One of Tara Rajendran's earliest memories is watching her mother playing music from their big old radio to her dying grandmother, and how hearing those songs brought them both some peace.
As a medical student, Tara also happened to read the book which won the Pulitzer of 2011, ‘The Emperor of All Maladies - A Story of Cancer’. These two events significantly influenced and inspired Tara to spend more time rotating in Oncology departments in India and the United States.
In this episode, Tara shares her journey to combine her 2 passions of music and cancer research, and to become the first physician-musician to launch an impactful sparking cross-disciplinary lecture-concert series advocating the significance of using a traditional Indian instrument called the ‘Veena’ for palliative medicine/oncology.
Featured Speaker:
Tara Rajendran
Tara Rajendran was 4 years old when her maternal grandmother died in front of her eyes with cancer. As a medical student, Tara happened to read the book which won the Pulitzer of 2011, ‘The Emperor of All Maladies - A Story of Cancer’. These two events significantly influenced and inspired Tara to spend more time rotating in Oncology departments in India and the United States. Tara did clinical hands-on clerkships of 9 months in Oncology from Ivy League institutions, Harvard Medical School, Weill Cornell, and Stanford Medicine. She was the featured international medical student of 2018, Weill Cornell medicine. Patients often described Tara, as an ‘exceptional and kindest student doctor’. The bright mind, embarked with clinical research in Oncology from the second year of medical school and received various grants including Indian Council of Medical Research short term studentship grant (ICMR-STS)and presented posters & abstracts at various prestigious international conferences such as AACR (American Association for Cancer Research - Boston 2017), ASCO (American Association of Clinical Oncology) and ASH (American Society of Hematology).