Acclaimed American poet, educator, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou, once said that in order to be an effective mentor, one must care. She went on to say that an effective mentor should care about what they know, and care about the person they are sharing it with.
A mentor is many different things on different days but is always endlessly interested in the quality of the learning experience and the well-being of their mentee. In short, they care.
It has been a long-standing tradition of the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program to pause each year to recognize an outstanding mentor among the many faculty members who serve the Program across the NIH, and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Nominations for this honor come from those who are the fortunate recipients of outstanding mentoring – the mentees.
Dr. Elodie Ghedin is the Chief of the Systems Genomics Section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and is also our incoming Co-Scientific Director of the NIH OxCam Program. She was nominated by her mentee, Tung Nguyen, who shared the following sentiments.
“Elodie Ghedin has been a rare and considerate mentor who has helped me professionally and as a person. She responds within seconds of a message and has provided resources in data, online courses, and publication and conference presentation opportunities beyond what I had expected for my first year. She is the type of flexible mentor where if I have a wild idea, she can contact the right people for me to test it out.
I feel like a student with autonomy commensurate to that of a young investigator, sharing my boss’s excitement to pursue data-driven leads and temperament to dissect unexplained patterns. Importantly, this patience has led to discoveries and further hypotheses for SARS-CoV-2 genomic interpretation. I am establishing my own network through my OxCam affiliation across disciplines and conferences in part due to Elodie’s openness to maximize my education. My boss engages me with two-way dialogue and has provided unique resources for me to reach into the field of viral genomics and public health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It has been a privilege to be directly mentored by Elodie Ghedin, and to call her my mentor, boss, and friend. It is an honor to nominate her for this award.”
Congratulations Dr. Ghedin!
Exceptional mentorship continues to be a cornerstone feature of the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program since its inception in 2001.