A moment with Dr Sneha Sharma (Class of 2020)| MEDICUS 2023 Issue 4

Exploring all that the “garden” has to offer
By Dr Sneha Sharma (Class of 2020), Family Medicine Resident

I went to Duke, Durham, in my third year as a medical student. Many of my friends and classmates warned me against going, saying things like “You will lose the opportunity to make valuable residency connections in Singapore”. I initially felt apprehensive about my decision.

But when the chance to build a project that involved computational neuroscience and translational research presented itself, I could not help but say yes. I had previously worked on several such projects at Imperial and was thrilled to continue working in that space.

I found Dr Carrie Muh, a paediatric neurosurgeon at the Duke School of Medicine who would become my research mentor, via the Duke website. When I first spoke to her, she had just received a grant to study paediatric epilepsy and wanted me to do my research on that. Luckily, she was open to incorporating computing and neuroscience into the project. In addition, she was kind enough to offer me a scholarship to help offset the cost of coming to the US. I was very fortunate to have found her as my mentor.

I had graduated from a US boarding school (my school was near Washington DC), so I thought I was ready for whatever the US and Durham had to offer. But on my second day, my friend Bhavya and I went on a tour of Duke Gardens. We were walking along one of the main roads back to our apartment when a lady stopped us saying it was not safe for us to walk home. We were confused. It was around 9pm and we did not think this time was considered “unsafe”. The lady explained that Durham has high crime rates and we must be vigilant at all time. She advised us to call a cab or use the Duke van service to get an escort home. Fortunately, the Duke van stop was just up ahead and the lady managed to ensure that we got on the van in time. That day, we definitely learnt our lesson. We always used the Duke van after sunset.

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Working on coding meant I could spend a lot of time on my computer. Either in the office or at home, running codes overnight, so I could analyse the results in the morning. That makes it sound easier than it was though. Sometimes, in the early days, my code just wouldn’t complete the action I wanted it to do. I would keep getting errors. One day, I was feeling particularly frustrated because I thought my research wasn’t going anywhere; so I sat amongst the ducks at Duke Gardens, watching them for a while. And then, a couple of days later I figured it out.

The Duke Gardens, became my happy, sad, zen and everything else place. I spent a lot of time there, exploring the different sections of the Gardens and enjoying the different flowers that bloomed over the course of the year. I even brought my now husband there. It is such a beautiful and quiet place. It helps you get away from things for a while so that you can have the chance to reflect because sometimes you need that in your research work when you don’t see a solution or don’t know what’s going on.

Dr Sneha Sharma (second from left) and her peers from Duke-NUS pose for a photo in front of the Duke Chapel during their third-year research project // Credit: Sneha Sharma

Once my code was running, I was able to contribute to the team’s work by producing some interesting results. And I got to present my work at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons in San Francisco in 2019. This was long after I’d come back to Singapore and I was really touched that my mentor flew all the way from the East Coast to see me present. That meant a lot to me.

Dr Carrie is the source of some of the most impactful lessons I learnt while at Duke. She was always there to give me advice; we even had bi-weekly check-ins in the beginning. I learnt that you don’t have to be everything all at once. You need to make sure that you have a good partner who can manage things at home when you’re not around, and at the same time you need to love what you do. You don’t have to chase publishing papers but you do have to find something that is intellectually satisfying. When Dr Carrie was doing her neurosurgical residency, she was the only female in her whole class. A lot of people told her to drop out, saying neurosurgery is not for women. For Dr Carrie, though, this was that one thing that brought her immense satisfaction, so she tuned into herself, didn’t hold grudges and instead maintained good relationships with everyone. Today, patients fly from all over the US and Europe to be treated by her. She is one of the best neurosurgeons in the US and yet is one the most humble human beings I have ever met.

What became clear to me from my experience is that research is important and will always be a significant part of my career. And while I’m still interested in neuroscience, I realised two years ago that I wanted to pursue a specialty where I could follow up with my patients longitudinally. I enjoy seeing people who come in with different conditions and are of all age groups. Family medicine became the obvious choice and I had no trouble getting into it. The harder choice was which cluster to join!

Even though I am currently focusing on my clinical skills, making sure that I can see patients well, I keep thinking of potential fields that need to be researched. Because research is not just for professors. Everybody can do it. You just need the right kind of environment and mentorship.

As told to Nicole Lim, Senior editor.