Dr. Sam Aparicio of BC Cancer, studying medicine was always the plan, but research became his passion. Unbeknownst to him, research also involves many skills that didn’t expect, such as grant-writing, which he had to learn along the way. This led him down other side pathways, such as starting a biotech company to commercialize some of the findings in the genomics field.

The mapping of the human genome was a fearless plunge into groundbreaking science. Dr Fraser says, as a scientist, she had to take risks that allowed her to answer the questions she was asking in molecular biology – at the time a nascent field. She dared to fail at a time when that was still an option.