Emily Hoskins

Emily Hoskins: Cancer Research in Russian

One Russian student, Emily Hoskins, spent her summer doing cancer research in the Baltics

“Cancer” and “Russian” are two words that, for most, would go in completely different mental boxes. Emily Hoskins, however, who majors in both bioinformatics and Russian, set out to find a world that integrates these two fields of study.

In summer 2018, Hoskins traveled to Riga, Latvia to intern at the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Center. There, Hoskins worked with a Latvian master’s student on a project researching prostate cancer. Describing her experience, Hoskins said, “Essentially, we took samples from a couple patients, and we looked at their genetic data with the tumor and then the data of the normal cells, and compared the two through computer programming.”

With these computer programs, Hoskins essentially took on a trilingual internship. Other than speaking Russian and occasionally English with her colleagues, she explained, “You have to give the computer instructions in its own language . . . There’s a data analysis language called ‘R’ that I used in my labs at BYU and it was the same one we used in Latvia. I went all the way to Riga, Latvia and was working on a project in the same language I’d learned before.”

While Hoskins found a common language between BYU and Latvia in the realm of computers, she also took advantage of what was different between the two locales, namely the amount of Russian speakers. Hoskins admits, “I would speak to people in Russian at the grocery stores and sometimes tourists would ask me questions in Russian.” Aside from chatting with the locals, Hoskins attended the Baltic Center, where she took classes on Russian grammar and European studies. In class, Hoskins and her classmates held debates in Russian on contemporary issues, such as refugees and immigration. She commented, “I was able to learn not just about my majors, but about world issues. It was interesting to look at these issues from a [Latvian] perspective.”

One of the issues Hoskins studied during her internship really hit home: cancer. Having seen the effects of cancer in her own family, Hoskins hopes to go into cancer research on a global level, collaborating with foreign scientists. She said, “I’d love to connect with people through research in Russian-speaking areas. I feel like speaking Russian, I could connect to these researchers on a more personal level.”

Hoskins attributes much of her increased cultural understanding to her studies at BYU and to her internship. She remarked, “Even though my majors are very different, the humanities side of my studies has really enhanced my ability to interact with people. It’s taken me places I never would have gone if I hadn’t majored in Russian. For example, this internship prepared me to work in a cancer research lab for a professor here at BYU. Experiencing an overseas internship has [also] given me a greater perspective . . . I’m still reaping the rewards of my experience.”