PROFILES in RESEARCH EXCELLENCE: Dr. M. ROBYN ANDERSEN

Linda & grand-niece Ella Henner

The Rivkin Center has announced its grant recipients for 2017.  As you will know if you read every word I post to this blog and have a good memory, MRC awards grants in four categories:  Pilot Studies ($75,000) to allow pursuit of new approaches to conquering ovarian cancer; Scientific Scholar Awards ($60,000) to assist talented newly-minted researcher get started on their careers; Bridge Funding Awards ($30,000) to help young scientists successfully swim the moat and scale the wall that stands between them and the glittering hoard of NCI funding;  Challenge Grants ($150,000 for two years) to explore big-picture ideas. 

For 2017 MRC appears from their web site to have given out 14 grants worth just shy of $1 million.  Not bad for an outfit created by a busy oncodoc in his spare time!  Saul, you are my hero.

But what about Robyn Andersen?  She is one on many who submitted proposals that appealed to me.  I chose her in part because I know her.  She worked with Drs. Urban and Drescher on a mega-colossal project – now sadly defunct – for which I attempted to be useful some years ago.  I have “edited” several of her papers and can say two things: she is a psychologist rather than a biochemist, and she can write long and convolute sentences of unmatched complexity.  I can say one other thing, although perhaps I shouldn’t: she is nice to look at, surrounded as she is by male cancer researchers who look more or less like a younger version of me.

Dr. Andersen’s Rivkin-funded project involves using “meditation-like exercises, along with a smartphone-connected feedback system, to reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety in patients who have completed initial cancer treatment.”  This is important; I know from personal experience.  Linda was brave beyond anything I can imagine, so avoided dumping the anxieties she must have felt on me.  Also, she was simply optimistic and cheerful by nature.  However, late at night when I was asleep I know she suffered.  If Dr. Andersen can mitigate this aspect of the cancer ordeal, she will have made an important contribution.

So, Robyn Andersen was educated at SUNY Stoney Brooke (MA), U. Washington (MPH), and Stoney Brooke again (Ph.D).  She has been with Fred Hutch for at least seven years.  In the past nine years she has published 27 papers if I counted correctly, for many of which she seems to have been the principal author.  That sure as hell beats my output when I was her age.  Way to go, Robyn; keep it up!