Science Behind Science with Dennis Grencewicz

Dr. Fontana is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine Emeritus in Cardiovascular Diseases at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. This interview took place during the American Physician Scientist Association Midwest Meeting on March 8th, 2025 in a session entitled "Interview with an Icon." Dr. Fontana completed her BA, MD, Internal Medicine Residency, and Fellowship in Cardiology at The Ohio State University Hospital (she’s only spent one year away for her internship at UNC Chapel Hill). After all of her training at OSU, she decided to stay. She became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine in 1971 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1976. Although OSUCOM students know her primarily as an educator, she is also a clinician scientist, publishing many papers on valvular disease, ranging back to as early as 1970 with a paper entitled “The Varying Clinical Spectrum of the Systolic Click” in Circulation.To speak to her background as an educator. She became the director of the ACLS program in 1991 until 2004. She also became the Director of the Independent Study Program in 1992, which was one of the educational paths for preclinical medical students at Ohio State at the time. Notably, she has been the Cardiopulmonary Block Co-Director for Preclinical Education since 2011.She has won at least 35 Teaching Awards in the College of Medicine, including the Ohio State University Lifetime Teaching Award, and is deeply intertwined with this institution. 

Today's conversation is with Dr. Rahul Damania, a Pediatric Critical Care physician and founder of HyGuru, a fantastic platform structured to prepare medical students for high stakes exams. After completing his medical degree at Northeast Ohio Medical University and pediatrics residency at Case Western Reserve University, Dr. Damania pursued his fellowship at Emory University School of Medicine while simultaneously earning a Masters in Medical Education from the University of Pennsylvania.Dr. Damania began his journey in medical education while still a medical student, teaching his first USMLE course and later developing HyGuru, an innovative approach to medical board exam preparation. His teaching methodology, which emphasizes the integration of basic sciences with clinical practice, has helped countless medical students navigate high-stakes exams.In our conversation, we explore the changing landscape of medical education, including the recent transition of USMLE Step 1 to pass/fail, strategies for exam success, and the role of emerging technologies like AI in medical training. Dr. Damania shares insights from his unique perspective as both a practicing intensivist and medical educator, discussing how to balance clinical duties with educational innovation, and offering advice for aspiring medical entrepreneurs.

Dr. Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist and Novartis director, shares his wealth of experience in drug discovery. He reveals the high failure rate in the field and its psychological toll on scientists. Derek contrasts academic curiosity with the industry’s pragmatic approach, discusses the importance of multidisciplinary teams, and offers insights into project selection and creative freedom within corporate structures. He also highlights the significant costs of drug development and emphasizes coping with research failures as a pathway to learning.

Today’s conversation is with Dr. Zihai Li, Founding Director of the Pelotonia Institute for Immuno-Oncology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Dr. Li completed medical school at Zhengzhou University, his PhD at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Internal Medicine Residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Medical Oncology Fellowship at University of Washington. He moved his professorship from the Medical University of South Carolina to Ohio State in 2019, when he was brought in to lead the PIIO. Today’s conversation surrounds Zihai’s long experience in the field of immuno-oncology, which is a wing of cancer medicine that is quickly and drastically shaping treatment for many cancer types. Within a decade, immunotherapy has become a hallmark of cancer treatment, with hundreds of new drug approvals and indications from the FDA.  My conversation with Dr. Li focuses on explaining some of the tenets of immunotherapy, as well as how he came to be a leader in this field. I was interested in learning about his training pathway, as I personally am considering a career in academic medical oncology. Beyond talking about his pathway and about the exciting development of the PIIO, we discuss his own personal motivations as a physician and scientist. For anyone on the research campus and in the cancer hospital at OSU, Dr. Li’s presence can surely be felt. He is extremely passionate, thoughtful, and motivated, and his energy truly brings the community together toward advancing cancer care.

Dr. Laura Chambers is a gynecologic oncologist and principle investigator at The Ohio State University James Cancer Hospital. Laura graduated from Midwestern University Chicago with her DO and completed residency in OBGYN and fellowship in Gyn Onc at the Cleveland Clinic. She now practices at OSU and studies the effects of the microbiome on gynecologic cancer outcomes. As a fun aside, Laura and I work together on many research projects, and we recently published a commentary in Cell Host and Microbe on exciting stage 1 clinical trial data supporting the use of Fecal Microbiota Transplant to improve immunotherapy response in patients who previously did not respond.  In this conversation, I wanted to talk with Laura to learn more about the unique clinical capabilities of a gynecologic oncologist. This continues my recent interviews with folks who practice different types of oncology, specifically from the academic perspective. Gyn Onc as a specialty is unique as it not only serves a very important clinical purpose, but it is the only oncologic specialty in which the same physician can complete a patient’s surgery and also manage any kind of systemic therapy they may receive. We discuss these details as well as how Laura balances this busy clinical career with her research goals and personal life. As a physician scientist who balances time with her family extremely well, I wanted to pick her brain on how she is capable of doing it all. I respect Dr. Chambers a great deal for many reasons, but one of the most pertinent is how much she cares about all aspects of her life, and how great she is even in the face of tough times and adversity.

Dr. Justin Sanchez is a Battelle Technical fellow, a member of the senior leadership team for Battelle’s Life Sciences and Biotechnology departments, and world-renowned expert in biotechnology. Prior to joining Battelle, Dr. Sanchez was the Director of the Biological Technologies Office (BTO) at DARPA. He earned his Masters in Engineering and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Florida. Major accomplishments include developing foundational human neurotechnology for the United States BRAIN Initiative, delivering the world’s most advanced prosthetic arm to military Veterans, accelerating gene editing techniques for national security/human health, and forming partnerships to deliver countermeasures in the African Ebola crisis. He was responsible for starting 31 new DARPA programs and investing more than $1.65 billion at national labs, industry, and academic institutions. In our conversation, we discuss some of his exciting areas of expertise including the development of neuroprosthetics and novel drug discovery methods including non-viral gene delivery. We also explain Battelle, which is an independent nonprofit that conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. We use the example of Battelle to then dichotomize industry science and academic science. Finally, we reflect on what makes a good scientist, what makes for a good scientific question/a worthwhile scientific issue to invest in, and how researchers can be good leaders and mentors. 

Dr. Jason Ryan is a Board Certified Cardiologist and the Director of the University of Connecticut Heart Failure Center who is very well known amongst medical students for his educational platform that helps prepare for the USMLE STEP1 board exam called Boards and Beyond. Dr. Ryan earned his MD and MPH from the University of Connecticut in 2001 and completed postdoctoral training and a cardiology fellowship at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Dr. Ryan has been a clinical educator for several decades now at UConn Health, and he started Boards and Beyond as a widely accessible resource for medical students in 2014. Subsequently, Boards and Beyond has generated video recorded lectures that can be purchased by subscription to assist with STEP1 prep - this is a resource myself and virtually all of my friends in medical school used in our prep for the STEP1 exam. Outside of B&B, Dr. Ryan recently released his first book entitled “The Gunner,” which is a satire of some of the hilarities and difficulties of medical school training.  In our conversation, Dr. Ryan and I discuss what Boards and Beyond is, how he prefers to teach (including tips on why he believes students find his style of teaching to be effective) details on his recent book The Gunner, and other hot and debatable topics in medical education. This was an extremely enjoyable conversation for me, as I have been listening to Dr. Ryan’s lectures for hours and hours in preparation for Step1. Definitely a meet your hero (and all my friends’ hero) moment. Further, getting to discuss Dr. Ryan’s book and his recent sale of Boards and Beyond was extremely interesting. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Jason Ryan.  Useful Links: Boards and Beyond Homepage Dr. Ryan’s Instagram and X (twitter) handle: @jasonryanmd The Gunner, available on Amazon

In this conversation, I speak with Dr. Itai Yanai, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Scientific Director of the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratories at New York University Langone Health. Outside of his very accomplished academic career, Itai hosts the awesome podcast Night Science with Dr. Martin Lercher, in which they interview guests about their own styles and methods of thinking about science. Night Science, as Itai describes here, is the aspect of research involving the pondering, the processing, and the development of testable hypotheses. This is compared to Day Science, in which researchers are actually executing experiments, writing code, and generating data. Itai’s own research spans several fields, including making sense of the human transcriptome, single-cell analysis, gene expression profiling, and gene regulation and development.  What sticks out to me about Itai is his ability to truly think deeply about biology. I believe this stems from his detailed appreciation for the scientific process itself, which includes building out time to think about science and the topics he studies as opposed to simply doing experiments and analyzing data. We discuss tricks to become better thinkers and the importance of having collaborators that we can bounce ideas off of for the sake of improving our projects. We also discuss his experience as a science communicator through the Night Science Podcast as well as his book, Society of Genes, and blog for Genome Biology.  Useful Links:  Night Science Podcast Website Night Science Podcast Spotify Itai’s Book: Society of Genes

Dr. Raphael Pollock MD, PhD is an internationally renowned surgical oncologist and Director of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center since 2013. In our discussion, I talk with Dr. Pollock about what makes him passionate about cancer medicine, what goes into running and building the OSUCCC, and how to build great teams. We also discuss what makes the OSUCCC special, and how interdisciplinary cancer care most effectively treats a patient’s disease. Further, we discuss the details of surgical oncology as a specialty, and Dr. Pollock provides his insight on how a medical student may know if a surgical specialty would suit them. Before his tenure at Ohio State, Dr. Pollock was the Chair of the Department of Surgical Oncology and Head of the Division of Surgery at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Pollock received his Medical Degree from St. Louis University School of Medicine, completed his General Surgery Residency at University of Chicago and Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s, and his Surgical Oncology Fellowship and PhD at MD Anderson Cancer Center.  Useful Links: The Contemporary Role of Surgical Oncology Principles of Surgical Oncology

Dr. Lisa Corwin, Dr. Sandhya Krishnan and I discuss the psychology of how students can internalize and maximally leverage perceived failures in academics/research to grow and become more resilient. Dr. Corwin is an Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Dr. Krishnan is a postdoctoral research fellow, both at the University of Colorado Boulder. These researchers investigate students’ experiences of failure in course-based undergraduate research experiences. In this episode, we talk about their research in STEM education, the experience of failure in STEM students, and the exciting opportunities FLAMEnet has to offer.  Lisa, Sandhya and I discuss what falls under the definition of an academic failure and how students positively or negatively change based on a perceived failure. The purpose of discussing failure leans into a major problem facing STEM students, especially students interested in research: great science and learning doesn’t happen without mistakes, but undergraduate and graduate education often prioritizes perfection over learning.  Dr. Corwin is the Principle Investigator for the Research on Ecology and Evolution Education for Action and Change Lab. https://www.colorado.edu/ebio/lisa-corwin  REACH lab website: https://www.thereachlab.org/people  FAIL is Not a Four Letter Word: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6757216/#:~:text=PMID%3A%2030821602-,FAIL%20Is%20Not%20a%20Four%2DLetter%20Word%3A%20A%20Theoretical%20Framework,Failure%20in%20STEM%20Learning%20Environments