Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellow

Manisha Srinivas Raghavan

Manisha Srinivas Raghavan is a graduate student at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Describe your interest in participating in the program. 
Raghavan: During my doctorate program's first and second years, I was one of the program directors for the Tri-Institutional Minority Society's Summer Program for Undergraduate Research. As a student-run initiative, this program aimed to introduce NYC-based undergraduate students from historically excluded groups to research in our labs. As graduate students, we designed the program from the ground up. This entailed hosting informational sessions, reviewing applications, interviewing applicants, designing the program curriculum, matching students, mentoring, and advocating for the program with the institutions. This was a pivotal learning experience for me, as it made me realize that advocacy was truly my passion, and I decided to pursue opportunities to build up my skills. Unfortunate circumstances that coincided with the Supreme Court's decision to overturn race-based affirmative action in college admissions resulted in our program getting axed. During our budget negotiations, I learned about how scarce funding is for scientific outreach programs. This was coupled with institutions having to deal with the stagnation of National Institutes of Health budgets, forcing them to prioritize research over educational opportunities. The shutdown of our scientific outreach program underscored the importance of policy-making in science. I pursued training opportunities to develop my advocacy, leadership, communication, and policy-making skills at that juncture. 

The Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellowship would be an enriching, immersive experience that would help me hone my skills, learn about policy-making, map out stakeholders, and learn tangible ways to influence policy decisions as a graduate student. Through the program's first component, I hope to understand better how decisions are made at the various government branches. The thorough science communication training will help me explain the importance of my work and advocate for increased scientific funding to the elected people, especially during Capitol Hill Day. The career information sessions would be valuable for networking and learning about how scientists transitioned from academia to policy. However, the most important component of the Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellowship is to meet and build a network with peers who are equally, if not more, enthusiastic about changing the future of science. I want to learn from my peers and their experiences and take back that knowledge to share it with the student body in school and colleagues at the National Science Policy Network (NSPN). I firmly believe that the Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellowship would be a pivotal stepping stone in my journey, and the training will help me become a better advocate for scientific funding and advancement in the U.S.

How do you plan to use the knowledge and experience gained through your participation in the Howard Garrison Advocacy Program? 
Raghavan: I intend to apply the skills I develop to advocate for integrating science communication courses into the graduate studies program at my school. Additionally, our institute has only two psychologists available for all the students and post-doctoral trainees. I want to advocate for a better mental health support system for all trainees at work. I hope to learn skills that will help identify stakeholders, highlight the gravity of the issues, and propose potential solutions.

My school currently does not have a science policy or advocacy club. I want to get the ball rolling by organizing workshops to introduce graduate students to the world of science policy, communication, and advocacy. Via this program, I will build a network that I can leverage to develop and host workshops and training sessions. I hope to share what I have learned with my peers on the National Science Policy Network's advocacy committee and incorporate strategies to accelerate our advocacy projects.

Using no more than 250 words, describe your research as you would to a non-scientist. 
Raghavan: How does a cancer cell leave its home base and travel to a different part of the body without getting detected by the body's defense system? This process, formally known as metastasis, is the primary cause of cancer-related deaths. In the lab, I study colorectal cancer, which is cancer of the gut. Cancer cells mimic the natural biological processes to survive longer in the body without being detected. To understand this, we looked at regular gut biology. Our gut is a unique organ because it regularly generates a new inner layer. This layer is made up of crypts, like wells, which house a mother population at the base, like water at the depths of the well. These mother cells constantly give rise to special daughter cells that play different roles, thereby replenishing the layer via a process known as differentiation. When the mother cells are lost suddenly, the daughter cells can become the mother cells to restore the population through a process known as dedifferentiation. Cancer cells have smartly copied this two-way process to become shapeshifters and leave the home base. Our work has identified a biological molecule regulating the dedifferentiation process in our gut and cancer cells. By blocking this molecule, we can stop cancer cells from becoming shapeshifters. This makes it easier to target and kill cancer cells, which will reduce the number of cancer-related deaths drastically!

Briefly describe any past or present participation in additional career exploration activities, experiences, and/or programs. 
Raghavan: Before graduate school, I was a member of Shades@Broad and Asians and Asian-Americans@Broad affinity groups at the Broad Institute. We advocated for representation in our institution's leadership board and the scientific community as a team. My role focused on curating social media campaigns to highlight the achievements of scientists of color and organizing community events. In graduate school, I co-led a summer program for NYC-based undergraduates from 2021 through 2023. Aside from that, I am also a member of the National Science Policy Network, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Association for Women in Science. I serve on the advocacy committee at the National Science Policy Network and am currently a Science Diplomacy Program Fellow. I attended the 2024 American Association for the Advancement of Science Catalyzing Advocacy for Science & Engineering workshop and participated in the Hill Day activities to advocate for scientific trainees. In the summer, I took a five-day policy writing course with the Aspen Tech Institute and workshopped a policy memo to address the stagnation of NIH research funding. I am participating in ASBMB's "Art of Science Communication" course and NSPN's "Diplomatic Skills Training" course. I serve as the co-president of our "Women in Science" group at school. I have been working with the school to make menstrual products available to the student body. We also made Association for Women in Science memberships available to all our students. We collaborated with NYC-based women in STEM groups to host community-building and professional development events.

Manisha Srinivas Raghavan is a member of American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, a FASEB member society.