You should move out of your comfort zone. If you do, you will always be learning. Go see other places and bring those ideas back to your country and patients. The mentorship program helped me do better for my patients.

- Kuruswamy Prasad, MD, PhD (Mentee)
Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India

To apply for the program, candidates submit an abstract for presentation at the IASLC World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) and provide a personal statement about their career goals, describing how the award will assist them. Program participants are matched with well-established scientific and clinical mentors from hospitals and research facilities in the region where the WCLC takes place. The awardees met daily with their mentors during the WCLC to discuss relevant conference presentations and strategies for getting the most out of the event. The week following the conference, the mentees traveled to their mentors’ institutions to shadow their mentor, discuss their career path and interact with researchers, physicians and other members of multidisciplinary cancer care teams.

Being a mentor provides a tremendous opportunity to learn about the challenges faced by oncologists in other countries. The IASLC should be commended for having a program like this,
as it benefits both mentor and mentee.

- Charles Butts, MD, FRCP (Mentor)
Cross Cancer Institute, Edmonton, Alberta