Aleksandra: [00:00:39] Welcome to the podcast, my digital pathology trailblazers. Today my guest is Inti Zlobec. She is a Digital Pathology Professor at the University of Bern, and she’s also the president of the Swiss Digital Pathology Consortium. Although she’s not a pathologist, which is a fantastic example how interdisciplinary this field of digital pathology is. So welcome Inti to the podcast. How are you today?
Inti: Hi! Thanks so much for having me. It’s really a big pleasure to be here. I’ve watched a lot of your videos in the past, so now it’s fun to be here. Thanks a lot.Aleksandra: It’s super fun. I’ve seen you on LinkedIn, super active in the space and taking on those leadership roles.
And the first time we spoke, I thought like we knew each other already, even though it was just social media interaction. So, there is power in social media.
Inti: Definitely I felt the same way.
Aleksandra: So, let’s start with you, who you are? Introduce yourself to our digital pathology trailblazers and let us know your [00:01:39] path to where you are now in digital pathology.
Inti: So, I am professor of digital pathology and as you mentioned before, I’m not a pathologist. So I had a little bit of a different route to get to the point where I was, so I work in an Institute of Pathology just as a fun fact. We recently just changed the name of our institute, so it’s actually the Institute for Tissue Medicine and Pathology.
And I think that’s really a nice representation of where I think the whole field of pathology is going because it’s very dynamic. It includes, as you were saying, many different disciplines. It spans really the histology, but also the molecular pathology and now the digital pathology and ai, and really shows how collaborative this space of pathology really is.
So I’m a professor here, and for the last, let’s say, before I started really developing the group for computational research, I also founded the translational research unit here at the Institute of pathology and reorganized and we structure the tissue bank. So I don’t come from a computer science background either.
So I’m actually from Montreal, Canada, so I’m a Canadian. [00:02:39] I was educated at McGill and actually started my Bachelor when I started my education. I did a bachelor’s in physiology, so physiology was the starting point. I majored there with a minor in statistics. And then I started thinking, what could I do after physiology?
I did not wanna be a medical doctor per se, but I was always really interested in how pathology worked and how pathological processes worked and so on. So I decided I would go into pathology. So I did that for my master’s and actually for my PhD. So, in experimental pathology and basically fell in love with histology at that point.
And also, the ability or the possibility to work on a project for, during several years that was really interdisciplinary with radiation oncologists and surgeons and gastroenterologists, and pathologists, and it was just this incredible environment where I could use the two parts of my brain a little bit.
On the one hand, my interest in medicine and pathophysiological processes, and on the other hand, statistic. So statistical approaches and being able to use that so I guess the whole thing started with investigating [00:03:39] biomarkers in tissues, in colorectal cancer. So, I was always working on the field of colorectal cancer and putting together, prognostic models, predictive models, simple things based on immunohistochemistry and all of the sort of difficulties that would also come with.
Investigating biomarkers, bio immunohistochemistry, and then slowly getting into the field more of molecular pathology, et cetera. So it basically started there. That was a really fun start. And then actually I came to Switzerland, which is where
I’m located right now at the University of Burn. But I first came to Basel.
And that feels like forever ago I had just defended my PhD and two weeks later with, two suitcases, I was on my way to Basel. And there the idea was that I would help people with their data and I would, because I was working in pathology, I worked with Jeremy Jass, I worked with Carolyn Compton, and I got a pretty good solid training looking at tissues and images, but it wasn’t really, there weren’t scans then, but in understanding the processes of pathology and how pathology start working and to be able to apply that and use also my statistical knowledge [00:04:39] to look at data was something that they were really interested in because they were producing a lot of tissue microarrays.
So, this kind of started, back in the late nineties, early two thousand, and they were producing so much data, but they didn’t know how to analyze it they didn’t have anybody who would really be like helping to analyze to understand that data and get the most from that data. And so that’s how I found my niche in that institute in Basel at that time. And stayed there for a couple of years, for four or five years. And I came on a one-year contract.
Anyway, it’s been 14 years since so that was a pretty nice transition. And then once I was in Basel, I was there, yeah, as I mentioned for a few years, also helping with their biobanking and really into the sort of field of tissue, everything related to tissue visualization of proteins and so on in tissue.
And I had the very unique chance to actually found and establish a lab here at the University of Burn in the Institute of Pathology that we call the Translational Research Unit. And basically there was nothing of this kind with this sort of idea in Switzerland yet in an Institute of Pathology where the idea would be to build a facility where we would be [00:05:39] able to help facilitate pathologist research. We were not aiming too high.
We thought we would create a lab that would have the sort of basic foundations for tissue-based histology research. I started that by basically with the support of my boss who said, look, I don’t know if this is gonna work with your crazy idea to do something like this, but.
Aleksandra: Go for it.
Inti: Go for it. Exactly. And so that’s something I will never forget. Exactly. No. That was really the opportunity. And so that’s what I did. And I started that by myself with supported a lot by Alessandro Ludie and my boss our parent with one, like a bond machine and like a 20% technician or something like that.
And so, the story started there from my journey in burn. The following year when the things started getting a bit more established, we bought our first slide scanner. We got TMA Grand Master instrument because of tissue microray and being able to study tumor budding, which is the thing we were all very interested in looking at Here.
We could select those areas of budding from the digital images and then that started becoming in really interest. And so that sort of progressed really into, okay, we’re producing all these TMAs, all this huge amount of data, how are we gonna [00:06:39] analyze them? We don’t have people to analyze this. So it’s naturally developed into, okay, let’s look into image analysis tools and how can, how we can do that.
And so we got a lot of experience in the research domain. and we are, we’re now seeing how we can leverage that knowledge for digitizing our diagnostic routine, which I’m responsible for doing that here. Also with a lot of help from a lot of people. And we’re trying to get digital now, so we had some good starts and some bumps along the way, but we’re doing a little bit of a reboot at the moment.
But things are on a good way. So now I’m in burn and it’s really interesting times.
Aleksandra: And you’re the president of the Swiss Digital Pathology Consortium, even though you’re from Canada, and we’re gonna talk about it in a second. I just wanted to touch on a couple of things that you said you know are part of your story, but are super important.
First, your department is no longer called digital pathology. It’s called tissue science tissue.
Inti: So yeah, so our Institute of Pathology. So, our diagnostic institute is called now the Institute for Tissue Medicine and Pathology.
Aleksandra: Yeah. Institute for tissue Medicine and Pathology. And it includes the, and you [00:07:39] pointed this out, I just wanna emphasize it cuz you are basically a personification of the bridge bridging pathologists and computer scientists and data scientists, and you know everybody who’s working in the tissue research.
So, I’m super happy that you change the name.
Inti: Yeah. Oh, thank you. So we have this branch of digital pathology in the institute, so that’s what I’m leading. And the tissue medicine thing, it’s exactly what you’re saying. That was exactly the reason for that change was to make it known that there’s really this dynamicism in pathology, that this is a clinical expertise, a clinical domain, but also has links to all kinds of other domains as well.
And this thing about being a bridge is really funny because when I was doing my master, this is just an anecdote, I’m sorry. But when I was doing my…
Aleksandra: Go for it.
Inti: When I was doing my master studies, so my father’s a mathematician, right? And one day I was having a little bit of a meltdown because I was looking at this histology.
We were, I was scoring all these immunochemistry antibodies or these proteins on these rectal biopsies. I was doing my own stuff in the lab, but that there was something missing. To the whole story. And I remember being on, in [00:08:39] our family room, talking to my dad and I said, look, I don’t know what I am. I’m not a pathologist.
I’m not a statistician. What am I? And then he says exactly what you said. He says, you are a hybrid and it can either be a blessing or a curse. , and in my case, luckily it ended up being a blessing because being able to understand different topics and different fields and being able to link things together and bring people together, bring collaborators together is something that served me really well.
Aleksandra: Totally. I think you’re in a unique position also. , I dunno. In digital pathology in general and pathology institute pathologist is the person you like look up to by the position and by the name. They put a little bit too high on the pedestal. And I’m a pathologist myself, and I think digital pathology cannot have that anymore.
It cannot be intimidating to talk to a pathologist for a computer scientist who doesn’t, or for people in the equation in this field who don’t have that much tissue expertise, they should acquire, like everybody has to acquire the level [00:09:39] of knowledge necessary to work with the other people. But not placing a pathologist in such a strategic position, I think benefits the whole team.
Inti: Yeah, it’s interesting because I
also get the opportunity and I see it as my mission, to be able also to make those connections also between computer scientists and between pathologists and because I’m sort of neither, I’m a little bit neutral in that sense, and I can bring people together.
And what’s interesting is I got a question once at a workshop that I was moderating a couple of weeks ago and somebody said to me, what is the correct way to approach pathologists to help with projects that we can do work together? And I realize that there is often, maybe a div, not a divide, but some resistance.
And pathologists are always too busy. Always too busy. You always feel like that they don’t have any time. But on the other hand, historically also, and I’ve seen this develop throughout the last 15 years, and things are getting much, much better in this sense, is that oftentimes I think that.
At least in the last, let’s say, oh, I’m gonna sound so old now, but like the last decade. Yeah. What could I do?
Aleksandra: That’s okay. In the last decade, a lot happened in the digital pathology world.
Inti: [00:10:39] Indeed. And I think the trick is to get pathologists included very early in the projects.
They wanna be part of this. Science, and if you come as an afterthought, oh, I just need some tissue in order to make it more translational, or I need it to recuperate some reviewer’s comments or something like that, then of course it feels like a shock. If you could make a cohort together with five patients or you need.
I need 10 normal mucosa and 10 match tumor tissues. It’s that feeling of it’s a little bit as a bank and it’s not like you are included in the projects. I hear that often from pathologists. If they had they come to me early in the project, or if I could give my scientific contribution, then this would certainly be, a really fantastic basis for collaboration.
Aleksandra: Yeah.
Inti: This should start from either side and so it’s true that in my position also, I’m involved with the Center for AI and Medicine here at the University of Burn. And it’s somehow exactly this is to try to put people with different skill sets together to make really excellent projects.
Aleksandra: So my industry guest, when I have them on the show, I always ask them this question, how do you work with [00:11:39] pathologists? It’s I know that many of them do not work with pathologists the way they should be included in the project like you just described. And when they are not included like this, then they do not feel like part of the thing, part of the research.
They feel like servicemen for annotations. Serviceman for a quick check of whatever other people are doing. And that’s not the point that kind of contributes to this. Oh, how do we approach a pathologist? Why do you even need to ask this question? So, the question I give to my industry guest is a little bit provocative, a little bit of so how do you guys work with pathologists? Because you have to.
Inti: That’s it. And it’s also when it comes to working together with industry, you’re just hearing also from the different companies. We also had recently an AI industry fair in Switzerland, and we’re pretty well. Informed about who’s doing what around when it comes to at least the commercialized AI products or IMS vendors or scanning vendors and so on.
And what’s interesting is that a lot of the image analysis that’s being performed digital, so AI sort of machine [00:12:39] learning based or deep learning based tools are for really a small slither or sliver of this huge pathology pie where you almost get the feeling like, it’s for a handful of cases.
For, maybe it would be very good for people who are working in cancer centers, like large cancer centers. But if you really look at what pathologists are doing and you ask them where are your pain points, they’re not necessarily gonna tell you the things that people are necessarily developing algorithms for.
And I feel like if only they would really sit together with pathologists and hear what they have to say, they would be constructing other kinds of algorithms and they probably would be much more useful in the sense like they could be applied to a much wider range of cases, much more frequently. So there’s a lot to explore there.
So though it’s much more than cancer.
Aleksandra: Exactly. Pathology is much more than cancer. And when I sometimes introduce myself as a pathologist, everybody assumes I’m an MD pathologist and then they have to explain, no, I’m a veterinary pathologist. Oh, what do they… They do a lot, [00:13:39] they do take care of all the preclinical part of drug development.
There’s also companion diagnostic and herd animal diagnostic, and a lot of stuff people do not know about it. From the industry perspective, a big market with many pain points. Anyway, but now let’s move on to the Swiss Digital Pathology Consortium. I wanna talk about this because first of all, you’re the president, and second of all, you and your people who are part of this initiative, you guys are influencing things at the national level.
How did this. Happen. How did this start? Where do you wanna go with it? And where are you at the moment with this initiative?
Inti: Great. Thanks a lot for asking about that. So we have here in Switzerland, the SD path, which is the Swiss Digital Pathology Consortium. This is a working group under the Swiss Society of Pathology.
And we felt a few years ago that there was something missing in Switzerland because we have working groups for everything sort of the you know. Even from the molecular people, psychology, every sort of major organ type has its working group. But what was missing was something [00:14:39] transversal, which was digital pathology because it affects all working groups, actually.
And we realized that when we started to explore in our institute how we would eventually be going digital, actually, we were looking. For, we started off from the research perspective because we were producing a lot of digital data and we were wondering how on earth we are supposed to combine all of this data together with the clinical information, with the molecular data, and to have something of our own mini kind of T C G A in that sense, right?
That we could at least be able to search within our own, research database to find stage two colon cancer patients, females less than 50 years. K R A S mutation or whatever. It’s, that was somehow my dream a few years ago. And then we started realizing that everybody’s having a little bit of experience in the digitization domain, but we don’t know what the others are doing.
And in rather than re-experiencing for ourselves even the negative things, why not form a consortium where we could actually exchange our knowledge? Get together once in a while and try to develop the field of digital pathology for us in Switzerland. [00:15:39] So the idea stemmed from Andrew Janovic, who you, I think also know very well.
Andrew and I saw very much similar ideas. So, we had very similar ideas when it came to trying to promote digital pathology for Switzerland. He, coming from the computational side of things, me from the translational research side of things and seeing the troubles in translating things into the clinic and we thought, okay, we gotta do something.
So, we basically brought on a pathologist colleague of ours, Ryan Grub, Holtz. All three of us are not Swiss, which is funny.
And we got together, and we said, okay, let’s do something. We founded this consortium. We actually have more than 140 members at this point. People were really very interested.
So, this started in 2018 and we’re actually being going strong ever since. We’ve had, many different things. Also, initiatives that have stemmed from this. And there’s one thing I really have to tell you about because I think. This, when you talk about the future for digital pathology in Switzerland, this is definitely gonna be one of those major projects.
We felt like the timing was so good that everybody what we felt was the major hospitals in [00:16:39] Switzerland, the Canton Hospitals, the private pathologies also. So, we have this kind of a tri-level system of pathology. We’re all feeling this digitization buzz, like we can feel it, right? So, we thought, okay, the timing was insane because there was a call that was put out by the federal government and it was called, The Swiss time.
Good running indeed, really it was called the Swiss Roadmap for research Infrastructure. Our colleague from Zurich, Victor Kelzer, who is somebody that, I’ve known for a very long time now because we started same day here in the Institute in Burn, which was like 13 years ago or something.
But he left. He went to Oxford and now is a professor at the University of Zurich. He saw this call and saw it as an opportunity for us to do something together. So he got in touch with SD Path and he said, we gotta do this. And we were like, absolutely we’re. This is crazy. Let’s do it. So the point was that we wanted to build a digital pathology network across Switzerland.
That was the main idea. And the thing was that we would like to take advantage of the fact that we are a relatively small country so we can get [00:17:39] things done. We have a history of working together, at least the university hospitals are quite linked through common projects and common ideas and common strategy for the future.
And so we thought, okay, what if we would start to digitize in a very harmonized structured way, the cases, it didn’t have to be all cases. It could be a subset of cases because everybody’s at different points in their digitization process. We would put in structured reporting, so synoptic reporting across all the university hospitals.
So we knew basically the minimal data set, minimal data set of variables that we would attach to image. N scans. So metadata coming from the scans themselves, but also the actual, histopathological data, morphology, topography information, some data that could be tracked from the clinic already in, in our hands here.
We would have the same hardware, so the same scanners everywhere, standardize the formats that we wanna use and basically inject into hubs across Switzerland, our scans. But the best thing is that we would leverage an [00:18:39] existing Swiss wide network called the Swiss Personalized Health Network.
And they basically have these facilities, so these computational nodes across Switzerland where we could in fact have our data’s stored and also a provide a central registry that would cross. So, it would basically bounce across all of these notes.
So if you’re making a search, you would have access to all of the data coming from the university hospitals, and we would link it together with the clinical data that comes from the Swiss Personalized Health Network.
So this would mean we have outcome data, we have survival data with treatment the patients that we are contributing to those nodes and have this sort of harmonized structured, beautiful data sets where, and ideally keep the data local and try to find ways that we can then use some sort of processes for sharing algorithms across the different nodes and basically create like virtual cohorts.
Clinical trials, virtual cohorts of patients in a way that sort of can be accessible to all researchers who sign up for this in Switzerland, and also with industry [00:19:39] partners, et cetera, to help boost pharma and everything. So to instill these collaborations, S D P I, we call it Swiss Digital Pathology Initiative.
Aleksandra: So, you guys basically are. making lab information management system for the country.
Inti: In a way, it would be more like a central registry where you could basically look for cohorts for a research perspective. So, everybody would con basically be contributing cases that would obviously come from their diagnostic routine into the sort of central pool T C G A but. But better in the sense.
Aleksandra: It’s more like a repository with all the metadata, but accessible and queryable like a database.
Inti: Yes. And fair in that sense of the findable accessible and everything so that we really have it somehow open for researchers to be able to access, to be able to throw on algorithms, to make annotations.
And ideally, I in an ideal world, we would also be able to curating the annotations maybe that can be reutilized. So you keep enhancing the data inside this database or this registry of images, like a data bank or almost like a tissue bank, but image repository, image bank and keep enhancing the data so we don’t always have to start from [00:20:39] zero.
Aleksandra: I love what you say about annotations and I have had recent thoughts on this, that so many hours, like millions hours of work on annotations since the very beginning of digital pathology, tissue image analysis, it’s gone. Yeah. Nobody. Treating it as data, it was just a mean to get an algorithm and then use the algorithm.
Inti: Yeah.
Aleksandra: But we know those algorithms are not perfect and they need to be tweaked and we need to re annotate. So yeah, I totally support the initiative of having annotations as standalone piece of this chain that has to be protected, that has to be curated. It’s part of the data that we’re using. The same way you need to QC your images, pick your cohort, you have to do the same with annotations and with whatever steps come, go flow into model development.
Inti: Yeah. What a huge value is loss. Having, also, it’s almost a mismanagement of all of this, and it’s such a pity when you hear about, it’s like the people who are doing, p c r at the beginning in these things, like the way that the technology has changed over time and it’s really that [00:21:39] dirty work that was done at the beginning, but what a pity.
Aleksandra: Yeah. We can do it differently now.
Inti: Yeah.
Aleksandra: And I am super excited about this initiative because once it’s done in one form or another, it’s a model for others to follow, to tweak, to adjust to their infrastructure. But there is gonna be something listened those guys did it in Switzerland, do not reinvent the wheel. Go check what they did and adopt to what you need to do or what you wanna do.
Inti: And for us, really those sort of role models was, for instance, path Lake. And we went to Nasir and we asked, we were, we had discussions with him, and Andrew had long talks with him, and he of course also supported our project.
So, we have a letter of reference, of course, from their group, from Empire. So, from, Norman Zerbe from the, from Palka, even for the synoptic reporting from the Netherlands, they were all so supportive and could only encourage us to go for it.
One of our challenges that we have here is also that, the data sharing thing.
We have to really also think about how to do that because we are also split a Switzerland is split [00:22:39] into 26 different can. And it doesn’t really always make our life so very easy, but I’m sure that we will find solutions to everything.
But yeah, definitely we are not the first, but I think that we can really have a competitive edge because Swiss as are very organized and we get stuff done here and we do it in a pretty timely way.
And I think everybody’s on board in, the motivation is definitely there and we’re all very excited about it. So it’s going well.
Aleksandra: This is super important as well, cuz you’re gonna have hurdles, you’re gonna have to troubleshoot constantly, like digital pathology the troubleshooting field anyway. So like any cutting edge technology, but that’s okay that’s part of the picture.
Inti: Yeah.
Aleksandra: So where are you now? Do you already have some institutions enrolled or how are you planning about deploying it?
Inti: Yeah, so we basically are thinking, so let’s say the first round of, if all goes well, the first sort of phase would include the university hospitals.
There are only five. So, we are only five university hospitals. It’s feasible. And then we ideally think that this will roll out to the Canton Hospitals, and they could use what we’ve done as a model and [00:23:39] then to expand it regarding the timeline. So, we’re still in a pre-project phase, let’s say, because the project itself, so this is if we do get the federal funding, so it, everything looks to be on a very good, positive way, but you never know.
But this would start 2025 and would be for four-year period. And right now, our colleague Victor Kelzer has been able also to secure funding for a pre-project phase. So, we’re actually already basically starting to think right now as to getting everything in order. So, we need to find a project manager, a national project manager who’s gonna help us with this project.
We have a consulting firm that’s also gonna help us also make sure that our initiative is very much in line with initiatives that are taking place already in Zurich right now. Again, reinventing the wheel, but we can piggyback off of knowledge that is already in place there because they’re definitely even if they’re not working with imaging data, but they are working with other kinds of data, and it will be the same kind of principle that they’re trying to do.
So, we have to definitely make sure that we’re not overlapping there, that we’re running a nice stream in parallel. So, we’re in this pre-project phase and basically [00:24:39] getting everything in order, so like getting our project management ideas in order, and we’re gonna start that very soon.
So regardless of what happens with federal funding, everybody wants to do it.
Aleksandra: And you’re gonna find a way to do it. We’re gonna find a way. This is super exciting and I’m gonna be following this project and reporting to my digital pathology trailblazers. Oh, what’s happening in Switzerland.
Inti: And actually, I should mention it that our idea is published in OVS, so it’s in OVS.
Aleksandra: I do hear the title of your paper. It’s towards a national strategy for digital pathology in Switzerland. And I’m gonna link it in the show notes.
Inti: Okay, awesome.
Aleksandra: Into some research today.
Inti: Awesome, thank you.
Aleksandra: Because it’s a March episode and 8th of March is the International Women’s Date, which I don’t think is really that international and is more celebrated in the Eastern blog countries. I very much celebrate.
Inti: Definitely is so.
Aleksandra: It is? And you’re one of my digital pathology female leaders. I wanna talk about it. I usually don’t talk about those things. I have avoided any polarizing or socioeconomic [00:25:39] discussions, but let’s celebrate women and let’s talk about it.
So, you. Said a couple of things, you know before already, because I knew your way of expressing yourself, but also your personality is, go for it. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, but I’m gonna do it. And another thing is let’s bring everybody together and these are gender independent qualities that leaders need to have.
But were you ever made conscious about you being in this position as a woman? Something different. I don’t even wanna say discrimination, but just like being conscious of being a woman in a situation where that is dominated by men and most of those meetings are still dominated by men, and the discussion is okay, is it just gender or is it personality or what’s the deal there that there are less women? Tell me about your experience.
Inti: I think I’ve been probably very fortunate because I somehow in my direct sphere of people who really did not care about my female gender. So they were really people who saw ideas that they [00:26:39] wanted to promote, and I certainly came with ideas, but that I could take from them and that they just supported me on this path.
So I was really, I think, lucky to have that in my environment. But there’s maybe a couple of things. There was perhaps only one time where I felt like, oh, I am the triple threat in the bad sense. I’m a non-Swiss. I was referred to as too young, Uhhuh and female. Three of the best qualities to be promoted as professor.
Aleksandra: Sounds familiar to me. I’m a non-US citizen. Uhhuh. ,not that old and female.
Inti: It’s raised maybe some eyebrows, but again, I had people who were really supporting me for promotions and for things like that, so I never directly felt it. I have seen how it’s affected people around me, and it’s true. When you go to conferences on this topic, it is really blatantly obvious that there is a huge gender gap.
Especially when it comes to, not in the people who are in the industry necessarily, but definitely those people who are, let’s say, speaking on a scientific level. And at some point, it’s almost the PhD students, there’s [00:27:39] still quite many PhD students, and then at some point the females start to disappear.
And I can tell you it’s just globally seen, so it’s not maybe at the university. I can mention for my medical faculty, because I know the numbers and it is around 20% of professors in the medical faculty who have reached a certain level so that are not assistant, but higher that are females and it’s somehow astounding.
Like where do all the women go? So that’s, on the one hand, there’s a whole complex system around the answer to this question, but it’s really quite staggering in the digital pathology field. It’s for sure that, and I know from my students, from the people that I talk to at the Center for AI in Medicine, they really would like to have more female role models, to say, okay, these are people that we can look up to.
They were able to get through this. And whatever barriers that came their way, they have made it to certain positions.
They are there as role models for us. I think also what’s funny in my situation is that oftentimes people don’t know my gender from my name.
Aleksandra: That is true. Because you have an international name, let’s say.
Inti: Exactly. So [00:28:39] it’s happened, and it happens maybe once every month that I will get an email or a phone call or a letter assigned to a Mr. because they don’t know. And I guess maybe that has also worked in my favor and the fact that I even say it like that, it’s unfortunate. But yeah, I definitely can see it around me that not all women have had it as easily, if I can say it like that.
As I have, I’ve just been surrounded by very good people, and I kept persevering and basically constructed things newly which is also may be easier. So, I don’t know. Very fortunate though.
Aleksandra: Did you have a situation where you felt it like some concrete examples and we don’t have to say any names, just describe the situation and just like to see where we stand on that.
Inti: I can’t say that I was discriminated again. For that. But something that I did find interesting that happened to me at a conference recently, I was invited to take part in some sort of a discussion, and it was as usual, many more senior men and me. Maybe I’m the token female in these cases because I work in the [00:29:39] field and I almost take it as, you know what, okay, fine, because somebody’s gotta do it.
And if it’s gonna be me, then fine. Because we gotta break through. So, if it starts with me, even if sometimes I feel like maybe they don’t necessarily want me there, but they do throw me in as the female that I have felt more than once I have to say.
Aleksandra: Uhhuh. Okay.
Inti: That I’ve said that for sure. So, then I was on this panel, many men around me.
Aleksandra: I did have a, I did have an experience like that. When you mentioned this, they threw me in because they need a female.
Inti: Yeah, you need a female.
Aleksandra: And I just, okay. You rise to the expectation and you.
Inti: Exactly.
Aleksandra: Show up as a professional.
Inti: Yes.
Aleksandra: As somebody who really has the knowledge, even though their initial thought was, okay, we need a female.
Inti: Yeah.
Aleksandra: And sometimes even for me, that they needed one.
Inti: And sometimes they even tell you, oh, we need a female. And you’re like, yes. Thank you.
Aleksandra: Okay.
Inti: You’re not taking me because I’m great at my job. You’re taking me because I’m female thank you for nothing. That’s something I, that’s, I really does more harm than good. But if you are an excellent female and you happen to be female, then yes.
Anyway, I was of course part of this panel, and then what happened [00:30:39] was they were asking does anybody have anything to say? So I took a microphone. I took the microphone from the guy who was sitting next to me, and I said, I don’t even remember what it was about, but when I left the room and I went into the lobby of where this conference was being held, there were some female representatives from a certain company who were there, and they told me, oh wow.
It meant so much to us that you did that. And I said, what did I do? They said, you took the microphone from him and you said, I have an opinion on this. and I said, oh, wow. Like that maybe gives you the state of affairs of how things are a little bit in this sphere that it’s.
Aleksandra: Yeah, it’s sad to hear something like that, that you need to be a role model in a normal thing, that you wanna express your opinion in a scientific panel where you’re actually invited as a scientist. Yes. As part of this panel. So, I don’t.
Inti: Yeah. So those things happen, yeah, we’re trying to do my part here too. So, I’m involved with a diversity in AI and medicine initiative here at ca, so the Center for AI and Medicine, and also on the Gender Equality and Diversity Commission for the medical faculty here.
Slowly, these changes are being made. It’s really an active [00:31:39] process where they’re really, trying to actively change this gender gap here, and it’s really something that should be commended. It’s working slowly, but it’s working.
Aleksandra: So from your experience, and one follow up question, the women you work with, once you remove the situational disability and you encourage them, do they have the qualities to play the part to be in those places where maybe initially they were intimidated and didn’t go for it themselves?
Because that’s always my question. Is it personality? Is it in generally that, women wanna focus more on family, don’t wanna pushed so hard to be at the top because when I’m thinking what all those CEOs and all those high-profile people have to do and the pressure they live under, I’m like, I don’t wanna go there.
Inti: Yeah. Of course
Aleksandra: I don’t wanna represent the woman there because I don’t want this kind of life. I’m not talking about those like really, I don’t know, president or whatever the highest level, but just. Normal leadership positions in institutions.
Once this [00:32:39] encouragement is given, do you see the personality traits necessary to pursue and stay in those positions?
Inti: So yeah, once you strip back that, one thing that I do see is insecurity. It’s a little bit of insecurity, which might prevent some of the younger females who are working in this domain to push through. But if I remember how I was like also with my crisis situation, talking to my dad, about what am I supposed to do?
I can’t imagine that I was so much different. So I think it just comes a little bit more with exposure, with experience.
Maybe even, taking some courses would help independent of your gender. Everybody should do that.
Aleksandra: So you say taking some courses and insecurity is in a way to reaching those positions and being out there.
Inti: Yeah, but I definitely don’t think it’s insurmountable and I don’t think that this is something that is permanent. This is just a temporary, I think change. It also comes with doing that, with doing the PhD and aiming for something higher. I think it probably is maybe gender independent, but I think it really is [00:33:39] important to have some role models who are, that’s our next generation can look up to.
Aleksandra: Thank you so much for this episode. Thank you so much for taking part in initiating all those projects that bring digital pathology forward and make it accessible to everyone. It was an honor to have you as a guest and I’m gonna be following that as Deep Path progress.
Inti: Thank you so much for having me. It was really a lot of fun and also congratulations to you on the success really of your platform. So, it’s been a real honor for me too.
Aleksandra: Thank you have a great day.
Inti: Thanks, you are too. Bye.
Aleksandra: Thanks so much for listening. If you stay to Leanne, it means first you’re awesome. And second, you’re gonna be interested in the episodes that follow this one.
So stay tuned and I talk to you in the next episode.
