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CRI Fellow Dr. Kamir Hiam-Galvez Shares a Day in His Life on CRI’s Twitter

Gabriella Rojas

Cancer researchers are ordinary people, but with special degrees and a mission to save more lives. So, when it comes the life of a scientist, the morning may look like ours—some music and coffee—but the day is spent breaking new ground in the lab.

On Friday, June 25, 2021, CRI Postdoctoral Fellow Kamir J. Hiam-Galvez, PhD, at Stanford University (who regularly tweets from @InflammatoryDC) took over the Cancer Research Institute’s Twitter account (@CancerResearch). Throughout his takeover, he shared insights about his work to improve our knowledge of CD4+ “helper” T cells in killing cancer cells.

Dr. Hiam-Galvez started his morning off with a pleasant combination: coffee and vinyl. He mentioned his time spent outside of science includes collecting records and listening to 60s/70s South American music.

He also took a moment to recognize CRI’s new DEI initiative in expanding accessibility through Spanish translation of resources. In that spirit, he also translated several of his tweets throughout the day.

Now on to the science! He shared a fun fact with the community about T cells and their role in killing tumor cells.

He also explained an exciting task of isolating T cells to transfer into laboratory mice. He leaves the cells to recognize the tumor, then takes the cells back out to map their trajectory. 

In the afternoon, he was joined by Frank (@buquicchioli), a PhD student, for sorting and preparing for more experiments.

He is grateful to work among an extraordinary team of scientists at the laboratory of CRI Tech Impact Awardee Dr. Ansu Satpathy.

Life in the lab requires a fair share of paperwork, too. Dr. Hiam-Galvez showcased one assignment: choosing an article to present with Public Journal Club (@publicjournalc).

Dr. Hiam-Galvez's interest in immunology sparked after a conversation with Matthew Spitzer (@Spitzerlab) during his first year of doctoral studies. No longer intent on studying developmental biology, he was enraptured by the interactions between immune cells and tumors/pathogens throughout his PhD program.

Before signing off, Dr. Hiam-Galvez shared a graphic by @TeamSciStories to help followers imagine the journey of T cells that he'd been working on mapping that day.

Follow Dr. Kamir Hiam-Galvez on Twitter at @InflammatoryDC or review his full day in a Twitter moment.

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