| 1 | Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at UT Health San Antonio | What is Translational Science? | 13974 | 112 | 2 | 58.5 | positive | 7:30 | Wow, that's going to be a tough act to follow. Hi everybody, my name is Essence Chaudhary. Camera man, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to follow me around. He's going to hate me. First of all, I want to thank Teresa, Charlotte, Nicole, and Laquisha for helping put this together. Thank you very much. We need this. I'm a student in the Translational Science PhD program. So when I told somebody about my degree, what I'm seeking it in, this person asked me, oh, so what language are you studying? And I said, no, sorry, I'm not translating Swahili in English. I'm studying a multidisciplinary science. So Translational Science was started here at the Health Science Center about five years ago. We have a pretty small class. And the purpose of Translational Science is basically a little bit of what we're doing here today. It's the interprofessional interaction between scientists, physicians, dentists, physical therapists to try to find innovative discoveries to some of the most chronic and some of the most critical care needs in terms of disease that we have today. So Translational Science looks to try to speed the discoveries in the clinic into discoveries of the bench side to treatment in the clinic and then assess which of those treatments in the clinic are most effective, cost-effective, and to try to make best medical practice guidelines based on that. So in a nutshell, that's basically what we do. So as scientists, we're kind of experts in our field, but we are also liaisons into the other sciences. So we try to hope people up, so to speak. So it's non-traditional, much like me. I'm going to give you a little bit of a background. I graduated Texas Lutheran in 1999. That's a long time ago. I came to Utahscar to do research. I've done research here before I was a student for about 10 years almost. And then I was also in the guard. I was a chief warn officer and I was a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear tech. So as a, yeah, that's a mouthful, say that three times fast. So as a warn officer, I was an expert within my field, but then at the same time I was a liaison between the officers and being listed. So that was a perfect fit for my translational science program. It was very non-traditional. And so I continued my research and I originally thought that I wanted to go to medical school, be an emergency room physician, go with a special forces around the world, but then I met her. And she said she probably couldn't be with somebody who's deployed all the time. So I had a tough decision to make. I chose her, obviously, right? So then I thought to myself, okay, if not a physician, what do I want to do? I want to have patient contact. I want to have interaction with patients. I want to work in a multidisciplinary field where I can talk with people from different disciplines. Try to work on something innovative. And so fortunately, the translational science program was started here at the Health Science Center. So I applied. I got accepted and never in my life have I felt so supported and welcomed as I have in the graduate school and the translational science program. And here at Utuska. And so on a daily basis, I get or interact with people who have a drive and a vision that's greater than mine or at least equal to mine. And that's inspiring. All of you have a vision. All of you have a goal that one day you want to put to work. You're going to be playing a critical role in healthcare. And so we all have different areas of our experts in. So if we learn to communicate in an interdisciplinary way, come to the table, talk, become friends, we can get a lot done for the critical care needs that we have in healthcare. So real fast, I've been fortunate to kind of find my life's journey, I think. I am involved in some science communication things because science belongs to us all. The problem is that a lot of scientists don't necessarily communicate science as effectively as one would hope. And that's the fault of some scientists. So to be able to do that, you have to be able to speak clearly, you have to be able to communicate what you're doing in a way that's accessible to everybody. And so fortunately I was involved in an event called Science Fiesta that Travis Block over there helped to organize along with Miloš, a Meringuevic. And so that was a great way of getting involved in science communication portion of it. Luckily I'm also working on trying to set up something that's related to crowdfunding for a lot of young scientists, try to get Biotech built in San Antonio. We have a great Biotech city. A lot of people don't know that. And so to try to get the word out, to show them how wonderful the health science center is as a part of the Biotech industry in San Antonio is critical. Another interest of mine is innovation through public-private partnerships. So fortunately there has been, I have a friend who's a CEO of a startup company here. He's bringing his technology into the health science center. And it's a technology that helps scientists manage big data. In the world of genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, a lot of big omics, a lot of big words. But basically we have a lot of information we don't know what to do with. So he has software that can help scientists manage that better. I also work in a technology consulting group, so that works with the office of tech commercialization. Excuse me, tech commercialization. And so we try to help bring some of the newest discoveries at the health science center to clinics and to try to bring them to consumers. So they can find that treatment quickly. But I think the most important thing is that we have to work effectively as a team to be able to tackle these problems that I was talking about. It's our responsibility as contributors to healthcare. Each one of us, whether you're a physical therapist, a dentist, a nurse, a physician. We all have a responsibility not only to patients, but to ourselves as professionals across disciplines to build the kind of relationships that we need to carry this forward and to find treatments and cures for cancer. And diabetes and heart disease and all the kind of maladies that are out there. So this is only one of the reasons that we need to reach out across schools, across disciplines, and to try to understand each other's life journey. And I think that this is a great form to do that. Thank you. | ↗ |