Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Mina Bissell, another of my science heroes, returns to #UCDavis
Well, one of my favorite people Mina Bissell is coming to talk at UC Davis tomorrow "The Microenvironment and the Genome: How Do Tissue Architecture and Extracellular Matrix Inform Breast Cancer Therapy". I first met Mina through my activities in something called the Defense Science Studies Group (DSSG) which I was a member of in 2004-2005. DSSG was an amazing program that introduced me (and others) to the various science activities going on in the defense, intelligence, security and related agencies of the US Government. I wish I had had a blog during much of this because it would have been fun to write about it (well, the parts that were not classified of course). Among the amazing things in that program, I got to meet Mina Bissell who was one of the program advisors. What an incredible woman. See her lab page here: Bissell Lab and more about her on Wikipedia Mina Bissell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia or here in a New York Times article by Gina Kolata Forty Years' War - Old Ideas Spur New Approaches in Cancer Fight . Mina became a bit of an advisor to me when I was looking to move to California many years ago and every interaction with her is always rewarding. So I am really looking forward to her coming to UC Davis tomorrow. Hopefully I will not screw up like I did the last time she was here (see The Tree of Life: A eureka moment - but not of the good kind).