot of places. It seems true where I am, enough that those women without families seem to have chosen that rather than having been backed into it by force.
cheers,
Laura
Here, most of the young women are postdocs and grad students. Every once in a while one of them has a baby, but not too often. It's sad, but they seem to be waiting until they "settle down" in a job.
FBP
Hi Laura,
At our college there aren't very many young women in science at all, but those there are have families. I guess this is a risky data set to rely on, but that's what I see here.
SSW
