SALT LAKE CITY — A professor at Rowland Hall Prep School and three of her former biology students will soon be featured in a cancer research journal. The students graduated high school in June.
"... at some point it seemed like; ‘Wow, we have some interesting findings here and the outside world should hear of it,'" explained Professor Padmashree Rida. "So the question then was, how are we going to get it out there?”
Born in India and educated in Singapore, Dr. Padmashree Rida has spent her adult life researching breast cancer. In particular, why it is especially deadly for women of color. "They have a 40% higher mortality compared to white women with breast cancer. And trying to understand why this is so and how we can ameliorate this has been the focus of my work for the last 20 years," stated Dr. Rida.
In 2021, when her husband took a job in Salt Lake City, Dr. Rida accepted a position at Rowland Hall teaching biology. "I was looking for a position in a school that valued STEM, that valued diversity and social justice," says Rida.
Last year, she decided to start and advance research biology class. That's when three students caught her eye; Adam Saidykhan, Sophie Baker, and Isabel Brown. That group decided they were up for the challenge of reading, then writing about a lot of books and research papers. "... managing that and this class, going home and reading all these papers was a big time commitment and huge struggle," explained the professor.
The students began to focus on some crucial, molecular drivers of an aggressive type of breast cancer.
Adam says Dr. Rida was cautiously optimistic about where the research might lead. "Rida informed us early on there was a chance this could lead to nothing, we could have nothing published," remembered Adam. "I'd say we were fairly lucky to find some thing of note."
Now thanks to the hard work of the students, and the passion about breast cancer research instilled in the students by Professor Rida, not only are their findings being published in the medical journal 'Cancer,' but all four were invited to present their findings before a room full of oncologists. They presented their findings in April at a San Diego conference.
“And it just filled me with pride to see how far they had come and how beautifully they were presenting and communicating their understanding and their findings to this elite audience," expressed Dr. Rida.
Sophie and Isabel are now freshmen in college. Adam says he's taking a gap year before enrolling at the University of Utah and taking on a double major, something in the medical field and a minor in film-making.
Meanwhile, Dr. Rida is continuing her advance research biology class and says she has some other really promising students who are enrolled. She says she's looking forward to big things from them as well.
