Acs Research - Theorylab

Former American Cancer Society grantee Neha Pankow already had a transdisciplinary background in engineering, biophysics, and cancer cell biology. Now she’s added policymaking to the mix. As a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation, she’s helping to develop policy for gender equity, STEM education, and the pursuit of interdisciplinary science. 3:20 – On how and why she became a AAAS fellow: “I would say I’ve been interested in policy-related issues for most of my life, but I was definitely a scientist inside, and I never knew how to bridge those two things. For me the AAAS fellowship is doing exactly that.” 10:30 – On how her experience has opened new doors: “And I thought this too as a graduate student and as a postdoc, that any kind of sidestep from my career meant that I was going to be throwing away everything that I had done until that point of time. And that’s absolutely not true. Especially for the AAAS fellowship I’ve seen friends and alumni who have either g