BLUE for Cancer Treatment (Winter 2025)
Sunday, 8 December 2024, 2359hrs
Please write to us if you have any additional questions.
What is BLUE for Cancer Treatment (Winter 2025) program?
We want to hear from those of you who are passionate about radically improving cancer treatment outcomes from an interdisciplinary perspective: whether using data analysis, machine learning, or a complete empathetic reimagining of how we understand the origin, existence, development, and treatment of disease in the human body.
Beautiful, Limitless, Unconstrained Exploration (BLUE) is a model of research Building 21 has developed and refined over the last 8 years. We believe there are vast amounts of knowledge that rests beyond what is conventionally recognized. We developed BLUE to facilitate scholars of all levels, backgrounds, and disciplines to discover that knowledge.
The BLUE Residency supports students who are dedicated to pursue an original project that falls outside of traditional research paradigms. By being a resident, students receive space, an interdisciplinary scholar community, mentorship, access to networks, and training to develop their research at Building 21.
This winter 2025, Building 21 is offering 5 special residency positions in collaboration with the cancer treatment company, Farcast Biosciences. Residents of the program will be a part of the 2025 BLUE Resident cohort while having dedicated mentorship with Farcast Biosciences' CEO, Mohit Malhotra, during the beginning, middle, and end of their BLUE project.
We believe that by combining the BLUE model of research with a front-line industry partner, we may uncover new perspectives to radically improve outcomes in cancer treatment.
Apply to this unique opportunity today.
Details
Position type
Residency
Cohort size
5 fellows
Period
Winter 2025 Semester
Duration
January 2025 - April 2025
This is not for credit.
*This year, BLUE is an unpaid residency where select students will receive compensation in the form of exclusive access to top executives from MILA, Google Deepmind, Microsoft, The Government of Quebec, and other connections through the BLUE residency program.
The Program
BLUE for Cancer Treatment (Winter 2025)
1. Part of the 2025 BLUE Residency cohort
2. Receive mentorship from the Farcast Biosciences team at the beginning, middle, and end stages of the project cycle.
3. Present the final iteration of the project internally at Building 21 and potentially, externally, with Farcast Biosciences.
Function
Develop one’s personal, original, creative, and rigorous academic project in order to acquire the knowledge and skills to think beyond the acknowledged, the recognized, and the comfortable.
Requirements
10 - 15 hours of physical presence at Building 21 per week across
- Doing research in the space
- Project check-ins
- Weekly Lightning sessions
- Training workshops
- Regularly scheduled talks and events
In-person presence at B21 leads to essential interdisciplinary connections and conversations.
Responsibility
To cultivate a community of scholars aligned with the BLUE ethos, we ask you to:
- Talk to other scholars about your project
- Develop your project in the space
- Present your project with the community
- Share ideas and feedback with a group of interdisciplinary scholars
- As an aspect of the residency, students may be asked to participate in Building 21 initiatives or host scholar events
See: Our philosophy of education
Showcase
Scholars will be asked to present their work to the community at the end of the residency in a project showcase.
Inspiration
We seek individuals who simultaneously engage with these priority points yet remain unconstrained in their approach.
CEO of Farcast Biosciences, Mohit Malhotra, has articulated to us 6 areas to describe the scope of the problem:
1. Cancer continues to be one of the leading causes of mortality and despite decades of research and billions of dollars spent across academia and industry.
2. Over the past 10 years, nearly 97% of drug candidates failed in clinical trials and of the ones that were approved, the response rates range for patients remain in the range of 15-% 30% at best.
3. Human tumors are complex, dynamic and unique for every patient and anatomy - making it hard to predict their response to treatment, therefore even with several new therapies that have become available, there is minimal difference in the outcomes for cancer patients.
4. One of the main opportunity areas is to develop models that are relevant to human biology and represent the complexity and dynamic nature of human tumors.
5. Farcast researchers have developed a platform that preserves the near native nature and architecture of human tumors outside the human body for up to 3 days. This platform begins by taking live tumor samples from patients who consent to donate a part of their tumor tissue, that is processed using proprietary techniques and subjected to multiple treatments simultaneously. The perturbations caused by these treatment lead to dynamic signaling between tumor cells in their microenvironment and these signals provide indications of likely response that is used to rank order the likelihood of durable response in patients.
6. Farcast has processed over 25,000 live human tumors over the past decade and has generated multi-omic data that has the power to create biosignatures to guide precision development of cancer drugs and also guide treatment options for patients.
We are looking for individuals with technical proficiency and/or creative power. We are open to all imaginings from different backgrounds and expertises.
In your application, please demonstrate how you will uniquely contribute to a multidisciplinary team of thinkers tasked with producing entirely new ways of looking at this complex problem. While disciplinary expertise is a bonus, we are looking to build a creative team that might uncover new perspectives, methodologies, and paradigms.
Eligibility and requirements
How to submit a successful application
Applicants will be asked to ‘wow’ the selection committee in the manner they prefer. This means choosing whatever platform they feel will best highlight both their ideas and personal strengths (video, text, music, filmed performance, unusual and original research work, etc.).
The application should show the originality and boldness of the idea submitted and the technical capacity of the applicant to make progress. We are looking for students who are passionate, engaged, autonomous, and are obsessed with knowledge, learning, and discovery. Think about the question or the unknown that you are trying to get at, and articulate it in your application.
Important: articulate the unknown that you're trying to uncover as clearly as you can!
Due to the expected large volume of applications, please aim for maximum impact and clarity as opposed to detail. We strongly recommend keeping videos and similar applications to be viewed within 3-5 minutes.
If you are shortlisted, we may call you for an interview where you are expected to explain your rationale for applying, and your overall goals.
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