On the critically acclaimed television series House MD, each episode often reaches its climax at a random circumstance where the genius Dr. House observes an idiosyncrasy about his world, revealing the elegant yet elusive answer to the problem that plagued his diagnostic team for 37 long minutes. In the real world, or at least in my world of laboratory science, it’s not a chance encounter with an idiosyncrasy about the world that helps me past a hurdle, but a well-timed conversation with a generous someone willing to dig through my problem with me. Often, I find those conversations while walking through the hallways of the lab or waiting to go into a seminar, but sometimes I find them in the most unexpected places. When I do find those conversations, I’m reminded that anyone can help me illuminate the critical questions in science.

My favorite example is a conversation I had with my grandmother, a woman who was a farmer her whole working life. I sat down with her and spent some of our limited, precious time together to answer her questions on what I do, and what I study, and what did I mean that I don’t know when I’ll be finished with school? I got to tell her that I study (at the time) how to treat cancer, by trying to figure out how to tell which cancers will respond to treatment and which ones will not. She listened intently and asked clarifications as I hobbled through my broken Telugu, which was not nearly developed enough for that conversation. Then somewhere along the way, she asked me if there was a way to tell if medicines used for purposes other than cancer treatment might also be effective against cancer. I shared what I knew, but mostly I was floored, and reminded yet again that the best big picture questions, the important ones, come from not being wrapped up in my narrow world of the one project I have to finish to earn my PhD.

My thesis necessarily has a narrow scope because it’s me trying to tackle one very specific question, whereas labs and multi-institutional projects are tasked with addressing big-picture questions. As we brainstorm and prioritize the questions we study, it’s clear that we could broaden our scope of where these questions come from to include more diverse perspectives. It’s important to remember that we are entrusted with an enormous charge – to address, alleviate, and explain the complexity of the diseases encompassing cancer. Given that the stakeholders of the outcome of this work is all of us​, why not listen to more voices at the top? We’re putting this hypothesis to the test as part of PROMINENT, and I have learned so much already. I’m proud to be part of PROMINENT and excited about the insights we will uncover together in cancer biology.