Bringing a Scientific Background to Policymaking
Former American Cancer Society grantee Neha Pankow already had a transdisciplinary background in engineering, biophysics, and cancer cell biology.\n\nNow she\u2019s added policymaking to the mix. \n\nAs a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation, she\u2019s helping to develop policy for gender equity, STEM education, and the pursuit of interdisciplinary science.\n\n3:20 \u2013 On how and why she became a AAAS fellow:\n\n\u201cI would say I\u2019ve been interested in policy-related issues for most of my life, but I was definitely a scientist inside, and I never knew how to bridge those two things. For me the AAAS fellowship is doing exactly that.\u201d\n\n10:30 \u2013 On how her experience has opened new doors:\n\n\u201cAnd I thought this too as a graduate student and as a postdoc, that any kind of sidestep from my career meant that I was going to be throwing away everything that I had done until that point of time. And that\u2019s absolutely not true. Especially for the AAAS fellowship I\u2019ve seen friends and alumni who have either go back to academia because that\u2019s what they wanted to do, I\u2019ve seen people who have gone into working for nonprofits, people who work for federal agencies\u2026\u201d