(mellow music)
>> Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm absolutely thrilled to be here with you today,
even if in a virtual roll.
But any medium, be it virtual, Zoom, or otherwise,
can in no way diminish the extraordinary joy and pride
we feel in our new graduates.
This day is probably the happiest day in the annual life
of any medical school.
It's a day of extraordinary celebration,
recognizing the amazing accomplishments
of our new scientists and physicians.
I hope you enjoy in whatever ways you can
your own celebrations at home to compliment
our convocation today.
But for me convocation is also an opportunity to reflect
and to give thanks.
I think first the students and us faculty
would like to thank the families, the friends, the parents
of our students who were always there for them,
who cheered their many, many successes
and comforted them in difficult times.
It's also a time to give thanks to teachers,
both past and present,
folks who saw something in you, who inspired you,
who did their best to convey the knowledge,
skills, and attitudes that are gonna become an integral part
of the physician you are becoming today.
It's also an important chance for us as faculty
to thank you, the students,
first for entrusting us with your medical education.
You challenged us with insightful questions.
You helped us in the discovery of new
biomedical information and knowledge
and you were there by our side
in the provision of safe, effective,
and very importantly, compassionate care to our patients.
And this brings me to the last group
that I think both new and practicing physicians
need to recognize and thank, our patients.
From the beginning they have welcomed us into their lives,
often as complete strangers,
shared with us their life stories,
offered their bodies for examination and intervention.
From them we learned important lessons
about human disease and its pathologies
and also its various treatments,
but the thing that I think they have taught us
that is most important
is about the grace and resilience of the human spirit.
They have been and always will be our greatest teachers
and we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.
So in closing I'd just like to ask you all
to please take care of yourselves,
your loved ones, your future colleagues.
And I also want you to remember
that wherever your paths take you in this country
you will always have a place in our hearts
and also under the dome.
I wanna welcome you all, new colleagues.
Thank you very much.
>> My name is Rakesh Goli,
and I'm extremely honored to have been nominated
by the class of 2020 to speak to everyone today.
I wish it were under better circumstances
and that we as a class could enjoy this day together,
but life has a way of throwing curve balls
when you least expect it.
I wanna start of by thanking everyone that's made today
and the past four years possible for us.
The administrations, the deans, and faculty
from the School of Medicine have opened their arms up to us
and made an effort from day one
to thoughtfully groom us into amazing clinicians
and future leaders in the medical field.
On this joyous occasion I hope that many of you
are able to celebrate with family
and I know that we would all personally want to thank
our families for the unconditional love, support,
and motivation that they have provided throughout our lives.
Likewise, I believe the CAP system is one of
the School of Medicine's greatest creations
and I'm so thankful to have a wonderful group of classmates
to have learned alongside
under a truly exceptional mentor.
Lastly I wanna give a special shout out
to my fellow classmates
that have made this experience incredible.
It's always fun to reminisce with friends,
especially as you get closer and closer to the finish line.
And I'm so thankful to be graduating
from such an incredible institution,
with such an incredible class.
When I first wrote to you about what I would say
in this speech, I briefly mentioned the ups and downs
that medical school offered
and how this tested us in unique ways
that ultimately pushed us outside of our comfort zone.
It's incredible to think back to when we first entered
the lecture room, fresh and ready to hear
that first anatomy lecture.
I remember before sitting down
I was thinking how I was gonna do my absolute best
to stay organized and on top of everything
throughout medical school.
Ironically enough, what followed was an hour
of furiously writing down every minute detail of embryology
and in the process not remembering a single word
of what Dr. Beaver actually said.
And one hour later I remember flipping through sheets
and sheets of carnage in my notebook
and looking at my classmate next to me
with that same dejected look,
who apply said, "Dude, we're not gonna survive."
In the moment I felt like truer words had never been said,
but somehow through this disaster
we adapted and we learned to stay afloat.
And honestly that's what medical school has been about.
It's been about surviving, adapting,
and eventually finding a way to thrive.
Even from that lecture experience
I came away with a couple of pearls.
Tip one, use OneNote.
Tip two, maybe don't write down every single word
the professor says.
From the classroom on to the wards,
we found ways to let our voices grow more and more confident
while developing beautiful bonds with the patients
that we cared for.
It was then that we could see that those hours of sacrifice
had finally started to pay dividens
and that we could make the difference
that we dreamed of from the start.
And this was all built on a foundation of tough moments
that pushed us to be better and to work harder.
When these moments pushed us to our limits,
that's when the comradery of medical school
became more apparent.
Those were the times
that we would talk to each other and vent,
or we would get that midnight Taco Bell with classmates
and get back to work for the long night that lay ahead.
In some ways it was a combination of those moments
that overtime morphed us into individuals
that built a toughness and a grit
to believe that anything was possible.
And it will be those moments in the future
that will shape the doctors that we will ultimately become
throughout our career.
With that in mind, I just wanna take a moment
to let everyone know how much I appreciate
being a part of this class.
Whether it was witnessing incredible athletic abilities
on display throughout the Olympics,
or hearing beautiful artistic creations
during the holiday party, I'm constantly in awe,
not only of what each and every one of you
are able to accomplish,
but how you do so in such a sincere and a humble manner.
Having had the chance to work together
and build a relationship throughout these years,
I'm astonished at the unique approach that everyone takes
to learn and immerse themselves in medicine.
Seeing the passion and the desire to improve as clinicians,
communicators, and people
has been a great source of inspiration for me.
And as we move forward to the next step of our lives
I can't wait to see what this class is able to accomplish.
In the current state of the world
the spotlight now shines bright on healthcare workers
and this is our opportunity to translate years of learning
and absorbing medicine to our patients.
Taking care of the sick and the vulnerable
is what brought us here in the first place
and it's important that we reflect
not only on the knowledge that we've built
and the skills that we've acquired,
but the words and the stories of our patients
and the beauty of our profession as a whole.
I wholeheartedly feel confident
that our class will be able to handle any situation
that comes their way with grace and poise.
I wish nothing but the best for the class of 2020.
Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this special day.
>> Hello, each year it is my privilege
to address our graduating Master's and PhD students.
Today we celebrate a collection of scholars
from a wide range of scientific fields,
medical historians who research past pandemics,
cell biologists working to cure cancer,
and engineers who create medical devices.
Despite this variety,
all students will recite the same graduate student oath
in which they pledge to uphold a number of important
commitments and practices during their careers.
I would like to draw the students' attention
to one in particular now.
You will pledge to be an ambassador of science to the public
and strive to be honest, respectful, and unbiased
when engaging the public.
Indeed each of you is likely already serving
in this capacity as your family and friends
a source for medical information.
I draw your attention to this specific pledge today
because in times like these
we are acutely aware of the importance of science
and the public's shared understanding of fact.
It is my charge to our graduating students
to embrace your responsibility to educate the public
throughout your career.
To close, I want to simply say thank you
to our graduating students.
Thank you for all that you've done while at Hopkins,
but more than that, thank you for all that you will do
for science, medical discovery, and society going forward.
It has been an honor and pleasure to be your colleague
during your time at Hopkins
and we will stay connected in the future.
On behalf of your teachers, mentors,
family and friends we celebrate you
and are proud of all that you've accomplished.
From all of us, congratulations
to the graduating class of 2020.
Each year the graduating Master's and PhD students
select a speaker to represent them at convocation.
It is now my pleasure to introduce this year's
graduate student speaker, David Ottenheimer.
David joined our Neuroscience PhD Program in 2015
after receiving a degree in psychology from Yale University.
He conducted his thesis research with Dr. Patricia Janak,
where he studied the neuroscience of decision making
and remarkably completed his degree
in just four and a half years.
Using rats as a model,
David studied which neurons in the brain signal
when rats are faced with different decisions.
Outside of the lab David actively contributed
to our school's diversity and inclusion efforts,
founding his program Student Diversity Committee
and serving on the university's PhD Advisory Committee.
David will be starting a postdoc this summer in Seattle
at the University of Washington
where he will study how neurons across the brain
participate in learning about the rewards
in our environment.
I'm pleased to present David Ottenheimer.
>> Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today.
It's a unique honor to be able to virtually address
the School of Medicine graduates
as we all watch from our homes.
We're graduating during a time
when the public's interest in biomedical science
is unusually high, so I thought I'd share my perspective
on interactions between science
and the broader community.
In many ways our research depends
on public support for science,
but this public attention sometimes comes
with unfortunate side affects.
One of these is the all too often misrepresentation
of scientific results we see in the media.
Although incorrect scientific reporting
can be dangerous at its worst,
today I'm going to share one of my experiences
that veers more toward the comical.
It all started when I published my first paper
during my PhD.
To summarize my work briefly,
by giving different tasty rewards to rats
and recording from their brains,
I found that the majority of cells
in an understudied brain region, the ventral pallidum,
are very active for preferred foods
and less active for less preferred foods.
This means ventral pallidum could be a good region to study
to understand how we make food choices.
I believe I speak for many of us
when I say that one of the reasons we pursue a PhD
is that we hope our work will one day improve public health.
For this reason when I was given the opportunity
to have the Johns Hopkins Office of Communications
publish a press release on my first paper,
I enthusiastically accepted.
When my paper came out I was delighted to see
that a few new sources picked up on the story
on my research.
Most of them just copy and pasted
the Hopkins press release though
and none of them asked me for quotes.
A few days later I received my first interview request.
It was not at all what I was expecting.
It came from a producer of a late night radio show
in the UK, asking me to chat on air
about the brain and why we choose sausage rolls.
Sausage rolls?
I was so confused.
I sent a note to my PhD advisor, asking for advice.
She suggested that I try googling my name
to see what came up.
What followed was the most baffling,
disheartening and hilarious autopsy
of science communication gone wrong.
In the press release we used a buffet of foods
like mac and cheese and mashed potatoes
to describe a scenario where your brain needs to evaluate
different food options.
In the UK, where neither of these foods are common,
they changed the example to a local favorite, sausage rolls.
This led to a series of wackier
and wackier headlines that included,
"Scientists say we can blame bad eating habits
"on our brain getting turned on by sausage rolls."
"Blame sausage rolls for bad eating habits
"because they turn people on
"and dominate brains, scientists say."
And my favorite, "We all have a sausage roll gene
"that helps us choose what food to eat."
Yes, "A sausage roll gene."
how did this all happen?
I went back to the original press release
and began to see what went wrong.
I talked about a dominant neural signal
about neurons having increased firing for preferred rewards
and a high level of activity in ventral pallidum.
It wasn't hard for the news outlets
to jump from those descriptions to,
"Foods dominating your brain, firing you up,
"and turning you on."
I think the moral of the story
is that public knowledge of scientific concepts
is often quite minimal.
And the people disseminating new knowledge
are often more interested in making an exciting story
than properly representing the data.
This is something we're seeing currently
as pilot studies and pseudoscience alike
are rushed out by the media
to people anxiously awaiting developments on COVID-19.
This is one area where all of us graduating scientists
can help out.
Regardless of where our careers take us,
we must all be ambassadors for science,
explaining the scientific process to those around us
and pointing out misconceptions where we see them.
If we can all help make science a little more understandable
we will be doing a whole lot of good,
both for the scientific endeavor and for society.
I want to finish by congratulating all of today's graduates.
I am so proud of all the work you have done
and to be standing here with you virtually today.
Oh, and since this is prerecorded,
current David, the speech is over now,
so you can stop cringing while watching
a video of yourself.
And go ahead and treat yourself to a sausage roll.
You've earned it.