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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, February 4, 2019 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

photo of Theresa Beech

Theresa Beech

"What Network Analysis Can Tell Us About Fighting Cancer"

Theresa Beech works in space communications at Goddard. She also uses her communications expertise to fight cancer.

At Goddard, she is the product development lead for the Goddard Mission Services Evolution Center (GMSEC), part of the Software Engineering Division. This Center simplifies the development of ground system software by providing a set of standard interfaces. The standardization makes it easier to change parts of the system as needed. It also allows small missions to develop software with the robustness and resilience as larger missions with much larger software development budgets. Another benefit is that operators can easily transition between missions without needing to learn completely new systems.

Her son Daniel was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a deadly form of cancer, when he was 11. Working with other parents, she gathered data on the disease, creating the largest osteosarcoma genomic and medical history data set ever. Learning that part of the cancer development process is thought of as a pathway, she used her communications expertise to see it as a network. Using that approach, she identified a choke point associated with the ROCK1 gene. Tests show that drugs targeting this point can kill cancer cells in the laboratory. The nonprofit organization Because of Daniel, founded by Beech, is raising money to help fund research on this and related topics.



Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov