Background to Breakthrough

As a boy in India, Manu Prakash spent endless hours exploring his surroundings, learning to find the sublime in the mundane. Today, as a professor at Stanford University, he pursues research questions with the same open-ended curiosity and creates tools to empower people around the globe to go on their own journey of discovery.

Dr. Calisi-Rodríguez’s research on pigeons, like her life, is one of charting an original path. Her experiences as a Mexican-Italian-American woman, professor, artist, and mother have provided her with fascinating and unusual perspectives to study the biology of parental behavior. In so doing, she is redefining what it means to be a scientist.

There is ample evidence that race can be a major factor in health outcomes. But racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in clinical and biomedical research. What are the consequences of this underrepresentation? What does it mean for equity in research and medicine?

When you see a doctor, you fill out a form and check a box for your race. That information is used by your doctor to make critical decisions about your health. But, what happens if you don’t fit neatly in one box? What does this mean for the medical treatment you will receive?

Scientific breakthroughs often come when problems are approached from different perspectives. However, a lack of diversity and inclusion in science and medicine is not only limiting new forms of understanding, but who benefits from them. How can we ensure that the future of biomedical research is inclusive?