For Victoria Schulman, science is a family affair.
As the daughter of two scientists, Schulman, 29, of Maryland, was never too far removed from the family business. Her parents both worked as researchers for the National Institutes of Health, but what really set her family apart was their dinnertime ritual: trading trivia questions about the Periodic Table of Elements.
Victoria Schulman
That childhood game turned into a passion for Schulman, who on May 29 will graduate from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences with a doctorate in biochemistry, cell and molecular biology. A geneticist and cell biologist, Schulman will head to Yale to complete her postdoctoral training — the next step in her burgeoning career.
Schulman has made an indelible mark on Weill Cornell since arriving on campus in 2008. At the lab bench, she discovered about a dozen of the genes and proteins required for proper muscle development and function, providing new therapeutic targets for treating genetic muscle diseases. She published that work in journals including Development and Fly.
She was one of just 45 graduate students selected by the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's National Graduate Student Symposium, an annual academic and professional development event in which doctoral students present their own work and meet with leading scientists. She was also selected as one of 90 to participate in a similar forum at the NIH for the National Graduate Student Research Conference.
Schulman is making a difference outside the lab, too. Grateful for the education she received, Schulman has made it her mission to pay it forward. Working with the New York Academy of Sciences, Schulman taught genetics to middle school students in underserved areas of New York City to encourage them to pursue careers in the science, technology, engineering and math fields. And she helped her fellow students at Weill Cornell as a teaching assistant, as well as joined the graduate school's curriculum committee to ensure that the next generation of doctoral students could receive the same excellent education as she did.
For these accomplishments and more, graduate school leadership has tapped Schulman as the 2014 Distinguished Graduate Student Commencement Speaker. We caught up with Schulman to get her thoughts on her experience at Weill Cornell as well as what's in store for her after graduation.
Q.: What was your reaction when you found out you had been selected to be the 2014 Distinguished Graduate Commencement Speaker?
Schulman: I was completely shocked when Dr. Randi Silver pulled me into her office and asked me to be the speaker. I'm a little bit star-struck by the whole situation, but it does mean a lot to me to be selected as the student chosen to represent the entire graduate school at commencement. Both of my parents have doctoral degrees. I wanted to follow in their footsteps and at one point I didn't think that I could, so the fact that I am able to get the same degree and do so with such an honor bestowed upon me is really amazing.
Q.: What was it like growing up with your parents both being scientists? Did they influence your interest in medical research?
Schulman: I would say so. Both of my parents at one point or another have worked at the NIH. My mom still works there. My dad has moved onto the Veterans Health Administration. So there was always science and it was always high-profile science. One thing that I love to tell people — because it always makes them laugh — is that when I was growing up —you know every family has placemats at dinner — ours were of the Periodic Table of Elements. So when I was little and my parents tried to get conversation going at dinnertime, they'd say, 'Which one has the atomic mass of this?' It was almost like a little quiz every evening.
Q.: Why did you choose Weill Cornell for your graduate studies?
Schulman: Location was a big factor because my then-boyfriend, now husband, was already in New York City. I applied to Weill Cornell, Columbia and NYU and honestly, I just had the most fun at the Weill Cornell recruitment. They made the biggest effort to highlight how great the student life was and they pointed out a lot about the Graduate Student Executive Council [the liaison between Weill Cornell students and Cornell's executive board] and how involved it was with campus life. It just seemed like the students were generally happy. Also, Weill Cornell is the only institution that I looked at that gives you the option to do your thesis research at Weill Cornell, Sloan Kettering or Rockefeller. (I actually did end up in a Sloan-Kettering lab, working with Dr. Mary Baylies.) So it's that Tri-Institutional umbrella program that allows students the flexibility to go in different areas. At the time, I wasn't completely sure about what I wanted to go into, so I needed that flexibility and Weill Cornell provided it, as well as a great outside-of-school environment.
Q.: You've accomplished so much during your time here at Weill Cornell. Out of your many achievements, which would you say means the most to you personally?
Schulman: The one I worked the hardest for and really had my heart set on was probably the least recognizable outside this campus. Last year, I won the Vincent du Vigneaud Award of Excellence for an oral presentation I gave at the Vincent du Vigneaud Memorial Research Symposium, which is an annual, student-run event during which graduate students can present their research to the Weill Cornell community. It's really only an in-house event and you have to be a graduate student here to participate. That one is the most important to me personally because Weill Cornell is my home. I'd seen people go before me who had earned this recognition and I had always looked up to them, so it was nice to be considered of the same caliber as those students.
Q.: What's next for you career-wise?
Schulman: I've accepted a post-doc research position at Yale University's School of Medicine and I will be working in Dr. Richard Lifton's lab. He's very well known in the field of human genetics. I will be working to identify the genetic mutations that predispose patients to cancer, and also working to identify the underlying cell biological changes and dysfunction that result from those altered gene states. This is a transition for me, from model organism studies of genetics to studies of human genetics, so it's a much more translational role using direct patient biopsies and clinical sequence data as our samples instead of trying to mimic the disease state in a model organism like mice and fruit flies.