Role Speaker, Business Skills for PhDs in Academia and Beyond Title Vice President, Scientific Education and Training, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Bio/Description As Vice President of Scientific Education and Training at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Ushma oversees the academic curriculum for pre- and postdoctoral researchers who train in laboratories across MSK. Ushma's areas of focus include enhancing the career and professional development opportunities available to trainees as well as designing courses in areas such as rigor and transparency, statistics, computational biology, and imaging. A passionate advocate for scientific communication, Ushma is also deeply committed to developing platforms that allow trainees to enhance the efficacy of their communications to fellow scientists and to the lay public. Ushma's graduate education began at Northwestern University where she studied pulmonary mechanics and mathematical modeling. After completing her doctoral degree in biomedical engineering, she used a Marshall Scholarship to study vascular permeability as a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College London. After her postdoc, Ushma spent two years as a manuscript editor at Nature Medicine, and then joined the Journal of Clinical Investigation as Executive Editor. During her nine years in this role, she led academic editorial boards at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Duke University/University of North Carolina in identifying, soliciting, and peer reviewing high-quality manuscripts. She also oversaw the writing, commissioning, and editing of front matter, including Editorials, News, Commentaries, Reviews, and Perspectives. Ushma first came to MSK in 2012 as Director of the Office of the President, serving as the Chief of Staff to President and CEO Craig B. Thompson. In this role, she worked closely with Dr. Thompson and other MSK leadership, to shape and manage a strategic agenda. Ushma continues to serve as Editor-at-Large for the JCI,acting as the chief interviewer for the JCI video series “Conversations with Giants in Medicine.” Related News Business Skills Program for PhDs Develops Acumen Vital to Academic and Non-Academic Careers Upcoming Professional Development Events Dec 2 Creating a Toy Windmill: 3D Modeling Workshop Dec 3 Getting Started with LaTeX Dec 4 Office Hours for Humanities and Social Sciences Graduate Students (In Person) Dec 4 Office Hours with Leonard Cassuto Dec 4 American Higher Ed Learning Cohort Session 5: Professionalization- Degrees, Other Credentials, Careers Dec 5 Managing Active Research Data Dec 7 Writing to Influence: How Academia Inspires Action with Christopher Paul Harris Dec 7 LaTeX Drop-in Consultations Dec 7 Cynthia Dwork: It’s in Your Phone. It’s in Your Browser. It’s in Your Redistricting Data! … It’s Differential Privacy. Dec 8 30 Minutes Towards Better Bibliographies and Footnotes! (online) Dec 8 Introduction to Environmental Studies Library Research: Water Use and Availability Dec 11 Office Hours for Humanities and Social Sciences Graduate Students (In Person)