The US has seen an erosion of public trust throughout the pandemic. This erosion is the result of misinformation, mixed messaging from leaders, and rapid changes in our knowledge of COVID-19. The Nascent Transcript had the opportunity to sit down with PhD Candidate, Markia Smith (she/her) a 4th year PhD Candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she uses integrative genomic approaches to study environmental and epidemiological factors of cancer that lead to health disparities in historically marginalized populations. She is also the co-organizer and current President of Black in Genetics (twitter @BlackInGenetics), an organization that amplifies the voices and work of Black-identifying geneticists. You can follow Markia on Twitter at @MarkiaASmith.
In this week’s A Spotlight On interview, we are joined by the team from Black in Genetics, an organisation dedicated to amplifying voices and work by Black-identifying geneticists across the United States and beyond. In this interview, Alexis Stutzman and Markia Smith discuss their journey to setting up the group and their plans for the future.
After a year turned upside-down by the COVID-19 pandemic, and now with promising vaccine news on the horizon, we can start looking forward to a new year with the hope that 2021 will bring exciting things to the science community. Here, Nature Genetics shares what we are awaiting in 2021.