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Snakes & Ladders Profiles of Women in Science and Stories of the Snakes and Ladders They Have Faced in Their Careers
War On Cancer
Drives 2006 Rhodes Scholar
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University of Melbourne medical graduate and winner of the prestigious 2006 Rhodes Scholarship believes cancer can be cured in her lifetime and wants to be part of a collaborative effort to do so.
Dr
Gee’s Rhodes Scholarship will enable her to go to the UK next year to do a
doctoral degree in the Department of Immunology at Oxford University.
Graduating from the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and
Health Sciences with a Bachelor of Medicine, Surgery and a Bachelor of Medical
Science, Dr Gee was also awarded the Australian Medical Association Prize for
the student with the highest aggregate mark for the entire course.
In the UK, Dr Gee will study the way in which the immune system recognises and
fights cancer, a passion she hopes will lead her to collaborate in innovative
research that takes new approaches to finding a cure.
“It may sound like an ambitious vision, but I dream of leading unprecedented
collaborations in science, medicine and policy by one day becoming the head of a
major research institution,” she says. “Oxford is the
next step in my realising that dream.”
Dr Gee’s drive to become a clinician and researcher in medicine was strengthened
when she confronted her father’s death in 2003 – he was diagnosed with a brain
tumour. She realised what was important
to her as she cared for her father during the last months of his life.
“That was a bolt from the blue that stopped me thinking about the place of cure,
and worked instead towards the most important goal – enabling my father to die
at home with his family around him,” she said.
“It helped me to understand what I valued about being a physician. There’s a
saying: ‘to cure sometimes, to relieve often, and to comfort always’.”
Music is an inspiration for Dr Gee, who managed to complete a Diploma in Music
at the University of Melbourne during her medical studies.
She remembers leading a group of musicians in a concert for an inner-city
community organisation focused on problems of homelessness, drug addiction and
poverty.
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“It was an amazing night which highlighted the way music can draw together an
infinite variety of people in an infinite variety of situations. In medicine,
too, it’s very often through unexpected connections that crucial research
breakthroughs can happen,” she says.
During her time at Melbourne University Dr Gee received a number of awards and
honours including the Senior Medical Staff Prize from the Austin Hospital, the
Vernon Collins Prize in Paediatrics, the Max Kohane Prize in Obstetrics and
Gynaecology, and the Edgar Rouse Prize in Occupational Medicine. She was on the
Dean’s Honours List for every year of her degree.
She also worked with leading clinician-scientists in Australia and abroad,
including for Professor Len Harrison at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in
Melbourne, at the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School and at the
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
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