We Need More Girls In STEM

By Student Ambassador Charlotte Jacobus

Student Ambassador Charlotte Jacobus, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering at Tufts University, highlights the connections between climate change and cancer risks, and the need to bring more young women into STEM careers.

A warming planet is already having drastic effects on human health, including an increase in asthma and allergies and rising lung cancer rates in non-smokers and young women. Climate change is also affecting access to oncological care for many by disrupting medical care infrastructure with an increasing number of extreme weather events like flooding, wildfires, and hurricanes. This uptick in extreme weather events is a multiplier of discrimination, bias, and barriers for marginalized populations, who are more likely to live in areas highly affected by air pollution. Studies have shown that those living in areas with high levels of pollution are about 15% more likely to develop lung cancer.

I am a graduate student studying biomedical engineering and sustainable solutions for lung cancer treatment. I am currently mentoring undergraduate students in the lab and I feel that bringing women into more STEM careers is vital to developing novel solutions to climate change and its effects. The biomaterials we work with are used to formulate and test low-cost therapeutic delivery systems that can be used to treat diseases like lung cancer. My undergraduate mentees and I are currently studying how these delivery systems can target cancer cells over healthy cells as a method to limit the adverse effects of systemic chemotherapy. It is my hope that advocacy and research achieved by myself and my peers can improve access to cancer resources and bring new therapies from our lab benchtops to clinics.

Learn more about Charlotte's research on biomaterials for cancer research here.