Our Wildwood, Volume 47

STUDENT VOICE by Huckleberry F. ‘22

Beating Cancer at Its Own Game

Using the Habit of Perspective and a Love of Gaming to Fuel New Insights in Cancer Research I WANT TO BETTER MY WORLD BY BRINGING my ideas to life. My true passion is game design, but I have always wanted to merge my love of games with a desire to help the world. This came to fruition last summer when I interned in the Junior Fellows program at the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine. The program focused on lab work and cancer research. These weren’t my natural forte, but I was excited to see how I could use the knowledge I would gain for my other passions. The program consisted of myself and seven other amazing students. When I first arrived, I was completely out of my depth. The rest of the Fellows had taken AP

Biology, which I had not. In addition, I have shaky hands and was inexperienced with lab work in general. It was very intimidating at the beginning but I worked with the people at the Institute to improve. Through help from others and practice, I made my way through the program, learning and becoming more accustomed to the environment. One of their key values is bringing together various different fields in order to further their cancer research. I was able to bring my game design abilities to unveil a new perspective on oncology. I brought the idea of a game based on cancer research to my internship supervisor. He loved it, and Stasis was born. Stasis functions as a cancer simulation where the players play as cancer cells. It is using the intensity with which people play games to fuel the research. The more players play, the more simulation data is acquired. I now lead a team of five, including brilliant scientists from the Ellison Institute. We seek to use Stasis to bring new insights into the world of cancer research. It also means a lot to me personally because it showed me that I could still help the world while making games. In the past, I’ve been concerned that games and game design wouldn’t be the best use of my or other people’s time. I worried that I wasn’t really helping the community enough because game design isn’t going to send people to space, build houses, or cure cancer. But, Stasis will be able to not only bring entertainment and joy, but also data and research to an important field. My team and I hope Stasis can improve people’s lives. Stasis has really been a great example of the Habit of Perspective. I am using a completely new

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approach to cancer research, and I hope it will lead to helpful results. Being able to look at an obstacle from a new angle is key in overcoming it.

STASIS WILL BE ABLE TO NOT ONLY BRING ENTERTAINMENT AND JOY, BUT ALSO DATA AND RESEARCH TO AN IMPORTANT FIELD.

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