Earlier this month, I finished my postdoctoral fellowship at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. I moved to Canada in early 2017 with just two suitcases and a job offer and am so happy with the life I've built here. My postdoctoral fellowship, wonderful PI and colleagues have been a major part of this and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have done impactful research with such a great team. The pandemic has affected everybody in research and it's been a tough couple of years, but I'm pleased to say that I'm writing up a couple of my projects for publication currently and I will stay involved with the group to advise on a few more ongoing projects I've been involved in.
I've also been lucky to find amazing research and patient advocacy communities, not only in Toronto, but all over Canada and am lucky to be involved in projects, advocacy schemes and organizations spanning several provinces. I will certainly continue this going forward. Everybody has been so welcoming it is sometimes hard to believe I have only lived here for 5 years.
I'll share some details soon of what's next for me, but right now, I will have some pre-planned and very needed time off to recharge and ready myself for my next challenge. I want to end this post by thanking some of the most important people who have contributed to my research over the last few years and that is the patients and families we work with and who generously donate their samples for our research. As a person who faced cancer myself age 8 and whose parents consented to my samples being used for research, I have always been acutely aware of the importance of using these samples to the very best of our abilities. The vast majority of my work over the past few years has used patient samples - ranging from healthy skin, blood and gastrointestinal tissues to leukaemias, colon cancers and brain tumor samples and my work simply would not have been possible without these donated samples.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me during this phase of my career, I am really excited for the future and a very rare month off :)
One last picture of some stem cells for good measure. With the right environment, they have infinite potential to become anything!
