This page is in response to questions asked by others with hopes to get into cancer research, but were not quite sure how to get to there.

Scope of Cancer Research:

Of course the field of cancer research is pretty broad. There are people here who work from the cellular biology side, studying the effects that different agents have on metabolic and/or protein pathways in cells, etc.; and in our department they look at how radiation affects cells and how radiation effects are moderated by the chemical agents noted above. I (O'Dell) happen to come from the engineering side where I don't care how radiation or chemical agents affect the cells, but rather how to better design tools to track a lung tumor as you breathe so that we can better hit it with a focused radiation beam. My(O'Dell) lab also develops improved tumor detection algorithms to find tumors earlier so that the treatment tools have a better chance of success, etc. Where you want to go with it thus depends upon what area of investigation (chemistry, bio, engr, etc.) you are most comfortable with and talented in.

Selecting an Undergraduate Major and Courses:

Because the cancer research field is pretty broad your undergraduate major could be just about any field relating to biology or biochemistry or molecular biology or biomedical engineering. To be honest in the first 2 years of college it probably does not really matter all that much what major one is in as all the first year courses are pretty much the same for all majors, although if you have an idea of where you want to be going that might help you select more appropriate electives. The BME program here is intended to give the students an idea of the biology/physiology of the body, and to give a solid foundation in engineering skills of applied math, mechanics, signal processing, etc. Our advice is to obtain a firm foundation in the biological and physical sciences as an undergraduate. Your specific focus will most likely come much later.

Selecting a Career Path:

These types of majors will provide you with the education you would need to start work in a technical position in either industrial or academic cancer research labs. In order to obtain a position in which you are developing independent cancer research projects (again either in academics or industry), you would most likely need further post-graduate study: most likely a PhD -- at this point you would concentrate on some specific field of interest, i.e., immunology, genetics, molecular biology, physiology, or something like biomedical engineering.

Our Career Paths:

W. O'Dell: I started as a bio major (at Cornell) and after 3 semesters transferred into engineering (applied and engineering physics to be precise). This switch was something I had in mind from day one as a backup in case the bio stuff did not go as I had hoped/expected, and that turned out to be the case. I'll note that at the time there was no BME program there (or anywhere really) else I would have gone into that. I took a couple more high-level applied math courses while as a bio major so my transition went pretty smoothly as I had all the engineering requirements covered. At that time I had no specific intent to go into cancer research. I did a PhD in BME in the area of MRI-based heart motion analysis, and then did a 4-year post-doc (in San Diego) working on finite element modeling of the heart. I did not start doing any cancer releated research until I took the position here at the UofR after completing my post-doc. B. Fenton: I received my B.S. and M.S. in chemical engineering and then my Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. In my case, the biomedical engineering research involved computer modeling of blood flow in vascular networks. I also had additional post-doctoral training in biomedical engineering, looking at in vitro blood flow experiments. However, I didn't actually begin any cancer-related research until about 5 years later, when I began looking at oxygen transport and blood flow in tumors (in mice). Over the past 15 years or so, my work has evolved into image processing of immunohistochemically staining frozen tumor sections, which allow me to automatically determine changes in tumor blood vessel patterns and oxygen delivery, in order to optimize radiation and drug therapies. So, as you can see, I had no specific training for cancer research until well after my PhD degree. And most of the techniques that I'm now using didn't even exist at that time.