When neuroscientist Nadia Chaudhri, PhD, shared a tweet in May, it grabbed the attention of thousands of people worldwide.
"Today is the day I tell my son that I'm dying from cancer," the 44-year-old researcher wrote. "It's reached a point where he has to hear it from me."
Chaudhri -- the mother of a 6-year-old boy, a wife, and an associate professor at Concordia University in Montreal -- has terminal ovarian cancer. Known for the work in addiction and alcohol use disorder her lab has produced, Chaudhri is an enthusiastic teacher and mentor, committed to raising funds to support emerging scholars even in her final days.
"At a time when a lot of people would be looking inward, Nadia has focused outward to get a system in place so she can continue to support students when she's no longer able to mentor them directly," Concordia University colleague Kristen Dunfield, PhD, told MedPage Today.
"Nadia is passionate about identifying students who don't fit the traditional mold of what a neuroscientist should look like or who bring a different background to the field," Dunfield observed. "She values the importance of variable perspectives, of making sure everybody has a seat at the table and voices get heard."
In Canada, major grant organizations require Canadian citizenship to apply, Dunfield noted. "Because Nadia is Pakistani and trained in the U.S. before she came to Canada, gaps in student funding have been very clear to her," she said.
Chaudhri's initial fundraising campaign was the Rising Scholar Award to help graduate students and postdoctoral fellows attend the annual Research Society on Alcoholism conference. But her enduring contribution will be the Nadia Chaudhri Wingspan Award, which so far has raised over $435,000 CDN -- more than double what it was 2 weeks ago -- with donations coming from many of her 88,000 Twitter followers.
The Wingspan Award will recognize early-career neuroscientists at Concordia who face hardship due to racism, sexism, geographic origin, or other barriers. Despite being in palliative care, Chaudhri has contributed to the fund by participating in the Concordia Shuffle, an annual campus walkathon that historically has raised money for student scholarships and other expenses.
"I pledge to walk the length of the palliative care ward every day for as long as I can," she tweeted on August 26. "What a goal! I can do it with your help."
Last Sunday, a Wingspan Award shuffle team of students, faculty, and staff walked from the Concordia campus to the window of Chaudhri's hospital room carrying a large saffron-colored banner that read "Nadia gives us wings."
"Over the course of her disease, there have been times when we were feeling more hopeful about her subsequent diagnosis and many members of the department helped with food and other things for the family," Dunfield noted. "Half the time when I dropped off food, one of her students was meeting with her. They've been her passion to the end."
"What's captured everybody's hearts is that, despite so many big problems in the world these days, Nadia has given this brilliant example that if you're committed to a better future -- even if you know it's not a future you're going to directly participate in -- spectacular things can happen," said Dunfield.
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September 09, 2021 at 11:00PM
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