N Equals One

N Equals One

N Equals One: a podcast about science and discovery at UC San Diego Health. In each episode, we bring you the story of one project, one discovery or one scientist

Episodes

n=49 All the latest on COVID-19 and fertility, pregnancy and breastfeeding

November 10, 2021 • 33 mins
Despite strong recommendations from the CDC, pregnant people in the U.S. continue to show low vaccination rates against COVID-19. It's been a tough choice for many parents or soon-to-be parents, so in this episode, we dig into the details. UC San Diego Health experts Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman, MD, Christina Chambers, PhD, MPH, and Lars Bode, PhD, all weigh in on the latest research and recommendations. We also speak with San Diego m...
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n=48 Funding fairness: Racial disparities in research grant funding

October 1, 2021 • 26 mins
Academic scientists rely on grants to fund their research, and the largest funder of biomedical research is the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). Unfortunately, many of the racial inequities in academic science have trickled their way into this grant funding process. As it stands, applications from African-American or Black scientists are less likely to be funded by federal funding agencies than applications submitted by w...
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n=47 From landscaping to the lab: David Gonzalez’s journey through academia

August 11, 2021 • 29 mins
David Gonzalez, PhD, is an associate professor at UC San Diego, where his lab studies how bacteria affect our health. He’s also a first-generation Mexican-American from San Diego County. Gonzalez, like his siblings, dropped out of high school, got a job and started a family. But when he found himself mowing lawns across the street of the local community college, something inside him shifted. In this episode, Gonzalez shares his uni...
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n=46 Environmental justice: Where COVID-19 meets climate change

June 8, 2021 • 15 mins
Climate change and COVID-19 are arguably the two greatest crisis of our time. The other thing they have in common is the fact that they disproportionately affect the same people — primarily underserved populations and communities of color. In this episode, we speak with Tarik Benmarhnia, PhD, about his work on environmental justice, and how it plays a role in the health of a community, whether that’s due to an infectious disease, p...
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n=45 A government in COVID-19 denial

March 23, 2021 • 14 mins
Despite political risk to researchers and participants, a new study provides the first glimpse into the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on health care workers in Nicaragua, a country where the government refuses to acknowledge that there is a pandemic, or do anything about it. Researcher James McKerrow, MD, PhD, discusses his work with colleague Jorge Huete-Pérez, PhD. Richard Feinberg, PhD, provides his insights as an expert on U.S.-La...
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n=44 Taking a stand for your health

December 4, 2020 • 34 mins
More than 5 million people around the world die from causes associated with a lack of physical activity. The news comes as many people have transitioned to working from home, are dealing with local gyms closing and may be sheltering-in-place as we face the COVID-19 pandemic. Two research teams from UC San Diego School of Medicine sought to understand sedentary lifestyles, with one finding that even light physical activity, includin...
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n=43 COVID-19 Vaccines: Our shot at immunity from SARS-CoV-2

October 26, 2020 • 25 mins
Around the world, at least 53 COVID-19 vaccines are currently undergoing clinical trials. Four of the largest and most promising have reached the final Phase III stage. UC San Diego is a testing site for three of the big four: Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen/Johnson & Johnson. In this episode, we speak with Susan Little, MD, principal investigator for two COVID-19 clinical trials in San Diego that are focused on finding a vaccine ...
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n=42 How to prevent a “twindemic” (hint: get your flu shot!)

October 5, 2020 • 15 mins
We don’t yet have a vaccine to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but we do have a vaccine for another respiratory virus: influenza. In this episode, infectious disease physician Michele Ritter, MD, talks about the difference between flu and COVID, whether it’s possible to get both and why it’s more important than ever to get your flu vaccine this year.
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n=41 What mini-lungs in a dish might tell us about COVID-19

September 16, 2020 • 27 mins
In this episode we speak with Aaron Carlin, MD, PhD, and Sandra Leibel, MD, assistant professors and physician-scientists at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Carlin studies viruses such as Zika virus and Leibel has developed “mini lungs” – stem cell-based organoids that grow in a petri dish in the lab, where she can study diseases that affect newborn lungs. That’s what they were doing six months ago, anyway. Then SARS-CoV-2, the no...
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n=40 The pharmacist will see you now

August 7, 2020 • 21 mins
In this episode, Candis Morello, pharmacist and educator at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego, shares her career path — inspired by her grandmother's peach tree — and explains how pharmacists have become an integral part of a patient's health care team. Her diabetes tune-up clinic provides an example of how pharmacists can improve patient outcomes and help lower health care costs. Read more h...
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n=39 Science meets art — on a dress

December 2, 2019 • 16 mins
By day, postdoctoral researcher Beata Mierzwa, PhD, studies cellular division. By night, she makes clothing — dresses, pants, shoes, backpacks — covered in colorful dividing cells. In this episode, she talks about her love of both science and art, how her unique designs help get people excited about science, and her new role as an IF/THEN Ambassador for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Learn more abou...
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n=38 Medical DNA test vs. consumer genetic analysis

November 14, 2019 • 13 mins
Lisa Madlensky, PhD, director of the Family Cancer Genetics Program at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health, explains the difference between medical grade DNA tests and consumer genetic analysis like 23andMe. She talks about the nuggets that can be derived from consumer products and what might not apply. She cautions us not to use consumer products to make medical decisions. Instead, if you're concerned about your health ris...
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n=37 Balancing an MD, PhD and advocacy with Alec Calac

November 1, 2019 • 27 mins
As a kid, Alec Calac knew he wanted to be a doctor, following in his father's footsteps — but it wasn't until he started college in another state and left his community behind that he discovered his second passion: advocacy. Now, as a second year MD/PhD student at UC San Diego School of Medicine, Alec spoke with us about his personal experiences and how he fills his "spare" time advocating for more visibility and support for Native...
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n=36 Your lungs, high altitude and athletic training

October 21, 2019 • 29 mins
Susan Hopkins, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and radiology working to figure out how the lungs work — and in particular, what happens to the lungs under stress. Following a winding road that brought her from family medicine in a small mountain town in Canada to UC San Diego School of Medicine where she researches the effects of low oxygen and exercise on lung function, Hopkins’ interests all come back to her love of figuring ...
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n=35 Student-Run Free Clinic: teaching compassion, caring for the underserved

July 22, 2019 • 24 mins
Sunny Smith, MD, is co-medical director of UC San Diego School of Medicine's Student-Run Free Clinic, a popular elective that offers free care for San Diego's underserved and provides a unique hand-on experience for doctors-in-training. One of Smith’s most cherished memories of her 20+ years with the clinic is the time the students crowdsourced funding to help an uninsured man get the prosthetic leg he needed to return to work. One...
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n=34 Join All Of Us

July 9, 2019 • 12 mins
For most of history, scientific and medical studies have tended to involve primarily white people, and mostly white men. We now know those findings don’t always apply to people from different genetic and environmental backgrounds. That’s why the All of Us Research Program’s goal is to accelerate medical discoveries by gathering data on health, habits, family history, genetics and environment from one million or more participants — ...
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n=33 Sports med doc heads to Women's World Cup

June 7, 2019 • 12 mins
In this episode we talk to Alan Shahtaji, DO, family and sports medicine physician at UC San Diego Health and a team doctor for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. We caught up with Shahtaji on the morning before he left to join up with the team and travel with them for the 2019 World Cup in France. He talks about what he does, what he likes about it and what’s challenging about providing medical care abroad for an elite team. H...
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n=32 Classroom crowdscience competition

May 14, 2019 • 17 mins
Trey Ideker and Samson Fong teach a course at UC San Diego School of Medicine called Biological Networks and Biomedicine. It’s designed to introduce graduate students to the concept of network biology — living systems as an interconnected whole, instead of individual cells, proteins or genes — and the bioinformatics tools used to study these systems. But instead of giving the class a standard final exam, Ideker and Fong created a c...
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n=31 All about endometriosis

March 28, 2019 • 18 mins
"Tiny ice skaters on your uterus" is how a patient with endometriosis describes the pain she lived with for nine years before being diagnosed. In this episode, Monica Cain shares her personal journey with the debilitating disorder, and Dr. Sanjay Agarwal talks about all things endometriosis, including the first new drug in a decade that is becoming a game changer.
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n=29 Cancer survivorship part 2: Cancer doesn’t define you

October 29, 2018 • 19 mins
In our previous episode on cancer survivorship, Michelle Brubaker shared her recent cancer journey. In this episode Laurie Knight, a licensed clinical social worker, and Cecilia Kasperick, breast cancer nurse navigator, of the Comprehensive Breast Health Center at UC San Diego Health, talk about how Michelle can move forward after treatment, without having her life defined by cancer. They offer tips for friends and family to help p...
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