MOLLIE BARNARD ’06

In 2016, while earning her doctorate of science in epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, she was awarded a highly competitive National Cancer Institute (NCI) F99/K00 Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Fellow Transition Award to study the role of inflammation and immunity in ovarian tumor development. As part of this grant, Mollie discovered that low-dose aspirin use may be associated with a lower risk of ovarian cancer. This finding was published in JAMA Oncology, a prestigious medical journal, and received media coverage on multiple news outlets, including NBC and The New York Times.

In 2018, Mollie took her NCI fellowship award to the University of Utah’s Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI). There she joined the lab of Jennifer Doherty, HCI Endowed Chair in Cancer Research. Mollie worked with Dr. Doherty to obtain two pilot awards and a nationally competitive research grant to build an ovarian cancer research cohort within the Utah Population Database. Mollie was, as Dr. Doherty noted, “able to efficiently guide analyses of a very large and messy real-world dataset, with collaborators with diverse scientific backgrounds (and opinions!).”

Her efforts resulted in several papers, including one titled “Endometriosis Typology and Ovarian Cancer Risk,” that was published in JAMA. This study compared rates of ovarian cancer among more than 78,000 women with endometriosis to rates of ovarian cancer among more than 350,000 women without endometriosis and showed that women with a particularly severe type of endometriosis may be ten times more likely to get ovarian cancer than their peers without endometriosis. In a press release describing her findings, Mollie noted “I chose to become an epidemiologist to make a difference in people’s lives. Often [epidemiologists are] several steps away from drug development or clinical practice, but this feels like it's just a few steps away, where it might take just a couple of clinical studies or implementation studies to figure out how this information can best be leveraged by doctors and their patients.”

In 2022, Mollie joined the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor. She is a member of both the Department of Medicine and the Slone Epidemiology Center, where she continues to develop an impressive research program examining risk factors for breast and ovarian cancers. Since joining BU, she has been awarded more than $930,000 from the American Cancer Society to investigate how cardiometabolic health influences breast cancer risk and breast tumor biology in Black women. She is a highly sought-after collaborator, as evidenced by her role as a co-investigator on four NIH grants, an award from the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and an award from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Mollie’s work has not gone unnoticed: she was awarded the prestigious Susan Cooper Jones Endowed Fellowship in Cancer Research while at HCI and the Shamim and Ashraf Dahod Breast Cancer Research Assistant Professorship while at Boston University. She has presented at universities and cancer research centers across the United States and at numerous scientific meetings. 

Striving to better the world in keeping with Laurel’s mission, Mollie has dedicated much of her leisure time to volunteering and mentorship. While an undergraduate student, she volunteered as a biology teacher for the Chester Children’s Chorus “Science for Kids” program. After college she was an Americorps volunteer at a residential school for children with disabilities. While in graduate school, she served first as a mentor and later as the Program Director for “Minds Matter Boston,” a mentorship program that connects students from low-income families with the mentorship and resources they need to successfully apply to and graduate from college. Now, as an Assistant Professor, she is a mentor to multiple master’s level analysts and medical students, and she is the Society for Epidemiologic Research faculty mentor for the mentoring team “Navigating your career as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.”

“It’s so meaningful for current students to look to alum role models who are making an impact not only in STEM but in terms of how they choose to get involved in mentoring and guiding others. Mollie is a sterling example of the adage we use often at Laurel, ‘Carry as you climb.’ We are so proud of her,” says Ann Klotz, Head of School.

For her mission to improve cancer prevention and early detection strategies for individuals at increased risk of developing aggressive breast or ovarian cancers, for producing an impressive body of scientific work so early in her career, and for her ability to build community and serve as a mentor and role model, the Alumnae Association proudly bestows its Young Alum of Distinction Award on Dr. Mollie Barnard ’06.