By Bill Snyder
Among the 114 students who earned Ph.D.s in the biomedical sciences from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine during the 2024-2025 academic year, two women are staking out very different career paths.
Rebecca Buchanan, has landed her first job out of graduate school as a postdoctoral research scholar in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University Medical Center. She is pursuing a career in academia.
Ebony Hargrove-Wiley is interning in medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s Association while she seeks a position that would enable her to contribute to scientific and clinical affairs in the pharmaceutical industry.
Both are grateful for the support and resources they received through the medical school’s Office of Biomedical Research Education and Training, and the ASPIRE Path in Molecular Medicine, a unique personalized approach that offers course work and disease-based clinical experiences. They also acknowledged their faculty mentors in both clinical and basic sciences.
“What really sold me (on Vanderbilt) was the BRET office and ASPIRE,” said Buchanan, a University of Georgia graduate who earned her doctorate in Neuroscience. “It’s not only unique but very well organized and comprehensive in terms of support for professional development. There’s so much opportunity, it’s almost overwhelming.”
Hargrove-Wiley, a Tuskegee University graduate who earned her doctorate in Cancer Biology, agreed. The informational sessions offered through ASPIRE and the BRET office helped clarify her aptitude for scientific communication supporting the development of pharmaceutical products that potentially will help clinicians improve outcomes for their patients.
Buchanan, who is from Carrolton, Georgia, gravitated to neuroscience because of a long-standing interest in neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Under the mentorship of Fiona Harrison, associate professor of Medicine, she focused her research on potentially modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. For her dissertation project, she explored the neurotoxic effects of overexposure to the trace mineral manganese in an animal model.
Currently, Buchanan is working in the laboratory of Erin Gibson, assistant professor in the Division of Sleep Medicine at Stanford, focusing on the role that glial cells in the brain play in regulating the body’s circadian “clock” and in cognition.
Hargrove-Wiley, who is from Kansas City, Missouri, chose research aimed at understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms that drive cancer progression. She was mentored by Barbara Fingleton, associate professor of pharmacology, and director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences.
For her dissertation project, Hargrove-Wiley assessed sex-related differences in immune responses to male and female breast cancers. She is first author of a paper published last year that recommended more rigorous pre-clinical and translational investigations of male breast cancer biology.
According to Abigail Brown, director of Outcomes Research in the BRET office and co-director of ASPIRE, 71% of this year’s PhD graduates are planning to pursue postgraduate training, while 27% have accepted or are in negotiations for jobs that don’t require postdoctoral work.
During their years in graduate school, the students, on average, co-authored five research papers that were published in highly respected journals including Nature, Cell, Science, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. They averaged two papers in which they were listed as first author.
External fellowships helped support the training of 48% of the graduate students. In 2024, for example, Buchanan was an ambassador in the Alzheimer’s Association International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment (ISTAART). The program provides professional development and networking opportunities.
Hargrove-Wiley’s outside experiences included a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, an Endocrine Society FLARE (Future Leaders Advancing Research in Endocrinology) fellowship, and an internship in portfolio program management at the pharmaceutical company AbbVie.
As the first in her family to earn a Ph.D., Hargrove-Wiley had some advice for incoming graduate students.
“Always seek mentorship and a support system,” she said. “You’re more than capable. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t capable.”
But graduate school is stressful, she added. “Find what you need to see it through.”
In his remarks to the graduates, C. André Christie-Mizell, Centennial Professor of Sociology, Vice Provost for Graduate Education, and Dean of the Graduate School, challenged them to “take the spirit of inquiry into everything you do. The pursuit of knowledge is never finished.”
Christie-Mizell also urged the graduates to realize the impact that their work can have on their communities and on society.
“Embrace the transformative power of education to illuminate pathways for others,” he said. “Small acts and a kind word can change the direction of someone’s life.”