Shree Bose

Danny.

I'm Danny Ruderman, and this is Extraordinary youy, a podcast that shares inspiring stories of young people who've done incredible things and how they did it. Our guest today is Sri Bose, an innovator, scientist, cancer researcher, public speaker, and advocate for women in stem. She was the grand prize winner of the inaugural Google Science Fair in 2011, and has spoken several times at TED, as well as met with President Obama and Bill Nye, among others. She graduated Harvard in 2016 and is currently studying a dual PhD MD program at Duke University School of Medicine. Sree welcome to XU.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'd like to start off today by jumping into this serious question of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Or M&M's.

M&M's, definitely. But I do like the peanut MMs.

That was my next question, actually. Yeah, you know what? I do, too. Not gonna lie. I like the peanut MM's.

Yeah, they're like a special dose of joy.

I know. I did research on this because, of course I did. Do you know that Reese's Peanut Butter Cups is actually the most popular candy in America?

That can't be true.

And M&M's is third after Snickers bars. What?

That's weird. My favorite are Twizzlers, so I don't know what to say.

Wait, I'm sorry. We're gonna have to go off on. Just for just a second. Twizzlers, Not Red Vines. Cause you're east coast, right?

Yes, definitely. Twizzler's not Red Vines.

No, Twizzlers are, like, terrible plastic.

So are Red Vines.

No, Red Vines are so much better. Everybody that I meet on the east coast is Twizzlers. And everybody on the west coast is.

This is correct? Yeah, this is correct. My parents raised me right. Is the takeaway here.

All right, all right, I'll let it go.

And Red Starburst. That's. That's where I'm at.

You're a freak. Okay, that's good. All right, so let's. Let's delve into more serious things. Tell me about how you grew up. Tell me about your family.

I. So, I was born in California, speaking of west coast, actually.

Interesting.

Right? Outside of San Francisco. I know, right? And then I left. But we moved to Texas when I was five. So all I really remember is, like, it was super nice weather when we were in California, and then it got really, really hot.

Got it.

But I grew up in Texas in a city called Fort Worth, which is right outside of Dallas. And my Parents were absolutely wonderful and so supportive of both me and my brother, who's two years older than me. And I remember from a really young age my brother sort of being my go to person. He would be the person I would go always bother whenever I didn't understand something, in school, whenever I had any issue, my brother was the first person I went to. And I also remember him coming to me and being really the first sort of influence in my life who was excited to teach me about science.

Wow.

I thought think he was my earliest science teacher. Like he would come home from school and I would be the only person he could boss around because he was two years older than me. And he would literally sit me down and be like, let me teach you everything I learned today. Like, let me tell you about atoms and molecules and cells and how they like make up everything we see. And I, I just remember looking at how excited he was, like seeing that little glimmer in his eye and just thinking, you know, I, I want to be that passionate about whatever I want to do in the future. And I was really little at that point, so I don't know if he knew it would rub off that much on me, but I was a little bit lucky that way.

Out of curiosity, what, what does he do now?

He actually works at a biotech startup in Baltimore and his wife is a graduate student at Hopkins studying electrical engineering. So.

So it's basically a dumb family is.

What you're saying, Right? Right. Yeah, we all sort of ended up going down science.

What did your parents do?

So my dad is an engineer. He is probably one of the most innovative people I've ever met, which is hysterical because sometimes he struggles with PowerPoint and I'm like, well, you're brilliant. But he started his own research and development company. So when I was growing up, I remember a lot of my dad working on a, on a startup on his own company. And my mom was his vice president, accountant, supports everything he needed. My mom was sort of, sort of.

So it was sort of this very sciencey, entrepreneurial minded family growing up.

Yeah. And then you're like, well, what happened to you? And so it kind of makes sense, you know.

And so were you, was science always your favorite subject in, in school?

Absolutely not. No, it was always my brother's favorite subject because he was really, really good at it. And I, I think I lucked out in having a brother who is really good at it. Exactly. The best tutor of my life. No, but I, I distinctly remember a lot of my favorite subjects being English in high school, I remember journalism was like the class I loved. I. I was editor in chief of our, like, school newspaper and I just. I loved being able to communicate things. And I think that sort of ended up merging in some beautiful ways.

Right, we'll talk about that. Yeah, that sounds really good. That's good. You're the double threat. So where then, where did you know, where did your interest in science research come from?

So a lot of it did come from really early exposure by. By my brother being really good at science. And I think that sort of laid the groundwork for some of my. My early sort of ways of questioning the world. And you know, I talk a lot about how in. In like first grade, I like, did a project where I tried to turn spinach blue and I was.

How'd that work out for you?

Oh, so badly, so badly. I was completely incompetent. My parents gave me like a spinach plant and a syringe and they were like, have adage, but I like, forgot to water the plants. Like, I walked in with these like, dead, shriveled up plants.

Didn't win that one, huh?

Did not win that one. No. I think I got mocked for that one. Yeah. But I think it was really those like, early sort of things that sort of shaped how I thought about the world around me as this thing that could be sort of questioned, manipulated, changed and improved. And I. I was really lucky to have parents who supported me, my brother who supported me in some of those early things. And when my grandfather actually passed away from cancer, I realized that that sort of way of thinking was something I wanted to.

Were you close with her? Were you close with him? Yeah.

Yeah, I was. My grandfather lived in India, so we didn't get to see him as constantly, but I have really fond memories of, of him, of him visiting and I know every time. I remember whenever we went to India, he just had bookcases full of Reader Digest magazines.

Sure.

Just years and years and years of reading.

I grew up with those too.

Yeah, yeah. And they were like, dusty and like so old, but they were like perfectly cataloged. And that's like what he did with family pictures. And that's, that's just how he lived his life, as this very organized, methodical person. And honestly, when I saw him towards, towards the end of his life, the last time I saw him, it was such a different person at that point. He was. He was somebody who couldn't get out of bed. He couldn't take care of himself. And just to see somebody who was so Vibrant, so self sufficient, sort of reduced in some way. Just was heartbreaking.

And how old were you?

I was 15 at the time. I. I knew just enough about cancer to like know what it was, but. But I didn't know enough.

And so I think if you were 15, you were a sophomore then?

I. Yes, I think I was a sophomore.

And had you taken biology already?

I was actually in biology at that time. And I remember sitting in biology class and like the slides would pop up saying like, what is cancer? And there's always this graphic for some reason where it's like a cell and then like a lightning bolt hits it and you're like, and there is cancer. And I remember distinctly sitting in class looking at that drawing and just being like, this makes no sense to me. I don't understand how that like tiny lightning bolt leads from my grandfather, like going from the person I knew to the person he was towards the end of his life. And that's sort of what inspired everything that sort of came from there.

That's amazing. And so you decide that you want to learn more about this and so what do you do?

So at 15, I did what most 15 year olds do and I ended up Googling cancer. And I read literally everything I could find. I read things from like the National Institutes of Health's overviews of what cancer is, how it affects cancer.

Those are pretty complex.

Those are very complex. Yeah. And I read journal articles that I did not understand. Like I was googling every other word of. I read conspiracy blogs. Like, I read it all. Like I read everything I could get my hands on. Why I, you know, as dumb as it sounds to some degree, even the conspiracy blogs, I was just fascinated by how people think about their disease.

Huh.

And it's something that continues to this day because I don't, I don't mean to discount any of it because there is like, just because we can't explain something yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And so I find there's a special fascination in being able to tie sort of the molecular mechanisms, like the knowledge base we have to what people see in the actual course of their disease. And so, so that's kind of like I have a tendency to pump myself up and get like way too excited about things.

That's a good thing.

Yeah, I think it was one of those things. And it was, it was really just having that picture of my grandfather in the back of my mind and realizing that there were so many people in the world who were affected by this, who, who were Dealing with sort of similar things that it was just baffling to me that we didn't fully understand yet.

So you're, you're doing all of this research and you have this real emotional reason for wanting to know this information. What happens next?

You know, at some point I got to a point where I realized I was starting to ask questions. Questions that no matter how much I googled, I could not find the answers to.

Interesting.

And that was, that was kind of the point where I realized I had sort of hit a cliff. You know, like we, the questions I was asking were no longer really questions we had answers to and they were the questions that research tries to answer.

Can you give me an example?

Yeah. I remember there being, I had this question about energy sensing in the cells. And funnily enough it came because of like one of those conspiracy esque sort of sites I, I was on at some point where it was like, yes, if you just eat differently then you can cure your cancer.

Right?

And I, I read that and I was like, okay, that doesn't make any sense. Like people take drugs and that cures their cancer. And then I started reading more into it and I started reading about how cancer cells process energy in super weird ways. Like they take up a lot of sugar and they process that sugar through glycolysis, which anybody in AP bio knows is like the first pathway of glucose processing. And they don't do sort of later, like TCA cycle, like mitochondrial processing.

Got it.

And I did not know why.

Why?

Yeah. And that is a question that has been apparently asked since the 1920s when it was first noticed by this guy named Otto Warburg. It's called the Warburg effect. And it was something that was so baffling to me, the fact that we know about this, we don't know why, we don't know how it develops, and we don't know what sorts of ways we can maybe possibly targeted. So that's sort of one of the first questions I remember having where I was like, this is weird, I don't know the answer. And now as a PhD student, I am working in a lab that literally works on that exact.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay, we'll get to that. That's really cool. So, but at the 15 year old tree, so you now have these questions and you don't have any place to go for the answers. Where do you go?

Exactly. So at that point I stick to my best friend Google and I start looking up people who are answering those questions around me. And that involved basically looking up all of the universities in my area. And I was really lucky because Fort Worth is a large metropolitan area where there are universities and there are sort of these resources and. But I was 15, so it's not like I had like a college sort of admissions process that I could sort of get into these labs with. So I started doing possibly the most annoying thing, which was I started reaching out to professors. I started emailing graduate school professors in my area. I looked up their research, I would read some of their papers and then I would basically just cold email them and just say, hey, I'm Sree, I'm 15. My grandfather passed away of cancer recently and I've been reading a lot and I really want the chance to get some hands on experience and to possibly work in your lab. I have an idea for this experiment, like, can you let me know what you think? Or something like that.

I'm going to stop you right there because what you just said and I. You are not one of my past students, so I haven't heard this story before. But what you just said is absolutely key and I want to point it out. Not only did you put yourself out there by emailing adults that you don't know, but you also stated why you were interested and then you came up with an idea and asked them for their feedback. See, when you email an adult by asking a question, it engages them to get back to you, which starts a conversation. So that was really smart on your part. Now having said that, how many professors did you email and how many actually got back to you?

Yeah, I think when you start off an email with I'm 15, like you're, you're not going to get the conversations from most of the people you reach out to, but it sets you up in the best way possible. I remember reaching out to at least 100 professors. A hundred if not.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm pretty sure it was more. And I just remember getting rejection after rejection and in my mind I was like, okay, I'm not going to just like mass email them because what is the one chance that one person gets back to me? So I did it sequentially. So it was literally I just got rejection emailed the next day, rejection email the next day. So I remember getting everything from really nice rejections, being like, I am, I admire your like, initiative down to emails like, please never contact me again.

Seriously?

Yeah.

Did you really? Because what's funny is that I find when most 15, 16, 17 year olds email adults in general, they're usually pretty positive because they want to help the one exception are professors. Somebody in academia aren't always so nice.

Yeah, it's. It's. And that was pretty much all of who I was emailing, Right?

Exactly. So, yeah, good start.

I think it really. It depends. It depends on the person. It depends on the place, the time, the, like, mood they're in. And I do think that, you know, you're going to get people who, no matter what, are not really receptive. And. And that's okay. And really, the professor I ended up working with, Dr. Alokananda Basu at the University of North Texas Health Science center, she didn't write back with like a, yeah, I'll take you immediately. It wasn't like that. She literally wrote me back and was like, huh, you seem passionate. How about we, like, have a chat? How about you come in and talk?

She opened the door.

Exactly, Exactly. I remember going in and sitting in this lab, being totally stressed out and being like, I don't know anything. Look at these amazing grad students. They know exactly what they're doing. And when I met Dr. Basu, I rambled for a bit, as I tend to do. And then I was telling her about this idea for an experiment I had. It was the same idea. Put it in the email, and she let me go on for a bit, and then she stopped me, and she was like, you know, sri, I'm just gonna stop you, because that makes no sense. And I was like, oh, no, I've been emailing so many professors with this idea. But. But the thing that she did give me is she was like, you know, it sounds like you have tried really hard to read up on this, and you seem really passionate, so I'm gonna give you a shot.

Nice.

And that's. That's where it started. It really started with being told, like, yeah, you don't know enough yet.

Right.

And. And for somebody who had just spent, like, months, like, reading everything I could find, I was like, what do you mean, I don't know enough? But really, it's like, it's a process. It's a process of learning and growing and figuring out what you don't know, which I think is a really powerful thing to be able to start doing when you're in high school for sure.

And, you know, there's the 10,000 hour rule where, you know, it takes 10,000 hours. Whoever. You know, it's. It's a Malcolm Gladwell thing, but it was. It was developed before that. It's basically 10 years to get really, really good at anything. But you can accelerate that if you put in all the time, you know, if you put in 10,000 hours in three years, it's the hours, it's not the years. Right. So. But it takes time. So when you get. When you. At 15, when you get into a lab, what is. How do you start learning? What does she give you to do?

So at that point, I think the biggest resource for me became the people around me, because I was surrounded by these graduate students. I remember some of them, many of them are off on very successful careers now, but, like Savita, Sridharan, Deepika, like, these were people who knew their stuff, right? Like, they had gone through the process of really getting the basic biology education. They. They knew. They had a really deep sense of what sort of cellular biology was and, like, basic principles. And I learned so much from them.

They were nice to you?

They were so nice to me. They were, like, things that were so obvious to them. Looking back on it, they explained to me in a way that made me feel like, okay, I'm not stupid for not knowing that. Like, that's great. Yeah, this is, like, a really cool thing, you know, And I think there was actually somewhat of a benefit of not going through, like, the very traditional way of learning about biology and just sort of being thrown into the deep end and being like, this test. Does this, like, use it to discover something?

Is that because you didn't have any preconceived notions about what something was or wasn't supposed to do?

Exactly, exactly. I would get a cool result, and instead of immediately being like, okay, that's probably incorrect because you did it wrong, I would be like, maybe this is amazing, and this cure cancer, which leads to a lot of getting shut down and being told, like, no, calm down. But. But I think it's a much more fascinating, exhilarating way to do science and sort of think about the questions you want to ask.

So you at some point decide to start your own project. And what is that project in a nutshell? And how are you supported in the lab?

Yeah, so my. My first summer in the lab, I worked on a really cool project about breast cancer and drug resistance to this drug called Taxol, which is a very common drug for. For breast cancer.

And this is something they were already doing in the lab. Right. You were just part of it.

Yeah, I tagged along.

Right.

And I remember taking that project to a science fair I had been going to for years. And at that point, I had done a bunch of projects on, like, recycling granite powder and making, like, recycled components, turning spinach blue Turning spinach blue. I made a remote control garbage can. Like, I had. I'd done these sort of, like, littler projects, and. And, you know, I had won awards for those. And they were science fairs. I knew. And I took this project to the state science fair, like the Texas State science Fair. And I remember I won nothing. Literally nothing. I walked out of the awards ceremony just thinking, like, oh, my God, this is, like, the thing I thought I wanted to do with my life. And it turns out I suck at it. Oh, my God. And I remember, like, having a very angsty period where I was like, I'm never gonna do research again. And then a few months later, I sort of. As I, like, processed, it was very much an idea of being like, well, I didn't start doing this because of the science fairs. Like, exactly. I didn't start doing this because I, like, wanted to win awards. It was because I had questions and I wanted to find answers. And so I ended up going back to Dr. Basu, and I was like, you know, I want to try again. Let's. Let's do another one. And she was like, you know, well, you can continue working on that breast cancer project, or we have some ovarian cancer cells. If you want to work on something with. Feel free to. And I was like, okay, we're going to. We're going to not work on breast cancer ever again, which is unreasonable. But I was like, all right, well, I would love to work with ovarian cancer. And what the project ended up being is actually really cool because there's this central energy regulating protein in the cell called AMP kinase. And basically in AP Bio, you always learn about. ATP is like, you know, the energy currency of the cell. Cell. Right. Like, it's what you use to do everything. And when you use up ATP, you get amp. So I'm.

So, you know what? Despite my degree from Stanford in human biology, I'm so happy that you're explaining this because you're doing a great job.

And people.

I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember that. Right.

And the currency.

The currency, Right, Exactly. Keep going. I'm not gonna even. I'm not gonna even interject. Keep. Keep talking. It's great.

So AMPK basically looks at how much energy you have, and it signals to the cell saying, you know, you have enough energy to do this process or no, you don't. You should stop doing that. And cancer cells are weird because they do things that technically they don't have the energy to do.

Which, by the way, this is what your fundamental Question. Or at least part of your fundamental question about cells and energy. Right, exactly. So you're sort of getting into it, and you didn't even know you were getting into it at first.

Exactly. Right, exactly. It's actually like a beautiful step story of full coming full circle in some ways.

So cool.

But, yeah, so I. I was looking at this protein, and basically I was looking at cells that stopped responding to this drug called cisplatin, which is a really, really common drug used for treating ovarian cancer. One of the.

It's used in chemotherapy, right?

Yeah, it's a chemotherapy. Basically, it goes into the cell and messes up the DNA in a way where the cell, like, recognizes that there's something so wrong with it that it will commit apoptosis or kill itself. And that's how this chemotherapy works. But a big problem is the problem of recurrence. Basically, those cells will eventually come back.

Right.

And this is a huge problem in ovarian cancer, in a lot of different types of cancer. But in ovarian cancer, cisplatin resistance is not super well understood. I mean, it's a very common problem, but the exact mechanisms are not really well known. And my project focused on looking at AMP kinase in that light. So basically, I took cells that were sensitive to cisplatin, I gave them the drug, and they died, which makes sense because they're sensitive. But then if you blocked that AMP kinase signal and then treated with the drug, then they stopped dying, they became resistant.

Got it.

Which is weird.

And so what caused that block in a body?

Right, which is weird, but it's not something we want because we want the cancer cells to die.

Right.

So what's interesting here is on the resistant side, when you take resistant cells that don't respond to cisplatin, you treat them with the same blocker, and then you treat with the drug, these cells start dying.

Huh.

So it reverses this resistance, which is super cool for a number of reasons, because it implicates, like, these energy pathways and being very, very important for how this happens, it means that there might be some sort of way to create, like, a cocktail to treat patients with after they become recurrent, so you don't have to give them new drugs. And it just opens up an entirely new field of sort of being able to probe what's going on in the cell and how the cell changes after it's treated with this drug.

So was there a day or a week when you were doing an experiment and you came across this sort of realization to discovery, and you're like, oh, my. Oh, my God. Wait. Oh, my God. Was there that moment.

I, you know, I love it because there was. There was a moment. There was a moment where I was like, I cured cancer here. But I remember because it was a western blot, which is a super common technique in molecular biology where you can basically look at the levels of protein and they just look like blobs on an X ray film.

Right.

And I remember standing there in this room, like, looking at this, like, X ray film with like four tiny blobs jobs and being like, this is it. And I. I took it to my professor, I took it to Dr. Basu, and I was like, look at this. And she was like, okay, well, maybe do it again. And I was like, oh, no.

Spoken like a true scientist.

Yeah. And I was like, oh, this is so sad. So I did it again and I got the same result and I took it to her and I was like, look, it's the same. And she was like, do it again. And so I remember repeating that exact thing like six times.

Wow.

So by the end, it was no longer like a eureka. It was like a no, this is actually happening. Which is kind of something that's sort of lost when you go through science in some ways because you're not like, oh, my God, this is amazing anymore. You're like, this is cautiously optimistic news. But that's. That's sort of. That's sort of the. The name of the game on that one.

So before we get to Google, what happened with that research? Like, what was the. Where is it now? What. What did it turn into?

Yeah, no, that's a good question. At that point, I, you know, I was going off to college, and as much as I really wanted to keep working on it, I really didn't have the chance to. So I passed it off to some of the other students in the lab, like the grad students who had sort of taught me everything, and they were going to do some more animal studies at the time. They were going to try it out in mice. And I'm not totally sure what ended up happening. I know that the lab ended up having some financial problems, which tends.

Which often happens in science, tends to.

Be the case in science. And yeah, I'm not that that sort of affects science in a way.

We can't really pretend that's something that a lot of people don't know. Right. You've got potentially a groundbreaking drug or a groundbreaking piece of research, and you're like, look, this is literally can help people all over the world. And they can't get funding and the research dies simply because it's not funded.

Yeah. That is a tale as old as time in science in a lot of ways. It's very much predicated sort of on what there are resources for, which is why funding for science is such an incredibly important thing that really, at the highest levels of like, administration, we need to think really critically about, because you're right, these things are sometimes just held up because there isn't enough money to sort of put a push.

Incredible.

Yeah.

So you decide this time that since it's your project and you've actually made a discovery that you're going to, what, let's just go after the bigger biggest science competition in the world.

Something like that. I, I remember actually it was my dad who showed me. It was. He like, opened up the homepage of Google one day and at the bottom it like, said, like, introducing the first ever Google Global Science Fair. And my, my, my dad like forwarded it to me, except he just forwarded me like google.com and I remember being like that. What. But I, I like saw the little, little tagline at the bottom and I, I ended up sort of clicking through. And what fascinated me about that science fair is that there was nothing like it. It was this completely online platform and in a world where that's how we communicate science in this way that is very global, very interconnected, very exc. Accessible. I just thought it was an amazing way to do science fairs. It was so different from the sort of traditional you make a poster, like you print out things and stick them on, which is something I was never really that good at. So I really, I relished the chance to be able to sort of present this stuff that I thought was so, so cool in a way that was so accessible and so sort of global, honestly.

Yeah. That Google's, you know, they're going to be big one day.

Yeah, I. If you haven't heard the name, mark it down.

Mark it down. What's that? Company. It's a company to watch.

Yes. Company to watch.

So I'm going to fast forward a little bit. So you, you submit your research, you submit whatever Google wants. And when do you find out? When? Where were you? How did that work?

It was a few months later, I got a call saying that I was one of the, the top 30 finalists and telling me that we were going to be flown to Mountain View, California. And the reason I'm looking confused is because I'm actually trying to make sure that it's actually 30 I think it was 15, but now no one.

I don't think anybody's going to hold it against you.

It's okay. I may have just created many more.

Google's calling me right now. They're really angry.

Fact check this, Danny, please. No, but I remember getting the call that I was one of the finalists, and it was definitely 15. I don't know why I said 30. I just wanted to have humble. Yeah, you know, that's what it is. It's. There were five finalists in three different age groups, so I was in the oldest, like, 17 to 18 age group. And I don't remember where I was when I got the call, but I remember being with my mom and squealing a lot and not telling her what the call was. And she was just like, what is happening? And then we flew to Mountain View to Google headquarters about, like, maybe a few months after that. And the saddest thing I remember, they told us, you know, like, bring something with you for a public demonstration that, like, represents who you are or what your project is. And I was like, well, I can't take a plate of cancer cells. That's.

That would be awkward.

Yeah, I can't do that. So I was like, okay, well, I'm from Texas, so I'm going to take a statue of a cowboy. Cause that makes sense. And so I put the statue in my bag, but I packed it really poorly and the head broke off. So I got there and I was like, oh, no. So. But I was like, this is the only thing I have that represents me. So I put this headless cowboy on my display stand, and I was trying to build a DNA molecule out of lego. It was all bad. So I had, like, a pile of Legos and Headless Cowboy, and the kid next to me had a fully functional LEGO robotic arm. And I was like, okay, well.

Well, it was. It was fun. Yeah.

It's been nice being here. Thanks for the. Enjoyed it. And so I. Honestly, I think part of. Part of what made the fair such a success was really the fact that I totally let it go at that point.

Interesting.

It's just like, you know, I.

You were more comfortable, though, weren't you? Because you said. You said, I'm never going to win now.

This kid has a LEGO arm. Are you kidding me? Like, and I. I remember just being excited to, like, share what I had learned and, like, the cool discovery I had made with. With the judges, rather than being as stressed out about it.

Funny.

And that's kind of what I think.

Made the difference for me, it very well might have. My. My. A college roommate who is a doctor, he took this attitude. Hey, John, by the way, if you ever listen to this, he took this. Everyone was really stressing about for MCATs, like, they were stressing hard. And he decided to just study six months before and then go to the movies the week before. He didn't study at all. He was the most relaxed person I ever saw. And his score beat everybody because he just was like, you know what? And he only applied to one med school. He suicided. Basically, as I said, I shouldn't use that word. But he is like, if I don't get in, I'm not going. He gets caught. He didn't get in. He went to the Peace Corps for two years, and then he applied again and got in. He's just, you know, it's amazing what happens when you relax.

Yeah. No, that's incredible. And sort of. I very much respect that, that way of sort of thinking about the world, and I wish I could apply it to more things, but I think that's a goal for everyone.

So you. You win while you're there. Do they announce while you're there?

Yeah, they announced, while I'm there. I am given the trophy by Vint Cerf, who's considered one of the fathers of the Internet. Wow. Almost hyperventilated on stage. It was great. One thing I remember, my mom, right, so. So they announced all of the age category winners, and then all three of us were sort of standing on stage. We were all girls. Hey. And right before I walked up on the stage, my mom was sitting next to me, and she, like, pulled me in, and she was like, sri, if you get up on stage, if you're lucky enough to get up on stage, don't talk to anybody, because it will look very rude if you're, like, speaking to somebody and they're, like, trying to film it. And in my head, I was like, okay, so I get up on stage. It's me and, like, the two other age category winners, and my name popped up on the teleprompter saying, I won. But I didn't see it, but the other two did. So they started, like, poking me, but I was like, no. My mom told me not to talk to anybody on stage.

I really want to find this footage. Now. That would be.

It's just me being like. But yeah, when they announced it, I was just like, this is incredible. And then the next few days, I think, were just an absolute just whirlwind of an event, which is really, really cool.

That's really cool. So you gave me a good transition, actually. And you said that all the winners were girls.

Yeah.

And so you are also a strong advocate for women in stem.

Yes, definitely.

Why is that so important to you and what did you do to promote that?

Yeah, no, it's something I am definitely very passionate about and maybe not for the, for the reasons you would expect. You know, like, I actually was never really that cognizant of this like, huge gender divide in stem. You know, right after the Google Science Fair when I got asked that question, a lot of being like, well, all of the, all of the winners were girls. What do you think of that? I was very much the kid who was like, it's cool, I guess, but I don't really have, like, I, I didn't realize that there was such a divide and I don't think I realized that until I got to start speaking to other high school students or to middle school students. And I started sort of talking to girls who very much had a, had a totally different experience than me, where they didn't have a brother who came home and taught them that science was incredible, who didn't have a dad who was constantly like, yeah, you can innovate any way you want to. And I started becoming more perceptive of those differences, especially in sort of the formative years of when you're getting trained in science and the way you think. And it was so upsetting to me to see, to see girls who are really good at science sort of get turned off by the entire concept of going into a career in science because of these gender divides that they sort of perceived very early on.

And what. So let's just give an example of that. So you are speaking to a girl in eighth grade or ninth grade and she says, I'm really interested in science.

But yeah, but I don't see really great tools to get started. Like most of the tools are these very free form things that are, are structured in a way that appeal more to young men, to young boys. A lot of the tools that we use to teach are very much gender skewed in a way that we don't even really think about. It's not like a conscious decision.

Give me an example.

Yeah. You know, actually a really, probably the best example I have is actually when I was going through the design process. So I started this, I co founded this company called Piper when I was in college, which makes these engineering kits for kids.

Cool.

And it's based off of the game Minecraft.

Sure.

So the kids basically play Minecraft in the digital world, and then as they're doing that, they actually build different pieces of hardware in front of them to sort of tinker and learn. Yeah, yeah. Like, bridging the divide between the virtual and the physical, which is such a cool idea. Such a cool.

It is, yeah.

It's such a cool introduction to, like, thinking about how you build this sort of stuff. And for me, I remember I was working with a team of all guys, and I was the only girl on the team. And at some point we were taking this around and demoing to different. To different, like, school groups, and we noticed that boys were the only ones playing with it.

Interesting.

And I remember being like, this is problematic, and I am very passionate about this, and this is not okay. And so I was like, why is this happening? I had like a. We had like a team conversation about it, and I. One of my co founders literally turned around and was like, well, you're a girl. How about you play it? And I was like, fair enough. All right, can't. Can't argue with that. So I started playing and I realized that I was struggling because there was no sort of end point of what I was trying to build. Like, and I was like, honestly, I was struggling with that. So we instituted like, a level, like a gameplay to it where we. We had, like, okay, well, you're building this to be able to move your avatar in space. Like, we are building this to be able to detect where the diamonds are in the field. Like, those, like, little changes, like just design elements that we changed a little bit, made our entire product completely different. And it became something that when we took out to these similar things, like, girls were playing just as much as boys.

How interesting. So it was the objective, it was the finish line, if you will, that was appealing.

It was, yeah, it was very much sort of a. Like, the utility of it was what we were building for, which is just a small example, but there's a ton of research out there on sort of how to create products, how to sort of teach things in a way that is much more appealing to girls. And I think you see those trends in what you see, like, women going into. Like, at this point, my medical school class is, I think, 60% women, 40% men.

So the majority of your medical school class is. Are women.

Is women. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So, and I think that is in part, not totally, but in part because a. The way that we teach biology, sort of in. In elementary school, high school, middle school, is sort of geared towards women more than it used to be. And B, because you have more role models in those fields to be able to look up to. There are these incredible, powerful, like, female doctors who are shaping the world.

I mean, I know. I know this. Incredible. Like, this. She's, like, in her early 20s. She goes to Duke. She, like, won the inaugural Google Science fair prize. And then she. She's an amazing role model.

She's like a great person.

She is. She's really cool. I'm sorry, go ahead. I can't help myself. No, but you are. Like, you are. That's why I wanted you on the show, because I wanted to provide, again, we say inspiration, but I wanted to provide role models out there for other students, whether they're 9, 11, 15, and say, wow, she sounds normal and cool. And I can do that. Yes. In quotation marks.

No, no. I think that plays a really important role, and I think that's sort of where we want to get with these other fields of science, like physics and chemistry and math. Like, we want to get to the place where there are really powerful women role models in those fields that can. That can show girls who are maybe struggling that, you know, this. This can happen, it can exist. And, like, please don't drop out of trying just because it looks like it doesn't.

That's amazing. So let me ask you just a few more questions. One is, what is your goal now? You are doing research. You're getting a medical school degree. Do you have a big goal or even the next steps?

At the moment, it's just school forever, apparently. Who knew? No, I think, honestly, depending on what mood you catch me in, it probably changes every other day. I think at this point, I am really passionate about sort of bridging the clinical world with research. And I went through clinical rotations in med school last year at this point, and I fell in love with pediatric oncology. So I think. I think that's sort of what I want to end up doing and also be sort of melding that with my interests in research. So we'll see what ends up happening. I definitely have other things that I'm really, really passionate about. Science communications is something I have loved since, I don't know, the day I started doing science.

And what does that mean? You mean communicating like we're doing right now? We're talking about science and the possibilities, especially for women. That type of communication.

That type of communication. But also what I think is really fascinating is the fact that there's so much cool research, so many new discoveries that People just don't know about because they're sort of blocked off behind this wall of like language.

Right.

You know, like the 15 year old me wouldn't understand. But, you know, I think that there's fascinating things that the world should know about and the way we communicate, that should change. And I have many ideas on where to, where to drive that forward. But maybe that's a podcast for a later.

Well, I can't. Again, you're segueing great, because I will have you on in two years and we'll see where you're at in four years and then eight years. And then I can say like, oh, you know, I knew her, I know her. Yeah, she was on my podcast. You don't know me, but I know her, which would be amazing for me. So I always end with three questions that I ask every guest. And the first one is, how much of your success do you feel is natural talent versus how much is hard work?

You know, I, I think that's a really good question because I, I don't think much of my success has been natural talent. I am surrounded by people who have incredible innate sort of talent. My, my brother being probably like my predominant example. Just somebody so talented at being able to learn something and pick it up immediately. I was surrounded by people like that at Harvard. And you know, I was never really that. Like, I struggled. I struggled in high school science and college science. I struggled during my PhD. You know, like it's. For me it's much more a matter of, of hard work and trying to stay really motivated, which is not always easy.

And that's funny coming from you because you seem like the most motivated person because you ask these big questions. So it's nice to hear that you have days when sometimes you're like, what am I doing?

Oh, many, many, many, many days. Yeah, that is not a foreign feeling to me at all. But I think I was really lucky from an early age to sort of realize that natural talent was not something I was going to be able to. And lucky seems like a weird way to describe that, but I think it's very much true. And I think lucky is also an apt description of how fortunate I was to be surrounded by people with those talents who could sort of pass them along to me.

Great answer. Here's the next question. What advice would you give even a 6, 11, 15 year old who might want to sort of do this? Something similar to, you know.

You know, that is an interesting age to be able to give advice to because I think it's A really formative few ages. And I think the main piece of advice that I wish somebody told me when I was 15 and trying to do all of this is you are not too young to do it. And I think that's even more true for kids who are growing up now, because in a world where we're all sort of interconnected, where we all sort of have the Internet at our fingertips at all times, you're really not too young to sort of go out in the world and discover big things.

Love that.

And yeah, I think that would be the best advice I could sort of give.

Thank you so much. And then what is one thing you wish I would have asked you?

One thing I wish.

There doesn't have to be anything.

Ooh, wait. I wish you had asked me about how meeting President Obama was.

Sree, how was meeting President Obama was?

Good grammar. Good grammar. Danny, good work.

No, how was that? That must have been so cool.

Yeah, no, it was incredible. We got. So the three age group winners and I got invited to. Actually. Sorry, I was one of the three age group. So we got invited to the Oval Office for this, like, 10 minute meeting with President Obama. And the thing about the Oval Office is that there's a bunch of fake doors. So, like, the walls are actually doors.

Right.

It's important. But I remember I was standing in the hallway with my back to a wall and I was talking to somebody and then I turned around and the wall was just totally gone because it was a door. And President Obama is just standing there and he literally goes, oh, hey, you're Sree, right? You worked on ovarian cancer.

And is that the moment? Out of body moment.

You're just like, I panicked. I panicked. He, like, sticks out his hand and in my head I'm like, what does one do with hand? And so I bear hugged him.

Nada, girl.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, kept my eyes open the whole time. Like, saw Secret Service starting to move in and was like, must just let go now.

That's awesome.

But that is how I met President Obama.

That is. I wish you. Right. I'm glad that you brought that up. I should have asked you about that. Well, Sree, thank you so much for being on with me today. I really appreciated your answers and your sincerity and thank you.

Yeah, no, thank you for having me. This was awesome.

If you want to learn more about Sree, as well as the steps she took to follow her dreams of becoming a science researcher, go to our website, Danny ruderman.com and become an XU VIP. You will not only get access to all our episodes, but you will also be able to download free guides that have step by step action plans and resources that will help you become extraordinary. If you want to tell us your story or ask for help, go to Danny ruderman.com YourStory or reach out via Instagram at dmruterman. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, please leave us a review Review Extraordinary youy is produced by Anna Darling, music by Geom, sound editing by Rob Pera. Extraordinary youy is a production of Acast.