Episode 27: Briana Christophers

Battle Cry

Bri Christophers (she) is an aspiring physician-scientist interested in bringing social justice to the lab bench and hospital bedside. Born and raised in Miami, Bri found herself moving to New Jersey to attend Princeton University, where she fell in love with developmental biology while staring at fish hearts down a microscope in the lab of Rebecca Burdine, PhD. Much of her advocacy work as an undergraduate focused on amplifying the voices of Latinx, BIPOC*, and first-generation/low-income students through organizations like Princeton Latinos y Amigos, the Latinx Collective and initiatives like Project Welcome Mat: A Guide for First-Generation Students. Her work was recognized with the Frederick Douglass Service Award given during graduation ceremonies, the Spirit of Princeton Award, and the Santos-Dumont Award for Innovation. She continued her journey in developmental biology by working in the lab of Robert Heuckeroth, MD, PhD at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, moving from the heart to the enteric nervous system. Now as an MD-PhD student at Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program, she is pursuing graduate training with Mary Baylies, PhD, studying muscle development. Briana has continued to bring together her passion for scientific discovery and advocacy, serving as diversity representative on the Weill Cornell Medical Student Executive Committee, co-running the Association of Diverse Physician-Scientists in Training (ADePT), and developing the Mini Lessons by Medical Scientists video series aimed at introducing children and adolescents to physician-scientists. More recently, Bri has turned to writing as a way of communicating science and advancing social causes. Her works have been published in Academic Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, The Lancet Global Health, Pediatric Research, Scientific American, and in-Training magazine. She co-authored and was lead editor of “The Free Guide to Medical School Admissions,” an e-book in its second-edition available at tiny.cc/MedAppGuide. You can follow her reflections on being a Latina growing into a pediatrician-scientist on Twitter, where she is also the co-leader of @LatinasInMed and @MedStudentChat.