ABOUT
We are a collaborative pair - a Scientist and a survivor Advocate - who work alongside a dedicated team of Scientists in the Gene Expression Laboratory of an iconic scientific research institution, the Salk Institute. We have experienced such a tremendous degree of satisfaction, reward, and mutual benefit from our collaboration, that we are motivated to spread the word about the dynamic that an ongoing collaboration like ours brings to both the world of science and to the patient community.
Together, we are better.
Our greatest hope is to inspire others in the field to form genuine and lasting bonds, likes ours, that will translate into great progress in scientific research - the kind that impacts lives through patient-centered medical advances. After all, strides in medicine begin in the lab.
Together, we are better.
Our greatest hope is to inspire others in the field to form genuine and lasting bonds, likes ours, that will translate into great progress in scientific research - the kind that impacts lives through patient-centered medical advances. After all, strides in medicine begin in the lab.
Bianca Lundien KennedyBianca is a two-time breast cancer survivor, who has worked in the field of breast cancer patient and research advocacy since her original diagnosis in May of 2001. Bianca's only sibling, her sister, Leah Lundien Harlig, is a four-time breast cancer survivor. Bianca is the Founder and Board President of PAIRS, having established the nonprofit organization in 2019, after being continually inspired by her scientific mentor and friend, Geoff Wahl, PhD, for nearly a decade.
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Geoff Wahl, Ph.D.Dr. Geoffrey M. Wahl is a Professor at the Salk Institute, an Adjunct Professor at the University of California, San Diego in the Department of Biology, and the past President of the American Association for Cancer Research (2006-2007). His research focuses on a number of important problems related to cancer biology.
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A few words from Bianca...
Having faced protracted cancer journeys twice in my life, at ages 35 and 47, when cancer found me, I found my calling. That may seem like an odd phrase, but I know it is true of me and others dedicated to advocating for breast cancer patients, becoming a voice for the cancer community, speaking to the standards of medical care, cancer research innovation, and the critical need for research funding. While I am not alone as an advocate working toward furthering productive cancer research and cancer care, I am both fortunate and humbled to be uniquely situated as the inaugural resident advocate in a lab at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California; to date, I remain the first and only advocate residing at Salk. As much as that is a distinction, Geoff and my mutual goal is to make it become the rule, and not the exception to it.
In the summer of 2011, an inexplicable force compelled me to attend a Department of Defense Era of Hope cancer conference in the month of August, in Orlando, Florida, a place that in the throes of my constant and brutal cancer-induced hot flashes, my every urge was to avoid. As a 10-year veteran of cancer conferences and trainings, with a background of working for breast cancer organizations, I could easily have skipped this particular conference, knowing it would be physically uncomfortable for me. Believing I had more to gain than to lose, however, I opted in and attended the conference. As is standard for any Department of Defense’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program event, it was exceptional; my physical discomfort, though, persisted all week. Endless hot flashes were exacerbated by the three-digit temperatures. On the last day of the conference, parched by the scorching heat, I gravitated to the nearest water cooler. This was the moment when Providence intervened, turning a trip that might have been relegated to a pleasant memory into a life-altering connection that would inform the rest of my life.
Upon our simultaneous arrival at the water cooler, a scholarly gray-haired gentleman motioned for me to get a cup of water first. I turned to thank him and we struck up an intriguing conversation. This gentleman, Geoff Wahl, PhD, also attending the Era of Hope cancer conference, was a scientist, scientific mentor, professor, and Past President Emeritus of the American Association for Cancer Research, who had worked at the Salk Institute for nearly forty years. Upon discovering that I was attending the conference as an Advocate, he offered to help me locate scientists in my area of the country, so I could learn more about scientific research for breast cancer. When I told him that I lived in San Diego, California, he revealed that he was hoping to recruit an Advocate to join his lab at the Salk Institute, saying "I have just the lab for you!"
Within one week of our chance encounter on the East Coast, Geoff invited me to tour the Salk, meet his lab team members, and become acquainted with the world-class facility, virtually in my West Coast backyard. I was inspired, uplifted, and amazed by the science going on around me at the Salk. I joined Geoff’s lab team that same month and have been an embedded Advocate and member of his lab team ever since.
Now in my seventh year as a Research Advocate in the Wahl Lab of the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute, I have amassed a collection of valuable experiences, mentoring, education, interactions, friendships, and inspiration, which had I not met Geoff on that hot August day, I may never have known. Through this work, my eyes were opened to the difficulties scientific researchers face, in terms of the complex nuances and delicacies involved in their carefully cultivated experiments, as well as the constant need for more predictable and sustainable funding that is vital to maintaining their work. As a non-scientist, I have been afforded a close-up view of a highly motivated and tenacious team of scientists, witnessing the evolution of their work through weekly lab meetings, where the scientists each lead discussions of their work, engage in a lively dialogue with their peers, are given the space to flourish, and are guided by Geoff’s expansive expertise and wisdom. While I, as a layperson, can easily communicate my limited understanding of their work to the scientists when I need to ask a question about the research during these lab meetings, what is more difficult, yet strongly emphasized in Geoff’s lab, is for each presenting scientist to spend the first few minutes of the presentation providing a synopsis of the work that they must give in layperson terms that I can grasp. It is, at times, as much a challenge for the scientists to reduce their language for a layperson's comprehension, as it is for a layperson, like me, to expand her foundational knowledge of science.
This collaboration between scientists and advocates has proven vital to the success of cancer research. In my role as advocate, I attend weekly lab meetings, edit lay abstracts for grant applications, quite a few of which have been successfully funded over the years, participate in and often speak publicly with Geoff at numerous cancer research events, and write about the impact of cancer research and the critical need to fund this research.
Geoff has been a generous, inspirational, and caring mentor, with whom I could only have ever imagined collaborating. The work advanced through Geoff’s lab team at Salk takes years to conceive and cultivate. As is true for other prestigious lab teams at Salk Institute, that work will become the foundation for miraculous medical advances for future generations.
On a personal note, my experience beyond our collaborative work was profoundly bound to Geoff’s lab team when in July of 2012, a year into my advocacy work at Salk, I was diagnosed with my second breast cancer. Outside of my immediate family, my first phone call was to Geoff. I disclosed my diagnosis and told Geoff we should view this as an opportunity, despite its inevitable difficulties, to let the lab team have a close-up view of my journey as a cancer patient. It was important to me to afford them the same front row view of my struggle that they had so respectfully afforded me of their work. Lab team members encouraged me to complete a year of difficult surgeries, rigorous chemotherapy, radiation, and adverse reactions to drugs, succeeded by another year of multiple reconstructive surgeries. On a day-to-day basis, Geoff’s lab team witnessed side effects, sufferings, uncertainties, and ultimately triumph over cancer. For them, by placing a human face on cancer, I made the theoretical world of cancer suddenly very real. One lab team scientist even decided to go into oncology, to become an M.D./Ph.D., based on her experience of seeing my cancer journey so closely. Our lab team members’ bond strengthened as we resided in a world of mutual inspiration. The scope of their work gave me hope and inspired me to fight through the most difficult days of my cancer battle.
While Geoff credits me, and by extension, the breast cancer population whom I represent, for being the inspiration to his lab team, I credit Geoff with being a generous innovator who found it critical to incorporate a cancer patient and research advocate into his lab team, to partner in the fight to one day eradicate cancer.
In the summer of 2011, an inexplicable force compelled me to attend a Department of Defense Era of Hope cancer conference in the month of August, in Orlando, Florida, a place that in the throes of my constant and brutal cancer-induced hot flashes, my every urge was to avoid. As a 10-year veteran of cancer conferences and trainings, with a background of working for breast cancer organizations, I could easily have skipped this particular conference, knowing it would be physically uncomfortable for me. Believing I had more to gain than to lose, however, I opted in and attended the conference. As is standard for any Department of Defense’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program event, it was exceptional; my physical discomfort, though, persisted all week. Endless hot flashes were exacerbated by the three-digit temperatures. On the last day of the conference, parched by the scorching heat, I gravitated to the nearest water cooler. This was the moment when Providence intervened, turning a trip that might have been relegated to a pleasant memory into a life-altering connection that would inform the rest of my life.
Upon our simultaneous arrival at the water cooler, a scholarly gray-haired gentleman motioned for me to get a cup of water first. I turned to thank him and we struck up an intriguing conversation. This gentleman, Geoff Wahl, PhD, also attending the Era of Hope cancer conference, was a scientist, scientific mentor, professor, and Past President Emeritus of the American Association for Cancer Research, who had worked at the Salk Institute for nearly forty years. Upon discovering that I was attending the conference as an Advocate, he offered to help me locate scientists in my area of the country, so I could learn more about scientific research for breast cancer. When I told him that I lived in San Diego, California, he revealed that he was hoping to recruit an Advocate to join his lab at the Salk Institute, saying "I have just the lab for you!"
Within one week of our chance encounter on the East Coast, Geoff invited me to tour the Salk, meet his lab team members, and become acquainted with the world-class facility, virtually in my West Coast backyard. I was inspired, uplifted, and amazed by the science going on around me at the Salk. I joined Geoff’s lab team that same month and have been an embedded Advocate and member of his lab team ever since.
Now in my seventh year as a Research Advocate in the Wahl Lab of the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute, I have amassed a collection of valuable experiences, mentoring, education, interactions, friendships, and inspiration, which had I not met Geoff on that hot August day, I may never have known. Through this work, my eyes were opened to the difficulties scientific researchers face, in terms of the complex nuances and delicacies involved in their carefully cultivated experiments, as well as the constant need for more predictable and sustainable funding that is vital to maintaining their work. As a non-scientist, I have been afforded a close-up view of a highly motivated and tenacious team of scientists, witnessing the evolution of their work through weekly lab meetings, where the scientists each lead discussions of their work, engage in a lively dialogue with their peers, are given the space to flourish, and are guided by Geoff’s expansive expertise and wisdom. While I, as a layperson, can easily communicate my limited understanding of their work to the scientists when I need to ask a question about the research during these lab meetings, what is more difficult, yet strongly emphasized in Geoff’s lab, is for each presenting scientist to spend the first few minutes of the presentation providing a synopsis of the work that they must give in layperson terms that I can grasp. It is, at times, as much a challenge for the scientists to reduce their language for a layperson's comprehension, as it is for a layperson, like me, to expand her foundational knowledge of science.
This collaboration between scientists and advocates has proven vital to the success of cancer research. In my role as advocate, I attend weekly lab meetings, edit lay abstracts for grant applications, quite a few of which have been successfully funded over the years, participate in and often speak publicly with Geoff at numerous cancer research events, and write about the impact of cancer research and the critical need to fund this research.
Geoff has been a generous, inspirational, and caring mentor, with whom I could only have ever imagined collaborating. The work advanced through Geoff’s lab team at Salk takes years to conceive and cultivate. As is true for other prestigious lab teams at Salk Institute, that work will become the foundation for miraculous medical advances for future generations.
On a personal note, my experience beyond our collaborative work was profoundly bound to Geoff’s lab team when in July of 2012, a year into my advocacy work at Salk, I was diagnosed with my second breast cancer. Outside of my immediate family, my first phone call was to Geoff. I disclosed my diagnosis and told Geoff we should view this as an opportunity, despite its inevitable difficulties, to let the lab team have a close-up view of my journey as a cancer patient. It was important to me to afford them the same front row view of my struggle that they had so respectfully afforded me of their work. Lab team members encouraged me to complete a year of difficult surgeries, rigorous chemotherapy, radiation, and adverse reactions to drugs, succeeded by another year of multiple reconstructive surgeries. On a day-to-day basis, Geoff’s lab team witnessed side effects, sufferings, uncertainties, and ultimately triumph over cancer. For them, by placing a human face on cancer, I made the theoretical world of cancer suddenly very real. One lab team scientist even decided to go into oncology, to become an M.D./Ph.D., based on her experience of seeing my cancer journey so closely. Our lab team members’ bond strengthened as we resided in a world of mutual inspiration. The scope of their work gave me hope and inspired me to fight through the most difficult days of my cancer battle.
While Geoff credits me, and by extension, the breast cancer population whom I represent, for being the inspiration to his lab team, I credit Geoff with being a generous innovator who found it critical to incorporate a cancer patient and research advocate into his lab team, to partner in the fight to one day eradicate cancer.
AFFILIATIONS
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