Padmanee Pam Sharma

Padmanee “Pam” Sharma went from a poor childhood in Guyana to Queens/NY, to Boston, to become the Scientific Director of the Immunotherapy Research Platform at MD Anderson, working with – and married to – Jim Allison. She works with tumor samples before, during and after treatment to understand why immune oncology drugs work for some but not all patients, using a “reverse translation” process with studies on human immune responses to generate hypotheses related to mechanisms of tumor rejection. In 2018, she received the Cancer Research Institute’s highest scientific honor, the William B. Coley Award, followed by the Women in Science with Excellence (WISE) award in 2020. She tries to combine all this as much as possible with hanging out on the beach with her family, good friends and adorable dog.