Kilang Yanger ’02 Interview by: Rhea Cassan, Class of 2022 Kilang Yanger, alumni from the Class of 2002, shares her journey of discovery and growth following her graduation from Woodstock. Being a scientist and having a Ph.D in cancer biology, as well as having completed a fellowship in regenerative medicine from Harvard Medical School, Kilang has contributed to an entire new sense and perspective of the medical field. She has used her experience collectively from Woodstock and its provided memories, personal experience, and perseverance to achieve the accolades she holds today. In this interview, she tells us how she’s arrived at where she is today, and the role Woodstock played in helping her reach for those aspirations. You’ve obtained your PhD in cancer biology and have completed a fellowship in regenerative medicine. How did you end up choosing science as your profession?
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I would say in Woodstock, I took a lot of science classes except biology because I thought I was going to get into engineering. So, I went to Carleton College, a small liberal arts college, in Minnesota and when I got there, I was taking their physics classes and I realized the idea of physics was not what I had in mind. However, long story short, it was my nuclear physics professor who nominated me for an undergraduate biomedical summer fellowship with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute – the second largest philanthropic organization after the Gates Foundation for biomedical research. Thanks to that fellowship, I spent a summer in New York and did bench research at Columbia University studying the evolution of vocal pattern generation in amphibians. The next summer I came to Harvard to do a summer internship in a lab focused on cancer biology as I had started to recognize that that was my interest. After those experiences, I realized that this was something for me, so I applied to PhD programs and decided University of Pennsylvania was my top choice. At UPenn, I joined a lab which was both a combination of cancer biology but also had a stem cell component, hence the regenerative medicine aspect. I did my Ph.D there and decided to continue with my fellowship that was more involved with regenerative medicine. It was more a mixture of these serendipitous steps yet at the same
time, an innate sense for curiosity which was definitely fostered by Woodstock’s approach to learning as it was back then.
Congratulations on the NorthEast Young Heroes 2020 Global North East Indian Award! How does it feel to be the recipient of such an award? I was taken by surprise because I’m based in the US and for them to reach out and even nominate me was very humbling. I’m from Nagaland but we from the Northeast region tend to think of ourselves as a collective. It’s both encouraging in the sense of wanting to help portray the area in a positive light and to be recognized by your own people and community is very humbling. It was also really nice to see the other nominees and how they’re all very accomplished in the things that they do in their own fields. It was a nice surprise and very encouraging way to end the pandemic year on a more positive note.
What are some interesting aspects of your career as a scientist? As you know, I did my fellowship but now I’ve switched to the commercial biotech aspect. I no longer do lab research in the sense of going into the lab and doing hands on research. I’m now working at a consultancy firm that is very focused on the life sciences and biotech. It’s amazing how much your Ph.D knowledge and scientific approach is helpful being part of the commercial and business side of things. The thing is that science, medicine and biotechnology are moving so rapidly that, in some ways, the older approaches of having a certain logic
