I Always Wanted to be a Scientist. It's Just So Cool!

"My name is Xiao Liu and I'm working in Nakamura Lab at the University of Chicago and basically our lab is doing the researches related to cancer. I'm the senior research specialist in this lab. But my research more focuses on the leukemia and lymphoma. I came from China. Actually, my parents, they are not scientists. My mom is like an ordinary office lady working in a Chinese company. My dad, he's an engineer and a businessman. I think his personality probably influenced on me for doing science because for doing science you have to know yourself. Some people they probably are not suitable for doing science because some people are really want to make money. I not care about money. I more care about my interests. I know what I want to do. I remember when I was like three or probably four years old I want to be a scientist because it's so cool you know. My real interest actually is I was driving when I was in high school so I was so interested in genetics. After I got my bachelor degree and my master degree in China and then I came to America and I got another master degree. So actually what I'm trying to figure out right now for cancer patients, they have all kinds of treatments especially immunotherapies. So we are trying to find out a way how to select the patient for immunotherapy. Once they start the immunotherapy how can we monitor the therapy so we more focus on this kind of field. Right now in China the air pollution is very fierce. Like my relatives and my relatives friends and my friends friends, some of them have the cancers so I really want to help the cancer patients and also like right now in my lab my boss, Dr. Nakamura, he's an expert in cancer field so I want to learn many things from him. So that's why I am working in his lab. Doing science is not like doing the business. For example, for an oncology company, they probably want to develop new drugs for cancer patients but they want to get the benefits from the drug. They want to earn money. But for doing science work we are totally different. Okay? So we want to find a new way and a novel treatment to the cancer patient and the cancer patient can afford it. For example, there's one treatment for cancer patient so we'll use the peptide treatment so we can find many peptides together and inject back to cancer patient to activate their immune system so the immune system can attack the cancerous tumor cells and to let the tumor cell die. To generate the peptide is cheap so we are trying to develop those measures, improve this treatment to cancer patients. Of course I want to save people's lives even if it's 1% or 10%. If I can save one person I'm very happy."