Francesca Nardi
Learner Profile
School
Harvard Medical School
HMX Courses
Pharmacology, Immuno-oncology, Cancer Genomics and Precision Oncology
Francesca Nardi is a second-year PhD student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard Medical School. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Italy before coming to the U.S. to pursue cancer research. She took HMX courses to expand her knowledge of key topics related to her thesis, while earning graduate credits (currently available for Harvard Medical School graduate students only) that will enable her to complete her program on time.
What are you studying at HMS, and why did you want to take the courses?
I am in my second year of my PhD program and I’m working specifically on research on lung cancer. The majority of the courses that I decided to take in HMX focus on cancer somehow. Also, in my research there is a biological background, but also a translational aspect. So, I thought that the courses I took were great because there’s also the translational linkage, which was very interesting to me.
I did not apply to the PhD program directly after my bachelor’s, but I did my master’s first. So I want to finish my PhD within five years. Therefore, when COVID started and I couldn’t go to the lab, I reached out to the administrator of our program saying, ‘I know that this is a difficult situation for everyone, but to not lose this time we could take other classes’ because I needed to take some credits to graduate. The credit was very important to me [note: credit is currently available for HMS graduate students only].
How much of what the courses covered was new to you?
For pharmacology, I knew some aspects of it, but when they taught us to calculate all the aspects of the variables for the PK, PD, etc, I didn’t know. I knew what was a potency, but it was more theoretical knowledge. I learned a lot from that class and everything is going to be applied to my research. So that is great.
I really liked the course regarding immuno-oncology; I didn’t have a strong background, so I liked that the first lecture was more an overview of the basics of immunology. For the other course on cancer genomics, of course I learned something, but I knew what they were saying, since I had a stronger background about that. I feel like I learned a lot and I’m very happy about what I chose.
Had you taken any online courses before?
No, and I have to say this very honestly: So far in my PhD, these online classes were the best classes that I took, and for several reasons. I love the slides, they were illustrated in the session – while the professor was speaking, it seems that they were drawing. So I thought that it was very, very good, especially for me, English is not my first language. In these online courses professors were speaking slowly. It was very understandable what they were saying. For me, it was much easier to follow – if I missed a part I could go back, this is the benefit of the online versus in-person. Also I think the fact that at the end of the lecture, there was a quiz question, it really helped to see if I captured what is important from these classes.
Have you found yourself referring back to what you’ve learned since completing the courses?
For sure. For example, I had to take my PQE, which is a big exam that we have in the second year of the PhD [program]. I went back to specifically the pharmacology and the immuno-oncology classes to look at my notes since in this exam the committee can ask many questions of biological relevance. So those classes were very useful.
I took immuno-oncology because there can be some immunology aspects of my thesis research. And the pharmacology [will be useful], because we will do several in vivo studies, so that will be very important for me to know.