Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery

Here is what Bhairavi's nominator had to say about her:

"Bhairavi Tolani, PhD, or Vivi as we call her, is an accomplished cancer researcher and faculty member. Despite her busy schedule, she is devoted to the SKY Breath Meditation organization and volunteers a lot of her free time to teach the SKY Campus Happiness Retreat and the Sahaj Samadhi meditation courses to faculty and staff.  She has written grants as well to make this accessible and free of cost to the campus community to help people deal with stress, anxiety, and depression by learning the breathing techniques. She is a wonderful, warm person.” 

Nominated by Roopa Ramamoorthi, Ph.D. 

Bhairavi's Bio:

My research has been focused on developing cancer therapeutics. For the past 17 years, my cancer research experience spanning academia, industry, and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) includes breast, ovarian, cervical, lung, and pancreatic cancer, melanoma, and hematological malignancies.    

As a high school student in India, I already knew that I wanted to contribute to cancer treatments. Thus at 19, I came to the United States to get an undergraduate degree. The College’s proximity to the NCI where I pursued both my senior project and master's thesis work, opened my eyes to exciting possibilities in the field. From then, there was no looking back. Prior to graduate school, I worked at 3 biotechnology companies [Invitrogen Life Technologies, Lonza Corporation and Digene (now Qiagen)], for 3 years. I went on to earn a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Southern California working on small molecules as treatments for blood cancers. In 2014, I started a postdoctoral position at UCSF where I focused on developing targeted therapies, small molecule inhibitors and biologics, for lung cancer. One year into my postdoctoral work, I was offered a research position as an Assistant Professor at UCSF. 

What has been an important success in your career? Have you had a key breakthrough moment? 

Scientifically, these past 9 years at UCSF have been a wild adventure. I found a molecule which was originally designed to kill certain cancers was actually more active in killing other deadly cancers. We pinpointed the exact molecular target of this molecule using CRISPR, published this work in a high-impact journal, got grant funding, obtained 2 patents which were licensed to a startup company, and the molecule has been in clinical trials since 2020. To know that I contributed to the discovery of this molecule which is now being evaluated in cancer patients is priceless! Here is the full podcast story

Can you tell us about a significant role model or mentor in your life? 

I am very grateful to my Ph.D. mentor, Preet Chaudhary, M.D., Ph.D., Chief of Hematology at USC, who took a chance on me and an entirely new project which I introduced to the laboratory. This work with small molecules as a potential cancer treatment ended up getting patented and published. I am also very grateful to Keith Yamamoto, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor of Science Policy and Strategy at UCSF. His guidance and mentorship have been vital for my career success at UCSF. Personally, my meditation mentor Sri Sri, has been an invaluable source of inspiration, strength, and guidance. He is the GOAT! SKY is a breathing practice which Sri Sri developed. It has been beneficial to millions in over 150 countries across the world and is offered at over 100 US universities. 

What do you like to do outside of work? 

As a high school student, I started to do breath-work, yoga, and meditation. I have continued these practices for the past 25 years and they have been some of the most valuable tools I have ever learned. These practices continue to help me both professionally and personally. Since 19, I have had to navigate living solo in a new country as an immigrant, woman, and person of color and these practices have served as an anchor through all kinds of challenges. A few years ago, I became a certified instructor for both breath-work and meditation. As the President of the SKY Breath Meditation organization at UCSF, I write grants to fund these workshops and I have been offering workshops to UCSF faculty, staff, and students since 2019 where these tools can be learned. These retreats are open to the entire UCSF community. If you are interested in learning more about SKY Breath Meditation, please reach out to me or our UCSF organization 

Meet other outstanding women of UCSF through Our Spotlight.