The story of breast cancer is the story of people - people we've been able to help through our research, community health programs, advocacy and global work - and the people who are trying to end this disease in laboratories around the world, and in our own neighborhoods. Join us here as we continue to share stories that celebrate the women and men who inspire us all.

"I suspected there were things we used in [astronomy] imaging to capture pictures of very distant objects that could be used for diagnostics in early breast cancer."

"My team and I are searching for a screening method to address these shortcomings, exploring a lower-cost, innovative way of screening for breast cancer called ultrasound tomography (UST), which can have the same low-cost advantage as mammography while delivering the superior imaging expected from more expensive modalities such as MRI."                                    – Dr. Neb Duric 

Astronomer to breast cancer researcher may sound like quite a leap, but its rewards have been great.

Astronomy has been a passion of mine since I was eight years old. I obtained my Ph.D in Astrophysics from the University of Toronto, and ultimately headed to the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, where I was a professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department for 18 years. Getting a faculty position was a dream job. But through consulting, I found that there was an opportunity to directly help people with their medical needs, and that became a new fascination.