Personal Reflections and Words of Wisdom: Story From Dr. Sudha Shenoy

Basic naïve curiosity and a passion for discovery have been the major driving forces in my scientific career.  I hail from the southwestern part of India and migrated to the US in 1992 with a strong desire to undertake graduate studies and an aspiration to succeed as a faculty in academia.  Although the number of women who opted for post-graduate studies was increasing with my generation of girls in India, career-seeking women faced many challenges and hurdles.  Inequalities based on gender were strongly built and supported by a net of cultural and societal factors despite the fact that India was under the leadership of a woman prime minister for nearly two decades.  My career path in the US has also been challenging, but a relentless work ethic, meshed with strong support from colleagues and family have helped me to reach the current status in my field of research. 

I advise young women scientists to be your own strength first, and to find your passion and goals that are ideal for you.  To succeed in research, one needs some luck combined with several feasible ideas and cutting-edge techniques, but an extraordinary level of patience and persistence.  If you are faced with downers, it is important to develop grit and persevere to prove them wrong and show them you can do it.  I remember one incident with the publication process of one of our manuscripts, which was built on original findings and had taken us many years achieve.  To my greatest agony, the journal where we submitted rejected it outright with mean comments.  In a frustrated yet hopeful state of mind, I reformatted and submitted the work to another journal that had a higher impact factor than the first journal.  When we received the acceptance letter from this second journal, I was actually thankful to the reviewers of the first journal because had they not rejected our work outright, I would not have been motivated to aim higher.  In essence, my words of wisdom for young women in STEM is to be bold, persistent, dedicated, and passionate; success will find you.

-Dr. Sudha K Shenoy, Associate Professor in Medicine and Cell Biology at Duke University